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April 2015

April 24, 2015

The Soul of the Law

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

April 07, 2015

Saving the World: A Reflection on Germanwings Flight 9525

A couple of weeks ago, a German man decided to kill himself. There are thousands...

April 03, 2015

It Is Finished: Christ’s Words from the Cross

When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head,...

April 01, 2015

Never Again: Netanyahu’s Holocaust Cliché

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

March 2015

March 09, 2015

Sojourners in the Darkness

My mother, an uneducated woman in her sixties, said she would ask [his murderer] to...

February 2015

February 26, 2015

The Courage of Men

By Suzanne M. Wolfe Twenty one men dressed in orange jump-suits are kneeling in a...

February 19, 2015

After the Killings in Chapel Hill

It’s less than forty-eight hours since Craig Stephen Hicks shot and killed three Muslim students...

February 18, 2015

The Sex Offender and the Cross

Guest post by Paul Luikart One day the girl I loved called me up—out of...

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...

February 12, 2015

The Collision

All I saw of the deer at first was the eye: domed, amber and pellucid,...

February 11, 2015

Hazel Motes Is Out of Time

TCM broadcast John Huston’s film version of Wise Blood yesterday, and I wound up watching...

January 2015

January 29, 2015

The Sublime and Beautiful

From antiquity to the Enlightenment, one of the great aesthetic dichotomies involved the sublime and...

October 2014

October 27, 2014

Riding the Waves

My sons argue over Avengers characters. The littlest insists he’s Captain America. Another claims Hawkeye....

October 21, 2014

Fury: The Beautification of Violence?

Guest post by Christine A. Scheller I loathe violent movies. When my husband watches them...

September 2014

September 12, 2014

The Machinery of Cowardice Fails the Children of Rotherham

My children once heard someone address me as “Doctor,” and so they asked me if...

June 2014

June 19, 2014

Medicating the Religious Mind

I’ve been taking an antidepressant for six months now. Psychiatry wins: I’m a more functional...

June 06, 2014

A Jew Prays in Venice, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. On the pleasant train ride from Florence to Venice, my wife Laurie...

December 2013

December 23, 2013

Christmas Past

I once watched a boy steal all my Christmas presents. I lay on my stomach...

July 2013

July 23, 2013

The Impossible Shows Us How To Live

If you were to live a day as though you’d be dead at the end...

May 2013

May 23, 2013

Why We Can’t Look Away

The morning I learned about the women in Cleveland, I knew from a single headline...

May 14, 2013

Deliver Us from Evil

Guest Post By Nancy Nordenson The day after the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school...

April 2013

April 25, 2013

Israel at 65: Caught in a Homeland Trap

“People caught in a homeland-trap,” writes the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai in “National Thoughts,”...

April 17, 2013

Mother of Sorrows: Colm Toibin’s Testament of Mary

Good Letters welcomes back former blogger Jessica Mesman Griffith, author of the new book Love...

April 11, 2013

Amour and Fear

Guest Post By David P. Clark, M.D. On the day I graduated from medical school...

April 02, 2013

Love Thy Neighbor…and Her Lice

Guest Post By Cathy Warner I’d only known her a month when Blythe called with...

March 2013

March 28, 2013

We Are Not Forsaken

My daughter’s teeth were clenched from the brain tumor and so I would hold her...

March 15, 2013

Rodeo and the Church Calendar

Despite my Christian upbringing, I didn’t grow up with the church calendar. Easter was a...

March 08, 2013

Can I Offer Up My Suffering?

“Pain is an evil, suffering is an evil. We mustn’t desire it. We don’t desire...

March 01, 2013

Feeling the Questions: A Serious Man and Footnote

“Why does he make us feel the questions if he won’t give us the answers?”...

February 2013

February 26, 2013

We Are All Immigrants

Several years ago I had the humbling honor of sharing my journey as a convert...