Category Personal Outlook
A girl who belonged wherever she was
The weight of certain decisions has been known to overwhelm me, though not in an all-at-once, crushing defeat. It has always been a slow decay, a creeping suspicion that I have strayed off course, that I have forgotten what I mean to be working toward. You could compare this feeling to the editing process within […]
Bless our crummy little hearts.
This past Sunday, I laughed along with the hundred or so other people filling the pews at New Canaan’s First Presbyterian Church as the pastor read a poem by Richard Newman entitled Bless Their Hearts. In it, Newman makes fun of way we often think handing out heart blessings serves as a cover-all for the […]
Your truth and mine, and everything in between
It’s laughable really that I’ve staked my career in religion journalism thus far on a claim that I can be more objective than those who have come before. More insightful, more decisive. That I will write from outside of situations, while remaining ever true to the people inside of them. It’s laughable because I’ve spent […]
Revisiting Romney and his vision of hope
Monday night, Mitt Romney closed the third and final presidential debate by telling the American people that he has what it takes to protect and restore this great nation, which, in his estimation, serves as the hope of the earth. Though rhetorically powerful, there is reason to pause over this notion that the decision we […]
A Prayer Among Friends
a poem by John Daniel “Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn’t ours for long. May we spend generously the time we are given. May we enact our responsibilities as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures. May we […]
There’s a little Romney in us all.
In a campaign that’s become much more about personal attacks on the competitor than a testament to his past four years in office, Obama’s team has kept themselves busy selecting sound bites and digging through Romney’s political and business records. And, as has been noted again and again, Mitt makes it remarkably easy. There was […]
I’m on the pursuit of happiness, baby.
“The U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.” -Benjamin Franklin Take a moment to consider this photograph. Study the smiles, the hands, the baby who doesn’t seem to appreciate this joyous little mob. I can almost hear this photograph. The shrieks of laughter. Overlapping voices […]
Are you there iPhone? It’s me, Kelsey.
Woken up again by 5 a.m. demons, it was the iPhone on my bedside table I reached for and not to God in prayer. For what do now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleeps mean to someone who can sift through twilight tweets and instagrammed images of star-filled skies? An ever-present God has been replaced by an over-stimulating pocket-sized piece of […]
Seeking the end of the story
Religious studies scholar Charles H. Long calls religion a personal orientation to the world, an effort at coming to terms with one’s place in the universe. This idea, that religion brings significance to the mundane ordinariness of the average person’s life, feels right, especially to someone who has stood in Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity […]
Kelsey Elizabeth Dallas 