“Right there is where it started,” he says, pointing out the window to emerald pastures several headlands away. Here, where the forty shades of green meet surprisingly blue seas on the southern coast of Ireland in West Cork, a breathtaking tableau dappled with dairy cows in any direction, blight is not a word that comes to mind. But right there is where the Great Famine began. We’re standing in late August at what will be my desk until Christmas, on... Read more
Last December, a woman at church used Jedi mind tricks, or something very much like them, to persuade me to participate in our house of worship’s Christmas play. “Okay, I can do that,” I said, the words leaping from my lips without my consent. “I can’t act,” I added quickly, hoping she would set me free and turn her powers upon someone else. “I can’t even act like I can act.” The following week, when she handed me a script... Read more
A few leaves are still hanging on the trees, but my yard is so covered that you cannot see grass; most of my neighbors have leaf piles along the street as high as a five-year-old. All day and all evening for the next few weeks, somewhere within hearing, leaf blowers wail. This morning the air was so cold it made my face hurt as I walked across campus. My brother Vaughn’s birthday is two weeks from today. He will be... Read more
“What should I do for Advent this year, Bill?” The year was 1993. Bill had been my spiritual director since 1985. He was Fr. William Shannon, retired theology professor and Merton scholar…but soon after our monthly meetings began, he was urging me (as he did all his friends) to call him Bill. On his retirement from teaching, Bill had become chaplain of the Sisters of St. Joseph in our hometown, and he lived at their Motherhouse. In response to my... Read more
Guest Post by Christine A. Scheller What good is a shepherd that goes to sleep? Suppose a wolf would come, and steal your lambs away, what you gonna tell your master next day? —Langston Hughes, Black Nativity Who is the shepherd? Who are the sheep? Those were a couple of my questions about a new film adaptation of the 1961 Langston Hughes play Black Nativity after seeing it twice and then reading the short play for myself. Is the reverend... Read more
The Hebrew word for intention (also, direction) is kavanah. In The Sabbath World, Judith Shulevitz introduces the concept of kavanah in relation to the story of the biblical character Hannah. Beloved wife of Elkanah, Hannah was unable to conceive a child. One day when she, Elkanah, and Peninah (Elkanah’s less favored but fertile wife), had made the pilgrimage to Shiloh, where they would offer sacrifices, Hannah prayed for a son. Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but... Read more
There’s something about the midday nature of the appointment that gives it a furtive cast: The putting on of mom-like clothes, stockings and “better” shoes, garnet lip gloss and a comb pulled through my hair, to give the appearance that I am a more organized person than I actually am. The keys clatter in the quiet as I lock the door, get in the car, and drive out of the neighborhood, careful to make sure I have the directions and... Read more
My children’s Michigan fact book says you can’t go more than eight miles without hitting water in this state, but it must be less this far north. I imagine the land shifting and disappearing beneath my feet as it does at the shoreline, except I’m standing in my kitchen. “You’re basically living on a big dune,” a woman says when I mention my back pain. I thought I’d pulled something lifting moving boxes, but she says transplants often complain of... Read more
The poet Ezra Pound made the phrase “Make It New” the rallying cry of artistic modernism. In one of life’s little ironies, he obtained the phrase from an ancient Chinese text. It seems that every time you get excited about making it new, you are forced to recollect the words of another ancient, the moralist Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” So which is it? I believe I’ll opt for paradox. To be sure, there isn’t much novelty... Read more
My Uncle Jimmy died this fall at the age of ninety. Born in Sicily, he immigrated to New York when young and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was married to my aunt for sixty-one years, the frolicsome father of my two cousins, a regular part of my life until I married and moved away. I can still see my uncle clearly as he was in January 1994. The way his brown eyes sparkled. The way... Read more
Good Letters
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