St Nicholas was a very popular saint in the Middle Ages, and with all the colourful stories about him, it’s not difficult to see why. There are several vernacular carols and poems in his honour from medieval England, and in fact one of the very earliest surviving English songs is a prayer to St Nicholas (one of the songs of Godric of Finchale, who died in 1170)… more (via Amy Welborn)–and you can listen to that song on YouTube: Read more
The second post about questions I was asked at recent speaking events. I’ve written about one important aspect of this already: You have to be out there doing the work of protecting actual gay people from actual violence, cruelty, and rejection. This is part of what our faith calls us to do. But okay, you’re doing that; what about changing the immensely important conversation on sexual ethics and vocation? The most glaring problem I see right now is that American... Read more
“How to Run Against a Tough-on-Crime District Attorney–And Win”: District attorneys and the prosecutors who work for them are the most powerful actors in the American criminal justice system. They enjoy immense latitude in deciding what crimes to charge people with and how much prison time to push for. And yet their role in the growth of the country’s prison population, which went from less than 200,000 in 1972 to 1.5 million today, often goes unacknowledged as policymakers in Washington... Read more
voxes: …Once we saved up enough money to buy a house of our own in Washington, DC’s Petworth neighborhood, we deliberately chose a place in which we would always have room for housemates, even if we had kids in the future. As soon as we closed on our house, our first purchase was a long dining room table that could accommodate our group dinners. For us, living in a group house was not a phase to grow out of but... Read more
…or, Every day is self-parody day. I did a couple speaking engagements recently (book me! [email protected]) where I was even more rambly and woolly than usual, and I am not a productrix of machine-like syllogisms under any circumstances. I’d like to wander through some of my answers here, to find whatever useful marginally-coherent ideas might be caught in the wool. At one point I found myself defending Oscar Wilde, Moralist. My interlocutors were skeptical, and for good reason: Didn’t Wilde... Read more
if not, why not? 2. When someone asks how many kids you actually have, you’re likely to say: (a) “Two.” (b) “Exactly the right number. Hashtag blessed! Hashtag soblessed!” (c) “I don’t like to impose my own numeronormative notions of quantity on them, so I’m going to let them grow up and decide for themselves how many of them there are.” (d) Tearfully, “I dunno.” more Read more
Will told me the story of relocating his family to be part of a church that takes community seriously. After a year in the new location, he met with one of his pastors to talk about how things were going. Life was good, Will reflected, and he was grateful for the welcome that he and his family had received at the new church. But he wasn’t sure that he was experiencing the community he had expected. Frankly, Will had hoped... Read more
or, my review of Winners and Losers: “Winners and Losers,” created by Marcus Youssef and James Long and playing at Washington’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company through November 22, is a tense and springy 100 minutes of aggression hidden under friendship–and vice versa. Youssef and Long act out their own longstanding, competitive friendship, getting rawer and more accusatory as the night wears on. I’m going to use “Marcus” for the guy I saw onstage, “Youssef” for the off-stage creator, but the... Read more
Amy Welborn quotes Benedict XVI: Dear brothers and sisters, in St Elizabeth we see how faith and friendship with Christ create a sense of justice, of the equality of all, of the rights of others and how they create love, charity. And from this charity is born hope too, the certainty that we are loved by Christ and that the love of Christ awaits us thereby rendering us capable of imitating Christ and of seeing Christ in others. more Jane... Read more
at The Fix: The YA addiction novel has become its own mini-industry. Which ones offer insight instead of hawking clichés? Below you’ll find the best addiction-related YA and middle-grade fiction I could find. more–and a couple notes. That Alaya Dawn Johnson joint is like the most DC thing I’ve ever read, it was glorious. I wrote earlier about the book and movie of The Spectacular Now. I just realized that I left off Because of Winn-Dixie literally by mistake! It... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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