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March 2017

March 09, 2017

Distorted Reality and FX’s Taboo

It’s been said that human beings warp everything that they touch as a consequence of...

November 2016

November 21, 2016

Listening to Beautiful Darkness

Waking from the Nightmare A little girl awakens in an autumn wood. She stands, looks...

October 2016

October 18, 2016

Creative Tension in the White Imagination

Tension Isn’t Usually Pretty A Facebook video shows a deputy sheriff getting in the face...

June 2016

June 27, 2016

Dead People: Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009)

For Gregory Wolfe The following is an excerpt from Meis’s new book Dead People, published...

June 13, 2016

Eden at the Indy 500

I managed to live in Indiana for forty years before visiting the Indianapolis 500. A...

June 01, 2016

The Arab of the Future

I snuck into a chair while a friend was describing how growing up under a...

May 2016

May 26, 2016

Odd Northern Indiana

Route 41 takes you along the coast of Lake Michigan out of Chicago. If you...

May 16, 2016

Fun with Circumcision

Every year, when a specific national obstetrics and gynecology conference (or is it pediatrics?) comes...

April 2016

April 22, 2016

Caution: National Poetry Month

How do you know if it's a poem? Maybe it’s a month, a month-at-a-glance, many...

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 04, 2016

Choose Life, North Carolina

This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses: I have set...

March 2016

March 15, 2016

Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry

The Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) is obviously not a religious institution. But damn if...

February 2016

February 23, 2016

Poetry in a Season of Lament, Part 2

Two Poets Laureate On Grief, Detachment, and Finding New Ways to Live, Part 2 By...

February 18, 2016

Everyone’s Waiting for the Victory Song

Everyone knows what happened. Everyone lifts a steaming spoon of cinnamon oatmeal to their lips....

February 03, 2016

Creating Sacred Literature

“We are just at the beginning,” Charles Taylor wrote in his lumpy but essential tome, A...

December 2015

December 17, 2015

For the Love of Hank Stuever, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. Hank Stuever’s 2005 collection of essays Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in...

December 16, 2015

For the Love of Hank Stuever, Part 1

It’s been a rotten day. The Fed Ex package didn’t arrive; a typo slipped through...

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...

October 2015

October 26, 2015

A Good Fight: Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night)

If a pair of writer/directors exists that can rival Joel and Ethan Coen for a...

October 20, 2015

The Beast Without

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

September 2015

September 16, 2015

Not Your Mother’s Book Tour

In my world, a typical book signing involves sitting behind a small publisher’s table at...

September 11, 2015

Seeking Refuge

By Shannon Huffman Polson I’d just put my two young sons to bed when I...

September 10, 2015

A Lottery for Barbarians

From time to time in my unorthodox career, I’ve found myself teaching a class—be it...

August 2015

August 11, 2015

Happy Pride Parade

I was in tears watching my city's Gay Pride parade go by this year. Yes,...

June 2015

June 22, 2015

The Art of the Authentic: Bill Baer’s Times Square

In 1973, Orson Welles made a documentary, F for Fake, in which he followed the...

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 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 09, 2015

The Thing Itself: Art and Poverty, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. How should we treat the poor? Among those who work on...

June 08, 2015

The Thing Itself: Art and Poverty, Part 1

The following is adapted from a presentation given at the Dominican School of Philosophy and...