Coming home to my family afterward makes the work richer easier and more fun.

Family is becoming more and more important to me.

You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.

For all of higher civilization's recorded history becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family.

In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it's not perfect that's okay there are a lot more coming along.

When you look around right now Nashville is kind of going through another changing of guard you're watching the Martina McBrides and the Faith Hills and all of them that have been the big stars for the last however many years and the next generation is coming in: Miranda Lambert Carrie Underwood those girls.

No relief was forthcoming from my then-Catholic faith which said the practice of homosexuality was a 'mortal sin' subject to damnation.

The most that one of Jewish faith can do - and some have gladly done it - is to say that Jesus was the greatest in the long succession of Jewish prophets. None can acknowledge that Jesus was the Messiah without becoming a Christian.

My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads round and green these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear.

What I think is fair to say is that coming out of the Republican camp there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith - something which I find deeply offensive and that has been going on for a pretty long time.