I always keep a poet by my bed. Lately it has been Billy Collins, former U.S Poet Laureate. I don’t open the book every night. Only when I need to touch the play of language, to be entertained by poetry’s taut twists and turns and surprises, before settling into whatever novel I’m reading that will engage me for a half hour or so, then lull me to sleep. But why Billy Collins? Why for months now has he kept me... Read more
Continued from yesterday. At the time of our children’s young-earth themed Vacation Bible School, I was in the midst of writing a poetry collection on Paul and his letters. While I’m no theologian, I can discern one theme that permeates the epistles like nothing else: unity. Paul prays continually for his brothers and sisters, even the ones who drive him crazy. He tells the Corinthians to live without divisions, “perfectly united in mind and thought.” He exhorts the Ephesians to... Read more
Two summers ago,my husband Jeremy and I decided to cancel our family’s cross-country road trip just days before departure. Our bank account had taken a beating with some unexpected bills. We suddenly found ourselves looking for staycation activities for our children, who were devastated to miss out on hiking the national parks and splashing in the ocean with their California cousins. Fortunately, several churches in our area offered Vacation Bible School programs,so we immediately set to registering Lydia, 9; Becca,... Read more
Guest post by Christine A. Scheller I loathe violent movies. When my husband watches them at home, I escape to another room or ask him to change the channel. This has been especially true since our son died a violent suicide death. I don’t want to see blood and guts. Death is too real and broken bodies are too precious for me to want to consume them as entertainment, or be confronted with them in art. So it was with... Read more
It was forty degrees this morning when I got into my car. The back window was spotted white with frost. As I drove to work, a new appeal came from news that had made me heartsick for weeks. It was a plea from the mother of Hannah Graham, the eighteen-year-old student who disappeared in September from the University of Virginia. “Please, please, please,” the mother’s anguished voice came over the radio with a British accent. “Help us find our girl,”... Read more
At the end of his life, Henri Matisse made art for a chapel. It was a strange thing for an atheist to do. That Matisse would make religious art was especially annoying to his friend Picasso. In one exchange, Picasso asked Matisse, sarcastically, why he didn’t just make art for a brothel. “Because nobody asked me,” was Matisse’s reply. You could take this answer as pure cynicism. The artist as gun for hire. “I make art wherever people pay me... Read more
I had fallen asleep thinking about the Sacrifice of Isaac: The account, given in Genesis, in which patriarch Abraham is called by God to venture to Mt. Moriah, and sacrifice his young and beloved son—the son born to him and Sarah in old age, for whom he had longed for decades. And as the Genesis narrative relates, at the very moment Abraham has steeled himself to bear the knife, a ram appears “in a thicket,” and Isaac is saved, and... Read more
Guest post by Suzanne M. Wolfe About a year ago I felt an overpowering urge to say the “Our Father.” I’m still not sure why. I never knew my biological father, so I’ve always been indifferent to this prayer, the only prayer Jesus taught us. In the back of my mind I’d think: He’s not my father. I don’t have a father. And my heart would be empty even as my mouth said the words. Until that moment my habit... Read more
Continued from yesterday. The Way of Saint James—El Camino de Santiago—is a pilgrimage that began in the Middle Ages and remains popular today. Each year pilgrims from all around the world walk from points throughout Europe to reach the tomb of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Some do it for sport, others for contemplation, others to pray for miracles. In September 2013 my husband and I were among the pilgrims. We began our walk in León, trekking 200... Read more
I didn’t know Julia well. The first time I saw her, she was sitting at the far end of the table around which our language class met. Although I knew the instructor, Chiara, it was my first day with this group of students who for years had gathered in Chiara’s dining room to discuss classic books in Italian. That day I was the last one to arrive, and when I entered the room the group was already engaged in friendly... Read more
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