Today we bid farewell to regular contributor Bradford Winters who has written more than 100 posts for “Good Letters” over the years. We extend our gratitude and best wishes to him. Situated as we are in early November at a midpoint between the end of the High Holy Days in the Jewish calendar and the start of Advent in the Christian one, it seems like the right time to include such a baldly titled book on the Church’s general Christmas... Read more
He called himself Weegee The Famous. Weegee, for short. His real name was Arthur Fellig. But even that wasn’t quite real. Born in a little town in what is now Ukraine in 1899, Weegee was originally named Ascher Fellig. He was a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ascher’s family immigrated to America in 1909, where he became Arthur. In the 1930s, Arthur took up freelance photography, roaming the streets of his new home. That’s when he performed his third transforming... Read more
Guest post by Cathy Warner I awoke one morning from a recurrent nightmare of nuclear apocalypse to see towering redwoods dripping with fog outside the window. I stepped from the cabin into a chorus of frogs and crickets, interlaced roots spreading wide into bracken fern, neon banana slugs sliding across fragrant duff. I breathed crisp air and sensed that I was in the midst of an ecosystem in perfect harmony. In that instant I was convinced this hadn’t happened randomly... Read more
He liked to be called El Santo (Spanish for “the Saint”). In almost anyone else on the planet it would be considered a sort of spiritual vanity or pretension. But in the case of Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete it was both a joke and a piece of deep theological wisdom. Come to think of it, just about everything Lorenzo said or did was both a joke and a theological truth. I think he liked being called El Santo because he was... Read more
In an effort to help believers who struggle with prayer, many evangelical speakers and books have attempted to break the discipline down into manageable parts. As a young adult, I learned the acronym ACTS as a way to structure my conversations with God (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication). I’ve purchased, begun, and abandoned at least a dozen prayer journals and apps. There’s nothing wrong with methods that help us commit to spiritual practices. However, these strategies haven’t helped me, at... Read more
The gentlemen I’ve been visiting in my local jail for the past decade live a daily existence, I’ve often considered, not unlike monks in the monastery I’ve also visited. They don’t have their wives or girlfriends with them. They all wear the same plain garment—not black robes, but old red scrubs. Their hair often grows scraggly, as they—like monks—don’t have many mirrors. They don’t care what they look like. The food isn’t very flavorful. They’re cut off from what used... Read more
At the beginning of Alice McDermott’s latest novel, Someone, an unattractive but good-natured girl divulges her deepest desire. One day, coming home on the subway, she fell against a man—someone who managed to catch her—an event that was memorable because he was kind in the way that he did it. It’s clear that in that short moment she comes to love him, as we are fully capable of doing with strangers—even those who will always remain strangers. She does not... Read more
Guest post by William Coleman To celebrate Image’s twenty-fifth anniversary we are posting a series of essays by people who have encountered our programs over the years. My first task at Image was to write to Ray Bradbury. That, I told my disbelieving self, was my job: to send proof pages of new work to the man whose old work so absorbed me at fifteen that all I could do for a year was write version after watered-down version of Dandelion Wine. What saved my cover... Read more
They talk. They talk to. They talk about. God. Please, God. Dear God. Thank you, God. Comfort, heal, save us, God our God dear God. They should talk. That’s what they’ve been told. I don’t know. I don’t know from God. They say God is the One who shaped the ear. I’ve said it, too. God, the One who gave life listening: Ishmael, God listens, God hears. They say God is near, near to all. I’ve said it, too. Near... Read more
My sons argue over Avengers characters. The littlest insists he’s Captain America. Another claims Hawkeye. There’s an argument over Ironman. They resolve it by awarding that honor to me, given that I’m a smartass and look a little like Robert Downey, Jr. I argue that I’m the Hulk. I flex my muscles. They roll their eyes, but their mother would understand. She told me once, not long before our divorce, that I am the angriest man she’s ever known. A... Read more
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