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May 2016

May 11, 2016

My Prayer Is Not Prayer

My prayer is not prayer, not exactly. It includes words. It may even begin with...

March 2016

March 10, 2016

Praying the Rosary

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

March 04, 2016

Learning Poetry, Unlearning God

By Natasha Oladokun In my sophomore year of college, I wrote a poem. Though I...

March 03, 2016

My Sh’ma

By Judy Bolton-Fasman Sh’ma yisrael Adonai Elohanu Adonai echad—Hear O’ Israel the Lord is God,...

February 2016

February 24, 2016

Peace, My Animal

"Benedic, anima mea," I say each night to the mouse that lives behind my desk....

December 2015

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 02, 2015

Here is Where We Wait

This summer, I climbed the rotting steps to the hayloft of my family's barn to...

November 2015

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...

October 2015

October 21, 2015

The Rothko Chapel: The Dark Before the Dawn

By Rebecca A. Spears The few years I lived in Houston’s Menil neighborhood, right behind...

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,...

July 2015

July 07, 2015

Morning Prayer and The New York Times

Summer morning routine: a cup of Awake tea, the Opinion page of The New York...

June 2015

June 29, 2015

Learning to Pray

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

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 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...

May 2015

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 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...

April 2015

April 21, 2015

What Will Pass for Mercy

By Brian Volck “Do not say God is just. Justice has not been evident in...

April 10, 2015

Prayer in Five Parts

“Prayer…is always available to us.” –St. Seraphim of Sarov I I sit atop my red...

March 2015

March 20, 2015

My Only Begotten Sin

Because I remain restless and impatient even in middle age, I am often only halfway...

February 2015

February 13, 2015

Monasticism In Lockdown America, Part 5: Holy Elders

With their white beards and deep lines in their faces, the older men stand out...

January 2015

January 08, 2015

Girl Meets God in the Classroom, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. On the first day of my class “Spiritual Autobiographies: Theirs and Ours,”...

December 2014

December 09, 2014

Monasticism in Lockdown America, Part 2

Earlier this year during Lent, I visited a Russian Orthodox monastery on an evergreen island...

December 08, 2014

Murder in the Synagogue

When I see him, I don’t see Israeli. I see Jew. Like the other men...

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 15, 2014

Smelling a Rat

Guest post by Suzanne M. Wolfe About a year ago I felt an overpowering urge...

September 2014

September 15, 2014

Detonating Jonah

When news broke this summer that Sunni extremists with ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq...