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June 2015

June 12, 2015

Sunday Morning at Wegmans, Prince George’s County, Maryland

It is the Feast of Pentecost on the Eastern Orthodox calendar, the annual commemoration of...

June 11, 2015

Prayers in the River

I stand hip-deep in a river, casting into the eddies. I am not the kind...

June 10, 2015

The Eucharist: Eat, Eat!

By Shannon Huffman Polson We sit in the back pew at church with intention; there’s...

June 09, 2015

The Thing Itself: Art and Poverty, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. How should we treat the poor? Among those who work on...

June 08, 2015

The Thing Itself: Art and Poverty, Part 1

The following is adapted from a presentation given at the Dominican School of Philosophy and...

June 05, 2015

Hello, Insomnia, My Old Friend

It may have started with the antique grandfather clock in my childhood living room. The...

June 04, 2015

A Place Where We Can Talk

By Brian Volck "Somewhere is better than anywhere." —Flannery O'Connor In my sophomore year of college,...

June 03, 2015

The Science and Sundayness of Play

This post was made possible through the support of a grant from The BioLogos Foundation’s...

June 02, 2015

The Beautiful Attitudes

By Dyana Herron I clearly remember the last day of being nine. I stood in...

June 01, 2015

Charlie Hebdo and the Inner Soul of Humor

My friend Justin Smith recently wrote a piece for Harper’s Magazine. Justin is a brilliant...

May 2015

May 29, 2015

Triple Scoop

By Jessica Mesman Griffith My best friend died suddenly almost two years ago. She’d lived...

May 28, 2015

What Is a Christian?

According to recent survey by the Pew Research Center, the number of U.S. adults who...

May 27, 2015

What Cannot Be Fixed

I remember the time when "entropy" was all the rage. It must have been in...

May 26, 2015

Self-Hating Jew: A Love Story, Part 1

In response to “Never Again: Netanyahu’s Holocaust Cliché,” a recent post of mine on Good...

May 22, 2015

The Two Lists

Seven-year old Isaiah found a small desk in the back of our garage and claimed...

May 21, 2015

While My Pen Gently Weeps

My daughter Gracie was helping me prepare dinner one evening. We were doing the bœuf...

May 20, 2015

Monasticism in Lockdown America, Part 9: Psalms, In the End

Continued from yesterday. Thinking of the psalms as a way to cycle through the...

May 19, 2015

Monasticism in Lockdown America, Part 8: Psalms, In the Beginning

I always privately hated the psalms. Most of them, anyway. As a teenager, I’d leaf...

May 18, 2015

In the Marrow of Depression and Anxiety

By the time you read this, I’ll be feeling much better. Therapy will have commenced,...

May 15, 2015

Go Ahead and Have the Damn Children!

I was working from home a few days ago, on a day when both of...

May 14, 2015

Contemplative Questions: An Interview on Spirituality and Prayer with Fr. Raymond Shore, OP, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. Jan Vallone: You say that joy is the knowledge of the possession...

May 13, 2015

Contemplative Questions: An Interview on Spirituality and Prayer with Fr. Raymond Shore, OP, Part 1

Spurred by both confusion and curiosity, I recently took a graduate course on contemporary spirituality...

May 12, 2015

Facing Calvary

There’s a line from last year’s thought-provoking film, Calvary, that’s uttered by a young French...

May 11, 2015

Finding God in Updike Country

It took me more than a year of living out here to realize I am...

May 08, 2015

Sugar, Sugar, Part 2: May 8, 2015

Continued from yesterday. When the editors of Good Letters first asked if they could rerun...

May 07, 2015

Sugar, Sugar, Part 1: June 10, 2011

I’ve written before about my father’s alcoholism. From my adolescence until his death, I spent...

May 06, 2015

My Rainbow Connection, Disconnected

By Chad Thomas Johnston It was a Saturday night and my wife, Becki, wanted to...

May 05, 2015

When We Die

A text from a friend: “What do you believe happens when we die?” She’d recently...

May 04, 2015

Las Madres: Art and Death in the Arizona Desert

"The artist is a beggar because she is empty, waiting to be filled. But the...

May 01, 2015

Jesus and Legos in the Deep, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. “Judas the transgressor,” we Eastern Orthodox sing during Holy Friday Matins,“was unwilling...