Dear friends,

Warm greetings from beautiful Maine! Lily and I are here to celebrate my 39th birthday (May 28) and our 12th wedding anniversary (July 8). I’m so grateful for Lily’s relentless love since the first day we met. She’s my teacher, healer, and gift from heaven.

This week I’m sharing a live conversation about loving our enemies that I recently recorded with Telos Group. Telos is a peacemaking organization that has profoundly impacted my life. I deeply respect their work and am so honored that they invited me to join this conversation. I heartily encourage you to learn more about Telos and participate in their work.

Telos said they were “blown away” by this conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. To listen, please click here.

Happy (early) anniversary, Lily!

Andrew

.. Read More

Dear friends,

I was in D.C. last week recording the audiobook of Why Pray? Seven Practices for Flourishing on the Edge of Faith (updated title). This is an intense and time-consuming process, and I want to thank my producer Robert Winship and the entire BitterSweet team for their energizing excellence.

I believe our bodies are good and that we should befriend them. Paul wrote the beautiful question, “Don’t you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?” (1 Corinthians 6:17). Ancient spirituality often taught people to ignore or idolize their bodies. Paul calls us to embrace our bodies as sacred homes to be cherished and cared for. I’m with Paul.  

But recording Why Pray? has given me a new window into how my body is still catching up with my belief. As I read my own book into the microphone, I discovered how little I know about my tongue, teeth, and lips. I talk every day and have recorded many hours of content... Read More

Dear friends,

I’m delighted to share that my new book Practice Flourishing: The Spirituality of Jesus is nearly finished being revised. I’ve just presented it to my board at the Institute for Faith and Flourishing, and my submission deadline for the final manuscript is May 15. My publisher BitterSweet Foundation hopes the book will be released in paperback, audiobook, and digital by mid-October. If you’d like to sign up for updates on the book’s release, please click here.

To mark this moment, I’ve written an essay about my experience writing this book. I’m excited to share it with you and want to thank you for your prayer, encouragement, and investment in my work.

Pregnancy: The Creative Process / On Writing

As a man, I would never claim to know what pregnancy is really like. But my sisters and many of my dearest friends have shared their experiences of pregnancy with me. I have watched their pregnancies unfold and witnessed the new life soon after delivery... Read More

Dear friends,

I love firsts, and this one is extra special: Lily and I are collaborating on Stop & Think with a brief essay from me and a brilliant painting from her.

Our shared theme is “groaning,” an experience that becomes increasingly familiar to us amidst pandemic, war, and other forms of conflict and loss. Lily’s painting is entitled Loss and Hope (March 2022). It’s a profound reflection on Ethiopian motherhood with many subtle meanings layered within it. Special thanks to Lily for sharing her sacred gift with me and the world.

Our work was published in this month’s edition of Cultivare, an exceptionally rich online magazine edited by my spiritual director Dr. Duane Grobman. I warmly encourage you to subscribe to Cultivare (it’s free) and read the entire edition. I hope you find it as illuminating and encouraging as I have. Special thanks to Duane for inviting our work!

Yours with groaning and gratitude,

Andrew and Lily

Loss and Hope by Lily DeCort

Groaning: Love in Pain​

My world shook, and I began to groan... Read More

Dear friends,

I recently finished reading the Harry Potter series, which was published between 1997 and 2007. My late PhD adviser Jean Elshtain always spoke so highly of these seven books, and now I know why.

In this essay, I want to share with you some of what I’ve discovered in the Potter universe. Perhaps these reflections will stir up treasured memories for you, or spur you on to read the series for the first time, or simply enrich your own moral imagination. Spoiler alert: I discuss a lot of plot details and endings below. If you want to jump around, I bold the key topics and characters.

For starters, these books deserve to be the best-selling story in history, which they are with over 500 million copies in print. They’re fundamentally about ethics — about good and evil, love and power, loss and resurrection. They speak to the human longing for goodness, joy, and togetherness despite evil, hate, and murder... Read More