Our society is frantic with worry. You’ve probably noticed. Worry is expected of responsible people. We equate worry with good citizenship and awareness. We actually pressure each other to keep worrying. We are expected to remain on emotional “high alert” as evidence that we care about the world around us. Other people want us to […]
I recently revisited an old post on this blog, and I was struck by how relevant still is and how helpful it might be to post it again (you can read the original here, if you’d like). Surrounded as we are by sales pitches, hysterical rhetoric, and outright propaganda, it’s far too easy for us […]
Four years ago, I learned how to swim. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. And it represented a personal breakthrough for me. After a lifetime of fear and telling myself I couldn’t do it, I decided to tackle this challenge because of an injured foot. I was hobbled by multiple stress fractures in my […]
It turns out we hyper-connected people are very lonely. And the youngest adults–arguably the most connected through social media–are the loneliest among us. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it actually makes sense. Check out the video to hear a few thoughts on this–and on one thing we can do about it.
World War I was a monumentally devastating conflict that permanently altered the world’s landscape and international relationships. New technology made soldiers more efficient killers than previous generations could have imagined, and somewhere around 10 million men were killed and injured in trenches in Europe and on battlefields throughout much of the globe. Ultimately, thirty-two countries […]
Several years ago, my family and I spent a weekend visiting friends in North Central Indiana. Although this part of the country is home to lots of regular Indiana folks, it’s one of the places known as “Amish country,” a handful of regions in the United States that are home to large Old Order Mennonite […]
Loneliness: It’s an even greater public health hazard than obesity. As perspective, obesity reportedly affects one in three Americans and is a leading cause of preventable death in this country. Loneliness’ impact is only expected to keep growing. So went the sobering conclusion of research presented in August 2017 at the 125th Annual Convention of […]
“It doesn’t matter.” I feel troubled whenever I hear a fellow Christian say something like this about beauty, creativity, or quality. I’ll admit a good portion of my distress comes from the clash it presents with my personal values: each of these words appears high on the list of what matters to me. And if […]
As someone who’s been in and around churches for my whole life, I have seen more than a few church fads come and go. I’ve seen four generations wield influence and felt the seismic shifts each time the concerns of a new generation become paramount. But some things don’t change all that much. And in […]
A few years ago, a study revealed the youngest generations of adults in America are also the most stressed. In one sense, this is no big surprise, given the economic and social factors influencing quality of life and near-future prospects for Millennials—adults ages 13 to 35—and for Gen Xers, whose scores are virtually tied with […]
© 2017 Amy Simpson.