Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
We sped through Amish country on our way to meet our friend Kris at a restaurant called “Funck’s.” My wife, Jamie, was convinced the name of this restaurant was an unfortunate typo.
The headlines can feel relentless. Conflict in the Middle East seems unending. We live in a post-9/11 world where threats feel constant, truth is debated, and morality often seems negotiable. Wars rage, leaders posture, and it doesn’t take much scrolling through the news to wonder if everything is coming apart. Perhaps that is why this …
It was an average weeknight in Birmingham when I stood atop the Vulcan statue. Snow on the ground. I was looking at the city below, standing beneath Vulcan’s massive butt cheeks.
We arrived in New York City and tried our best to avoid the chaotic crowds of pedestrians downtown. But this proved to be difficult inasmuch as our cab driver was driving on the sidewalks. We tried to ask him to slow down, but he was too busy on a video call.
When frustrations, disappointments, and sorrows arise, believers can cultivate the habit of turning first to prayer by intentionally placing reminders of God’s presence before their eyes and choosing, again and again, to cling to Christ.
Some of us are blessed with memories of godly fathers who protected us, guided us, sacrificed for us, and loved us.
Some of us carry pain—because our fathers were absent, distant, harsh, or broken.
I’ll call her Rebecca. She’s from Washington D.C. Her email started off like this:
“Dear Sean, I don’t know what to do, my mother just died of brain cancer… I am only 18 years old, and she was all I have left…
“She read your Facebook posts, and I am hurting… I know you can’t help me, but I don’t know who else to tell.”
Memorial, Veterans and Independence are American tear producing days when we honor our soldiers – past and present. We are also blessed to have an abundance of patriotic citizens who have unselfishly served this country so many times. Right here on our soil and in highly visible positions are others of every affiliation who serve this great nation. Everyday our first line of defense, our police officers and firefighters unflinchingly serve at risks that cost some their livelihood and lives.
I used to write about her all the time. She was just so easy to write about.
From the first moment I met Thelma Lou, when she was an itty-bitty puppy, I knew I had found a literary muse. Then, she bit my ear with her puppy teeth. Crimson blood poured down my cheek. I held the puppy in the air and announced, “This is the one.”
I am in the backseat of our van, sitting in a tiny, hollowed-out cavern of stuff.
We are traveling to Tennessee and Kentucky this weekend where I will be performing my one-man shipwreck at theaters where, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a standing ovation like a few nights ago. Although to be fair, the ovation was moving toward the exits. Also, they weren’t clapping.
As America marks 250 years of history, Christians can celebrate God’s blessings and our nation’s remarkable achievements while honestly confessing our failures and seeking renewed faithfulness to Christ.
A little breakfast joint. Birmingham, Alabama. The birth pangs of summer are in the air. Alabama feels like a Monet. Trees are pregnant with blossoms. Birds are everywhere.
On my way into the restaurant, I see a man seated on the sidewalk, weeping. A young woman sits beside him, rubbing his shoulders. I’m wondering what’s wrong. I’m probably staring, even. Which isn’t polite, but I can’t help it.
It’s weird. Standing on this stage. In this arena. I’m looking at a thousand faces. Many of them are about to be college graduates. And they’re all looking back at me so hopefully, so full of wonder, so wide-eyed and eager, as if to say, “I hope this idiot’s speech isn’t too long.”
Dear little girl, you are not ugly. I say this because currently, over 78 percent of American young girls think they are ugly. Over 78 percent of girls hate their physical appearance. Seventy-eight percent despise their own self-image. Seventy-eight percent are disgusted with themselves.
A middle-aged guy sat at the piano. The middle-aged guy plays by ear. He can’t read music because as a kid he was too obsessed with girls to practice “Hot Cross Buns” under the weight of Mrs. Downing’s glaringly sinister eyes.
The young Walmart cashier looked at me from across her counter. She had just finished ringing up my underpants when she recited my total from the register screen.
I reached into my pocket to pay.
For nearly sixty years, the Nordmeer has rested on the bottom of Lake Huron, a monument to both human craftsmanship and human error. Built in the German shipbuilding city of Flensburg and carrying nearly a thousand coils of steel, the freighter’s fate was sealed by a single wrong turn on a November night in 1966. I’ve been diving her since 1986, watching Lake Huron slowly dismantle what German shipbuilders once created. Today, her rusting hull, massive diesel engine, and twisted steel frames tell a story that stretches from Europe to Thunder Bay—a story of industry, survival, and the relentless power of the Great Lakes.
For generations, we’ve been told science and Christianity are locked in a war for the soul of humanity. But what if they’re describing the same reality from different angles? Biology reveals a species unlike any other—one that plants trees for future generations, builds civilizations, and passes wisdom across centuries. Christianity offers an explanation: humans were created in the image of God and entrusted with a mission of stewardship. In a world drowning in information but starving for purpose, perhaps the question isn’t whether science or faith is right. Perhaps the question is why humans alone seem driven to leave the world better than they found it.
I’m pleased to report that, as far as we know, I’m not dead. I make this statement because a lot of messages have been arriving in my inbox asking questions like:
“Why hasn’t Sean been writing lately?” And, “Where is the daily column?” And, “Is Sean dead? Did he get hit by a Mack truck? Where the [bleepity bleep] is he!!!?”
