LaVonne Neff is an amateur theologian and cook; lover of language and travel; wife, mother, grandmother, godmother, dogmother; perpetual student, constant reader, and Christian contrarian. She blogs at Lively Dust and reviews books for various magazines.
Posts By This Author
Which Party is the Biggest Spender? A. Democrats B. Republicans C. All of the Above
The Second-Best Book on Sabbath
If you read only one book about the Sabbath, it should be Abraham Joshua Heschel's 1951 classic<
Once Again, the Health-Care Bill Is Far From Perfect
Lent on $2.50 a Day
My friend Irene Groot decided to try the Lenten Experiment this year. "I recently sent off a couple of hundred dollars to a local soup kitchen," she e-mailed me this morning. "That's the money I saved taking up your challenge."
Health Care: Swiss Solidarity and the Scandalous 5%
America's Health Care: Paying More for Poorer Outcomes
Committed: Family Values from Eat, Pray, Love Author Elizabeth Gilbert
African Lent
An Ash Wednesday Memoir of Mortality
A Lenten Experiment
In January last year, Mr. Neff and I began a Lenten experiment. We wanted to see if we could eat adequate amounts of tasty and nutritious food on a food-stamp budget. We also wanted to see what we might learn from the attempt. I recorded the experiment in fifty almost-daily posts on my blog, Lively Dust.
Health-Care Magic
Five Steps to Avoid Financial Disaster (Inflated Expectations, Part 2)
[Continued from part 1] I have no idea how the United States will or can get out of the economic mess we've spent the last 50 years getting ourselves into. As individuals, though, we can take steps to avoid disaster.
50 Years of Inflated Expectations
Boomer Blues: 'We don't learn from the past, and we don't plan for the future.'
Cheerful Books for the Bleak Midwinter
The Archbishop and the President's Common Problem
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
--William Butler Yeats, from "The Second Coming"