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October 2014

October 31, 2014

Monasticism in Lockdown America, Part 1

The gentlemen I’ve been visiting in my local jail for the past decade live a...

October 30, 2014

Breaking the Fall in Alice McDermott’s Someone

At the beginning of Alice McDermott’s latest novel, Someone, an unattractive but good-natured girl divulges...

October 28, 2014

The Trouble with Time

They talk. They talk to. They talk about. God. Please, God. Dear God. Thank you,...

October 27, 2014

Riding the Waves

My sons argue over Avengers characters. The littlest insists he’s Captain America. Another claims Hawkeye....

October 24, 2014

Billy Collins’s Art of Drowning

I always keep a poet by my bed. Lately it has been Billy Collins, former...

October 23, 2014

Raising Kids in the Creation/Evolution Divide, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. At the time of our children’s young-earth themed Vacation Bible School, I...

October 22, 2014

Raising Kids in the Creation/Evolution Divide, Part 1

Two summers ago,my husband Jeremy and I decided to cancel our family’s cross-country road trip...

October 20, 2014

Hannah Graham and a Silence too Loud

It was forty degrees this morning when I got into my car. The back window...

October 17, 2014

Inside Matisse’s Chapel of Cut-Outs

At the end of his life, Henri Matisse made art for a chapel. It was...

October 16, 2014

Holding the Blade of Sacrifice

I had fallen asleep thinking about the Sacrifice of Isaac: The account, given in Genesis,...

October 14, 2014

The Iron Cross: An Observation from the Way of Saint James, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. The Way of Saint James—El Camino de Santiago—is a pilgrimage that began...

October 13, 2014

The Iron Cross: An Observation from the Way of Saint James, Part 1

I didn’t know Julia well. The first time I saw her, she was sitting at...

October 10, 2014

Pasternak: Artist and Holy Fool

As I read the essay “The Writer and the Valet” in my latest issue of...

October 09, 2014

Commodifying Myself

Guest Post by Ryan Pemberton “It’s a funny feeling,” I confessed to an editor-friend as...

October 08, 2014

Renouncing the Gridiron

I gave up sports for the same reason I gave up politics and pornography. I...

October 07, 2014

The Saints of Mount Midoriyama

Loving my fellow man has never come easy. Candidly speaking, I love a small contingency...

October 06, 2014

The Self and the Shadow

Guest post by Holly LeCraw Lately, I am drawn more and more to the thought...

October 03, 2014

Goodbye to My Nuclear Days

From the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, I devoted my research and writing to the...

October 02, 2014

The Saint John’s Bible: Back to the Future

The story of how the text of the Bible was set down and transmitted is...

October 01, 2014

Who Lives? A Meditation for the Days of Awe 5775

“And who by fire, who by water, / Who in the sunshine, who in the...

September 2014

September 30, 2014

In a Domain of Sheep, He was a Lion:
Tributes to D.G. Myers from Friends & Colleagues

The writer, critic, and literary scholar D.G. Myers died September 26 at the age of...

September 29, 2014

Jesus and the Junkie in My Car

You learn a lot about your neighborhood when you drive a junkie from the laundromat...

September 26, 2014

Living My Family’s Legacy

The sins of the fathers may indeed be visited upon the children, and upon the...

September 25, 2014

Better Red(head) than Dead

One day my mother came home from the interior decorating shop where she worked, very...

September 24, 2014

Rubble and Re-Creation

“Good Letters” is pleased today to welcome Chris Hoke as a regular contributor. In the...

September 23, 2014

Bar Rescue, the Wedding at Cana, and Me

Guest post by Lisa Ampleman I hardly ever go to bars, and when I do,...

September 22, 2014

The Demons That Possess Us

When I graduated from Seattle Pacific’s MFA program, I was sorely disappointed to hear Greg...

September 19, 2014

Surrendering the Lead: An Observation from the Way of Saint James, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. On our seventh day walking El Camino de Santiago, my husband and...

September 18, 2014

Surrendering the Lead: An Observation from the Way of Saint James, Part 1

I could not accept retirement with grace. Perhaps it was because retirement was not something...

September 17, 2014

We All Have a Place on the Great Chain of Being

Somewhere along the Great Chain of Being, we all have our place. That’s an old...