Posts by Sean Dietrich

Maybe peace isn’t stillness. Maybe peace isn’t even something we “do” at all. Maybe peace simply “is.”

We arrived at the Christmas tree lot after dark. My wife and I walked the long aisles of pinery, scrutinizing each tree as though it were asking for our kid’s hand in marriage.

“The first rule of knitting is understanding patience, this takes a lifetime. The rest can be learned in only a few minutes.”

There's an ever-growing list of things you can’t do anymore.

Even after his retirement, he still preached. He preached in a country church, way out in the sticks. Sepulga Baptist, it was called. A place so far from town they had to mail order sunshine from Sears, Roebuck & Co.

One can never tell what stories are behind the faces we encounter in our daily lives.

We have more power to change the world than we think.

The little girl flagged the older man over. By now, Mom was thinking to herself, it was too late to roll up the windows, the guy was already coming this way. She didn’t want to be THAT rude.

The main reason I’m writing is because the world is going to go nuts someday. And I mean totally, flipping nuts.

Loving kindness is not dead. Sometimes it is only sleeping.

It was only an experiment. I wanted to see if I could change America in only one day by being the nicest person on earth for 24 hours.

Pay attention to the little stuff today. Things you usually overlook. The seemingly insignificant. Notice these things.

I quietly turn off my TV. I shut off my phone. I close my laptop screen. And, just like that, I found God.

When mother and child left the highway café that night, the boy had no idea what had just happened to him.

My mother always told me to smile. Especially when I didn’t want to. She often told me to smile when I was sad, when trying on school clothes, or whenever I was forced to eat beef liver at gunpoint.

Everyone knew the words. Everyone sang. The stadium sounded like it was going to crumble beneath the volume of mass singing.

I am convinced that if you live wrongly, if you treat your fellow man poorly, if you are selfish, if you are not a good person, you will die and wake up in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

I found old photographs in the attic. I rifled through hundreds of old Polaroids. Most were infant pictures of me naked.

I miss the newspaper. Before the internet. I’m talking physical newspapers. The kind you unfold.

When Mom and son reach the stairs of the slide, they are shouting in make-believe voices. Making more explosion sounds. But the boy breaks character for a brief moment. And in a voice that is small and sincere, he says, “I love you so much, Mom.”

There were no cameras around. The kid wasn’t seeking attention. He wasn’t posing for selfies to publicize his charitable act on social media for likes and shares. He just wanted the guy to take the shoes.

The worst part of it all, he often said, was the loneliness. Loneliness is the worst sensation in the human experience.

The boy didn’t have a lot going for him. At least, that’s what his parents first thought.

There is nothing like July on the lake.

It was a Wednesday, 10:35 a.m., when two “abject failures,” a couple of dropouts, named Wilbur and Oriville Wright, altered the course of world history.

Each ripe fruit represents the humble journey of belief. Of faith. It represents the farmer’s defiant optimism, his long hours of hard work, his months of prayer.

I got into an argument at the supermarket. This is how volatile our world is right now.