Once upon a time when my mother was a kindergarten teacher, a little girl walked into her classroom and brightly announced, "my grandma blew up in the space shuttle!" What? The incongruence seemed humorous at first. Why on earth would a child say such a thing? It was late January, 1986. The tenth mission of … Continue reading The Power of Story in Dark Times
Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not/keep that vigil, how they must have wept/so utterly human, knowing this too/must be part of the story. — Mary Oliver One of the reasons I believe the gospels are true is the realistic portrayal of Christ's disciples. They leave everything–fishing nets, families, worldly wealth, everything–to … Continue reading The Utterly Human Peter: Lord, Save Me
When it comes to news consumption, I mostly have two kinds of friends. The first backs away from any conversation about current events. “Oh, I don’t pay much attention to the news,” they say with a dismissive wave of the hand. “It’s too political for me.” I know what they mean. Many of us are … Continue reading Books Before Newsbites: Curating the News with C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Day
"All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in 1877, "And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell." Nevertheless, the poet marvels at the natural world's resilience in the face of industrial degradation: And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things... I recalled … Continue reading Nature’s Best Hope: Your Yard and Mine
I’ve been humming Gordon Lightfoot tunes since his passing last month. I mean, a little more than usual. My brothers and and I latched onto Gordon Lightfoot’s special genius as teenagers when visiting our mom’s side of the family in California the spring when Sundown topped the charts. We then learned that our beloved Uncle … Continue reading Lesser Known Lightfoot: Glimpses of the Singer’s Spiritual Side
When I was a young mother trying to finish a Bachelor of Arts in English, I relished my Tuesday evening class at the local college. The English department head, a kind woman with twinkling eyes and exacting standards, required us to read a book a week and come prepared to spend the first 30 minutes … Continue reading “Go and Be Human” with Close Reads: A Podcast for the Incurable Reader
I feel as if I've read the first three chapters of Genesis a zillion times. As a young adult I read the Bible through each year, starting with Genesis. Then I began following the lectionary, which leads us through the Scriptures every three years. That's a much more meditative pace, but Genesis 1-3 is so … Continue reading Uncentered: How Adam and Eve Reveal the Truth about You, Me and the Middle Tree
“One year from now, you are likely to be much the same person except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I don’t remember who told me this back when I was young but I never forgot it; it's helped me track my reading year after year ever since. Lately the Goodreads Reading … Continue reading Fiction, News Addiction & The Scandal of Holiness: Standouts from a Reading Year
I’ve struggled with it. I sometimes suspect that the word peace is used to shush rightful responses to real harm. I’m tempted to think peace is for reality deniers. And besides, being a broken human, I certainly can’t live peace. Can I? This month as I pondered a word for the year, “peace” kept rising … Continue reading Why Peace is my Word of the Year
When I speak to pretty much anyone these days, we share a litany of worries: rising prices, Covid variants, the nation’s angry political divide, “wars and rumors of wars.” “But there’s not much we can do about it,” a friend remarked the other day. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Truly … Continue reading How to Offer Hope in Advent’s Exile
