SO MUCH MORE It remains shocking to me that as of last Friday I entered my sixth decade. A friend that crossed the same threshold shortly before me asked me how it could have happened. “We didn’t die,” I replied. And so here I am, still upon the planet, and now in a sixty year old body. I wanted to find a fitting way to enter into this new decade, something representative of how I intended to sojourn the trek to seventy. When I turned fifty I went tandem skydiving. For me that was facing my fear of heights and also my reluctance to really rely on other people, especially men. Since that time my fear of heights has abated and I am now happily married. Approaching

RECLAIMING THE CROSS I grew up in a mid-western Evangelical church that had an ongoing and profound effect on who I came to be. During these days preceding Easter I have a plethora of memories regarding that theology and the traditional meanings surrounding this season. Some of those memories are sweet in their remembrance, and many are admittedly painful. I recall as a small child staring intently at the enormous cross suspended over the baptismal of the church. I remember the feelings of remorse and shame as early as age seven or eight, and how I prayed to Jesus to forgive me for my part in his atoning death. The glory of a resurrection was lost to me compared to the detailed descriptions of his agonizing death.

IS ANYONE HOME? I have been noticing with increased rapidity the tendency in our culture to interact with people as though they were “smart” devices. While it is not exclusively true I find it rarer and rarer to leave a conversation and truly have felt heard. This is the case whether the interaction is via phone or face to face. On the phone, I often hear the subtle click of computer keys and a general vagueness coming from the other party. Reactions to what I have said are frequently delayed and just as frequently irrelevant to what I have actually was communicating. In person, I watch the darting and averting eyes, and I most often feel as if I am being scrolled. If there is a device