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Reflection

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January 2016

January 25, 2016

Listening to Simone

By Christiana N. Peterson The woman stands in the entryway of our common building just...

January 19, 2016

Eden’s Border: Where Objects Have Stories

We’ll have to go back to the gun shop today. There’s no way around it....

January 11, 2016

Sign-Seeking in the Dark

January is for sleeplessness. Maybe its cause is the temperature inversion that presses pollution down...

January 07, 2016

My Luxury, My Privilege

Though the Dalai Lama has yet to use a computer, the 1990s “Think Different” ad...

December 2015

December 28, 2015

Precious Things Come from Staying

Joan Didion’s family, she says, are a tribe of leavers. In her 2004 book Where...

December 22, 2015

Prayer: When You Can’t Find the Words, Make Them Up

I spent much of this past summer watching my friend’s three-year-old girl, Mia, as my...

December 08, 2015

A Christian Jew and a Jewish Christian

By Alissa Herbaly Coons Summer is here in Australia, a string of perfectly forgettable sunny...

December 07, 2015

After a Thanksgiving Feast

I carry my failure with me. My embarrassment. My shame. It grows. It sets me...

December 03, 2015

Above Calcutta

By Laura Bramon The summer before you died, I hid on the roof in Tollygunge....

November 2015

November 30, 2015

Saying the Name of God

Recently, I spent a good part of three weeks promoting an event that my parish...

November 24, 2015

The Tyrannical Self-Gaze

I'm doing most of my walking after dark these days as night comes a little...

November 23, 2015

Maybe Tomorrow I Will be a Mystic Mom

I am outdoors in the late afternoon and sitting cross-legged on a quilt from which...

November 17, 2015

Joining in Life and in Death

By Martyn Wendell Jones When I moved into this apartment with my wife after gaining...

November 12, 2015

Sleeping in Slave Quarters at Sweet Briar College

From my office window I can see the pale yellow plantation house, its sharply pitched...

November 11, 2015

The Man Living Under the Overpass

My daily bike-ride near downtown Tucson is not picturesque. It’s along a bike trail that’s...

November 10, 2015

The Evidence of Things Not Seen

Since I’ve been blogging here at Good Letters I have been contacted by several friends who knew...

November 05, 2015

The Odyssey: Homer’s Retort to Current U.S. Policy

Are you as numb to news of war as I am? We the American public...

November 04, 2015

Listening to a Stranger’s Story

I am boarding a plane to Detroit, and so is she, her thick coat falling...

October 2015

October 22, 2015

Blessed Are the Tentmakers

For my daughter, Evangeline Sofia, who celebrated her first birthday on the second day of...

October 20, 2015

The Beast Without

“Isaac’s being a jerk,” my seven year-old, Isaiah, says about his older brother. They have been...

October 16, 2015

The Way of Saint James

My Uncle Jimmy died in September at the age of ninety. Born in Sicily, he...

October 09, 2015

Our Lady’s Football Team

Every Saturday morning in fall I wake up and feel a tinge of disappointment that...

October 06, 2015

Tale of the Lucky and the Star-Crossed

They say that luck is where hard work meets opportunity. But often the ones who...