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July 2013

July 10, 2013

Smiling Skulls: On Death and Diversion

With sinister skulls on their black Metallica and Megadeth T-shirts, the teenagers who snaked alongside...

July 08, 2013

Sisyphus with a Lawnmower

I hate mowing the lawn. I hate lawnmowers. Our unkempt yard stands out among our...

June 2013

June 28, 2013

Remembering Deacon Patenotte

On Wednesday, June 12, 2013, at more or less the same time that I was...

June 27, 2013

The Fragrance of the Unknown, Part 2

Continued from yesterday From my mindfulness meditation practice, I’ve learned the value of looking closely...

June 25, 2013

Pondering Prayer

I had a problem with prayer. It’s not that I didn’t think of God or...

June 21, 2013

Scattering the Children of God

According to a psychology professor I read recently, we are hardwired to make enemies. Doing...

June 17, 2013

Looking for a Father

The last Father’s Day card I sent to my father came back to me, returned...

June 13, 2013

Practicing Forgiveness

A few months ago an old friend of mine emailed and asked me to forgive...

June 10, 2013

Wiman and Words

At “Good Letters,” words are what we work with. Of course, this is true of...

June 09, 2013

Nebuchadnezzar, Nevermore

Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people...

June 05, 2013

Cathedrals of Consumption

Many years ago now, not long after I had been received into the Orthodox Church,...

June 05, 2013

For the Time Being

I recently ran into a good friend who’d been battling depression for years. She looked...

June 04, 2013

Booked: Reading My Way Back to Faith

I accidentally read my way back to church in graduate school. I hadn’t been any...

June 03, 2013

Spared not Blessed

In the West we have forgotten how the world devours children because mostly when our...

May 2013

May 29, 2013

Prime Time Secrets

Recently I completed work on the first season of The Americans, a new FX drama...

May 23, 2013

Why We Can’t Look Away

The morning I learned about the women in Cleveland, I knew from a single headline...

May 22, 2013

Before the Fall of Baseball

As a child, school did not rank high on my priority list, which meant my...

May 15, 2013

A Corporal Work of Mercy

I was nearly two weeks late, so I already knew the answer, but I took...

May 14, 2013

Deliver Us from Evil

Guest Post By Nancy Nordenson The day after the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school...

May 13, 2013

Two Tribes: Good Wishes and Good Works

One summer my family got evicted from the house we were renting in Florida. The...

May 10, 2013

A Theology of Singleness, Part 2

Guest Post By J. M. Samuelson Continued from yesterday. Alan Jacobs recently made a wise...

May 09, 2013

A Theology of Singleness, Part 1

Guest Post By J. M. Samuelson Publishers today are churning out self-help literature at ever-increasing...

May 08, 2013

The Marrow of Prayer

Early this year, Spanish researchers published a peer-reviewed paper considering the evidence of social learning...

May 07, 2013

Emerging from the Tomb Intact

There’s a moment in Anna Karenina in which a frustrated Anna turns to her husband....

May 03, 2013

Beautiful Loser: Poetry at the Mall

Guest Post By Daniel Bowman Jr. Pray for one good humiliation every day. –Richard Rohr...

May 02, 2013

The Diameter of the Bomb

By the time this posts more than two weeks after the event, the Boston Marathon...

April 2013

April 29, 2013

Partaking and Passing On: The Work of Luci Shaw

The world is not with us—enough. O taste and see. –Denise Levertov, “Taste and See”...

April 26, 2013

Luci Shaw’s Poetry of Hope and Humility

The pale bits—twigs, fibers, pine needles—sun struck, fall through the lazy air as if yearning...

April 23, 2013

Peripheral Vision

Not long ago, I had surgery. I suppose that in the vastness of creation, the...

April 22, 2013

The Inestimable Value of Clichés

In his great work, Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess has the main character—Kenneth Toomey, a doddering,...