One such patient, under my care, describes how he must “wake up” his phantom in the mornings: first he flexes the thigh-stump towards him, and then he slaps it sharply—“like a bay’s bottom”—several times. On the fifth or sixth slap the phantom suddenly shoots forth, rekindled, fulgurated, by the peripheral stimulus. —Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales It is a great temptation, when a part of you has been cut away,... Read more
This morning, prepping for a class I’m teaching called Writing about Film and Music, I stumbled across a YouTube clip of the legendary Brian Eno, producer of U2’s 1987 The Joshua Tree, talking about his role in the making of that iconic album: I got the sense that [U2] was capable of making a real marriage between the two things I was talking about, between something that was self-consciously spiritual to the point of being uncool—and uncool was a very... Read more
I once saw a girl beaned in the head with a Bible. Her attacker was a well-muscled star of our middle school football team, so his throw was hard, accurate, and had a bit of a spiral. To be fair, the weapon wasn’t a full Bible, neither was it large. Someone in this guy’s group of cronies had procured a box of those miniature New Testaments kids are given in Sunday school, and brought them in his backpack with the... Read more
A Guest Post by Brian Volck Monks, I’ve found, having spent some time with them over the years, make good company—rewarding enough, in fact, to spend my birthday with some of them on one of my visits last year. It was the ideal holiday for an introvert, but I came for more than silence and solitude. I wanted a stiff dose of contemplative prayer—straight, no chaser—what the late Walter Burghardt called “a long, loving look at the real.” The gift of contemplation... Read more
Guest Post by Cathy Warner One Sunday during my first year of parish ministry, I stood in the church narthex waiting to begin the service, when Barney, the neighbor of a twenty-year church member, ran red-faced from the street screaming, “Help me, help me!” Barney, who’d been coming to church for the summer, was sweating and trembling in his worn polyester suit, and for a few moments I thought his suffering was physical until Shirley (the twenty-year member) charged in... Read more
I sit in the sunroom and look at the strewn possessions of my youngest, my daughter who will be thirteen in three short months. The boys don’t leave clutter like she does—their socks lay limp around the house like the shed skin of fat albino snakes, but that’s about it. Grace is the one who leaves her possessions all over. From the chair where I sit, within reach is her page-a-day DOG calendar, her Discovery Girls magazine with a special... Read more
A few weeks ago, early planning started for this summer’s Fiction Intensive at UC Berkeley Extension, a week-long fiction program with workshops and craft talks, readings and lectures. I’ll be giving a talk: What Is Fiction? Yes, it’s a question both daunting and exhausted. Nothing I can say here that’s particularly new. And I’m wary of definitions that suggest fiction is any one thing. Escapism? Moral duty? Truer than truth? Totally amoral? A pack of lies? All of the above.... Read more
“So what are you doing for Lent this year, Bill?” This was my annual question to my spiritual director, Fr. Bill Shannon, for the twenty-five years that I went to him for monthly counsel. (I wrote about our relationship in a previous post.) When I posed the question in 1995, about ten years into our relationship, Bill’s eyes twinkled in a smile as he answered. “Each day I’m going to write a letter to someone, and then keep that person... Read more
Arts & Faith’s Top 25 Films on Marriage list was recently released by Image Journal, in concert with Arts & Faith.com. Over forty people in the Arts & Faith community participated in nominating and voting for these films: a large group of cinephiles from a wide variety of vocations, including some film critics. This Valentine’s Day, curl up with a film that doesn’t just play to romantic tropes, but challenges and illuminates as it explores the wellspring and cipher that is... Read more
For Pastor Matt, who hopes to convert my skeptical ears to belief in bluegrass, and our new Associate Pastor Meredith, who has added intellectual hipster chic to our congregation with her PhD and her nose piercing alike. You two help make First Baptist Church in Lawrence, Kansas feel like home. Patti Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses, famously opens with the line, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” Smith goes on to sing, “My sins my own, they belong... Read more
Good Letters
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In