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May 2016

May 09, 2016

Thin Places, Part 1

A few summers ago, my husband Tom and I were in Dublin for a week,...

May 06, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The Moss Method” by Pattiann Rogers

I've long loved Pattiann Rogers' poems: how they caress nature's most minute details with acutely...

April 2016

April 15, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The Grackles” by Betsy Sholl

Here is a poem that silently enacts a conversion. The poem starts off with a...

April 12, 2016

Charles of the Desert

By Rebecca A. Spears One early June, traveling to a wedding in San Diego, I’d...

April 11, 2016

A Strange Season for Inter-Christian Families

American culture, at this late and plural hour, seems to have pretty well normalized the...

April 08, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Smokers, Sunday Morning, 1975” by Bobby C. Rogers

This poem seems at first to be a straight-forward narrative: a childhood recollection of the...

April 01, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Creed in the Santa Ana Winds” by Bronwen Butter Newcott

Growing up in southern California, I experienced the uneasy allure of the Santa Ana’s hot...

March 2016

March 18, 2016

Dancing on the Way to Prison

By John Bryant I’m standing in a circle with thirty singing and swaying old men...

March 14, 2016

The Living Among the Dead

Thanksgiving Day after I turned four: high fever at dinner, a drive through a blizzard,...

March 10, 2016

Praying the Rosary

By Laura Bramon My first rosary is invisible: a string of children’s voices ricocheting off...

January 2016

January 15, 2016

Honey, I Want a Tattoo

By Brad Fruhauff If Katie had had a tattoo when we met, I probably would...

December 2015

December 15, 2015

How to Win the War on Christmas

After thirteen years of parenting, my husband and I still know virtually nothing about raising...

December 14, 2015

The Greater Evil: Proscription or Compulsion?

There’s a new law in China, and it’s aimed at weakening a faith. As the...

December 11, 2015

Poetry Friday: “Annunciation” by Katharine Coles

Each Friday at Good Letters we feature a poem from the pages of Image, selected and...

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...

November 2015

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 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...

October 2015

October 19, 2015

Here at Last is Love: The Poems of Dunstan Thompson

I get tingly with anticipation when I'm about to meet a new poet. I don't...

September 2015

September 21, 2015

Let Me Die Like This

When I die, Lord, let me go in a plane crash, spiraling down, earthward, earthward,...

August 2015

August 07, 2015

The Day I Became Elijah

By Martyn Wendell Jones In his essay “The Wounded Word,” French philosopher-poet Jean-Louis Chrétien describes...

July 2015

July 31, 2015

Wrestling with Sunday Mornings

This past Saturday afternoon I warned my husband, “I’m not going to church tomorrow.” In...

June 2015

June 29, 2015

Learning to Pray

Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything. —Abba Moses The...

June 19, 2015

Is the Gospel Good News or Bad?

Continuing a little bit what I started with my essay “What Is a Christian?,” I’ve...

June 17, 2015

Wanted: God—Dead or Alive?

If you practice a religion faithfully—faith-fully—, why do you do this? And why is it...

June 16, 2015

Before the Fall of Baseball

By Chad Thomas Johnston When I was a child, school did not rank high on...

June 15, 2015

His Murderer and His Keeper

Some days I can’t remember: Am I Abel or Cain? Blackberry soda in the afternoon...

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 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...