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June 2015

June 04, 2015

A Place Where We Can Talk

By Brian Volck "Somewhere is better than anywhere." —Flannery O'Connor In my sophomore year of college,...

June 03, 2015

The Science and Sundayness of Play

This post was made possible through the support of a grant from The BioLogos Foundation’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...

May 2015

May 29, 2015

Triple Scoop

By Jessica Mesman Griffith My best friend died suddenly almost two years ago. She’d lived...

May 28, 2015

What Is a Christian?

According to recent survey by the Pew Research Center, the number of U.S. adults who...

May 27, 2015

What Cannot Be Fixed

I remember the time when "entropy" was all the rage. It must have been in...

May 26, 2015

Self-Hating Jew: A Love Story, Part 1

In response to “Never Again: Netanyahu’s Holocaust Cliché,” a recent post of mine on Good...

May 22, 2015

The Two Lists

Seven-year old Isaiah found a small desk in the back of our garage and claimed...

May 21, 2015

While My Pen Gently Weeps

My daughter Gracie was helping me prepare dinner one evening. We were doing the bœuf...

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 15, 2015

Go Ahead and Have the Damn Children!

I was working from home a few days ago, on a day when both of...

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...

May 12, 2015

Facing Calvary

There’s a line from last year’s thought-provoking film, Calvary, that’s uttered by a young French...

May 11, 2015

Finding God in Updike Country

It took me more than a year of living out here to realize I am...

May 06, 2015

My Rainbow Connection, Disconnected

By Chad Thomas Johnston It was a Saturday night and my wife, Becki, wanted to...

May 04, 2015

Las Madres: Art and Death in the Arizona Desert

"The artist is a beggar because she is empty, waiting to be filled. But the...

May 01, 2015

Jesus and Legos in the Deep, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. “Judas the transgressor,” we Eastern Orthodox sing during Holy Friday Matins,“was unwilling...

April 2015

April 30, 2015

Jesus and Legos in the Deep, Part 1

I read about a shipping container holding five million Lego pieces that fell into the...

April 29, 2015

Sexist Assumptions and the Difficult, Dirty Work of Grace

My husband was deep into a bathroom remodeling project when he asked me to stop...

April 27, 2015

Jesus: Here, There, and Everywhere

Gertrude Stein once said of her hometown, Oakland, California, where she was raised after having...

April 24, 2015

The Soul of the Law

At the beginning of the old Norton Anthology of English Literature (4th Ed.) appeared this...

April 22, 2015

For the Love of Money

My husband and I took a spring break trip to the central coast of California,...

April 21, 2015

What Will Pass for Mercy

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

April 17, 2015

Jesus Through Poets’ Eyes

In my Catholic faith, Easter lasts for seven weeks, until Pentecost; so I'm not too...

April 14, 2015

Who Needs to Read Anymore?

At the community college where I teach—actually in the state capitol two hours away—a massive...

April 09, 2015

Literacy Class: Learning the Language of Love

This past week, I taught my last English class for quite some time. Three years...

April 06, 2015

Internet Jubilee: A Holy Year of Mercy

On a recent Sunday, my pastor preached on the idea of the jubilee year as...

April 01, 2015

Never Again: Netanyahu’s Holocaust Cliché

In the air, on the air, tunneling through cables, conquering newsrooms, occupying the mouths of...