Christmas Day is almost upon us, and during this last week of Advent, we focus on the theme of love - its challenges, its requirements, its embodiment. Today, I speak with baker and theologian Kendall Vanderslice about the way we offer and experience love through the foods we eat. She talks about her new book, Bake and Pray, and walks us through some of the traditional practices of Christmastide and Epiphany.

We live in a time that is dominated by cynicism and suspicion...and joy is sometimes in short supply. Today, I speak with artist and poet Corey Frey about the role curiosity and imagination have in cultivating a life of joy - and why we in the modern West have lost so much of our capacity for wonder. We talk about the power of paradox, the mystery of a dynamic and incarnate God, and the way the holidays habituate delight.

How do we define peace? Is it a feeling? A disposition of the heart? A state of being? To help answer these questions as we meditate on the theme of week two of Advent, I talk with Pastor Rich Villodas about what Jesus has to say about peace in the Sermon on the Mount. Pastor Rich unpacks the difference between peacemaking and peace keeping, and he also talks about his new book The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Path of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls.