Essays & Reviews
Small Resurrections — An essay for Easter and the season of return
The Minivan and the Frequency — What Yaxel Lendeborg’s Story Tells Us About Formation
I Build Tunnel. You Stay. Good Good Good. — A Project Hail Mary Review
Reading the Grain — What Two Woodworkers and a Snowflake Teach Us About Formation
Culture Care in Hard Places
Three essays for people in the middle of hard seasons, in the posture Makoto Fujimura named culture care: mercy is the door, kindness is the room, play is the field.
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Letting Kids Play
For the parent in the middle of it: the field where the name gets used, and the long way honored. The third essay, which sits with play.
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My Name Is Not Legion
For families in the diagnosis years: the cost of the story told for us, and the longer arc that gets us home. The first essay of Culture Care in Hard Places, which sits with mercy.
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The Kindness That Is Strong Enough
An offering for a culture that has grown tired of fighting: the room sturdy enough to hold young people without a verdict. The second essay, which sits with kindness.
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Let There Be
The verb that made the world, and the making that reflects the Maker: the jussive at creation, the name that refuses to be a noun, the idols as verbs removed, and formation as continuing speech.
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Knowing How to Remember
The ethos beneath the work: how a family, an organization, or a community can hold its past sincerely without being held by it, and face the present without resentment.
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Knowing When Not to Measure
A working doctrine for human-serving systems in the AI era: measurement at stations, never ambient; reasons recorded at the moment of decision; readings dated and never final.
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The Canon Behind the Ethos
An annotated bibliography for Knowing How to Remember, shelved by function: the Room voices that govern, the Structure voices below the floor, the Ear that only instruments.
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Growing Together
A word of courage for parents as the school year begins.
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He Brings the Beauty, She Brings the Justice
A Book for One Room — the Fujimuras' Beauty and Justice, reviewed: the multiplication sign, the two neglected thirds, and one small assignment.
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Making the Room Beautiful
On healing through creating beautiful space: the Fujimuras' Beauty and Justice, one room at a time, and the communities that never forgot that goodness and beauty were one word.
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You Cannot Buy a Village
After Seattle Center: the fifteen million is mostly good, and it is not prevention. On keepers, programs, and the question the announcements never ask.
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Room for Play
Will Ferrell, San Quentin, and the slack where the world answers back — a companion essay to Culture Care in Hard Places.
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Review of Remarkably Bright Creatures — Young Adult Homelessness and a non-professional approach to resolving crises
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There Aren't Enough Speed Bumps
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The Room Your Family Has Been Looking For
You know something the school can’t measure. Good Protocols is building formation communities for families navigating the school years—where your child is known by name, your family’s practices are honored, and the thirteen hardest years of parenting are not navigated alone.
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I Build Tunnel. You Stay. Good Good Good.
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Reading the Grain
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The Minivan and the Frequency