My wife once sent me a picture of a home decor sign that read:  “Being an adult is telling yourself, ‘Next week won’t be so busy,’ over and over again until you die.” This might be hilarious if it weren’t so true—or maybe that’s precisely why

A version of this essay first appeared in the Preservation issue of Commonplace. The term revolutionary used to mean something before it was hijacked and inflated by the tech industry to hype its latest innovations. Even so, there is no better word to describe the effects of artificial intelligence. We

An Essay on Doubt  I tossed and turned in my bed, trying desperately to sleep. Questions chased themselves around my head. I tried to push them out, but they kept coming back—questions about God and His character, questions about religion and personal faith. Questions for which I had no

Five funerals in eighteen months. Two babies, a toddler, a teenager, and a 60-year-old father of nine. The sadness, the hugs, the commiseration, and recognition of a common mortal lot feels starkly familiar. The endless loop of unfair suffering and separation is spinning up. We stand and sit in sad

This essay was first printed in Kline's book Scratching the Woodchuck. It has been said that community is like an old coat—you aren't aware of it until it is taken away. I became aware of what community is when I was drafted during the Vietnam

Sandhill cranes, long legged and musical, pitching into the estuarine mud flats with stilted legs outstretched. A flock of several hundred White-fronted geese, these with a watery cackle, circle once and join the cranes. The sky is alive with birds: Lesser Canada geese, Pintails and Mallards, a wigeon, some Northern

Every culture has its taboos. Muslims can’t drink alcohol; Jews can’t eat pork; Mormons can’t drink coffee, tea, or anything with caffeine. Some taboos are explicit, perhaps written in a holy document, while others are unwritten or unspoken. They become an unseen but powerful undercurrent in a