Calvin Miller

I am enchanted by the redwoods of California. I often walk in the Henry Crowell Grove North of Santa Cruz and understand why some cry, "Save the Redwoods!" The oldest living thing in the world is a California Sequoia Redwood. Saplings at the time of Moses, these mature plants were 300 feet tall at the […]

My mother was born in 1900. It seems a long time ago, even to me (born in 1936). She was born in Guthrie, Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), and she was destined to live for most of the final century of the second Christian Millennium. I sensed in her a continual "what will they think of […]

'Twuzz the night before … well, never mind. Anyway … Mr. S. took his Prozac, then slouched for the day, (Psychotic, neurotic, chaotic I'd say). And the elves at the pole, Felt frazzled and old, As they sidled up to the sleigh. The time for the annual flight was at hand. The reindeer had brought […]

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands: Give thanks to Him: For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, For the love that from our birth over and around us lies. Give thanks, till your benedictions celebrate His benevolence, Till your prayers celebrate His purposes, Till your hallelujahs […]

JFK Jr.'s tragic death has left me bewildered at the whole issue of public grief. I have given my crowded mind much space in the attempt to sort through what makes cultures cry. I have lived through the deaths and interments of many prominent world leaders, beginning with the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in […]

How does a hurried society speak to each other? They make their chests into billboards, and then enter the flow of human life. They pass on the sidewalks and their chests bear little messages, blaring the chatty credos of their beliefs. There are some deeply serious T-shirts that say, Be a Baptist or be Ashamed! […]

Hats off – or should I say helmets off – to Lincoln Gaskin of Melbourne, Australia, who was the first (worldwide) ticket buyer for The Phantom Menace. To win this title he had to camp out on the sidewalk in front of Mann's Chinese Theater for thirty-six days! So now he has joined that great […]

I want to have a fresh approach in my walk with Christ. The pasty, predictable clichés many evangelicals use in talking to God have no appeal. I want to talk to Him as I generally talk to my wife – open and freely, with every word of my conversation being born spontaneously fresh, with nothing […]

She came before you, not in prominence but in time. Yet in every way she readied me to love you. To say this woman's image would be stamped upon your being may seem a monstrous strike against your uniqueness. Yet here I must begin. I knew her first: not just before I knew you, but […]

Emily, during her delirium and near-death experience in Our Town, believes herself already dead and is loitering around the cemetery among the familiar tombstones of friends who had died and gone before her. Not too long ago my wife and I visited the little Oklahoma country cemetery that holds our grave lots. All around our […]