Guest Post by Joel Heng Hartse Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I’ve only recently begun to realize that I’m becoming the “they” and not the “you.” Two things made me start thinking that this year: first, we had a kid, and second, we moved again, for about the fifth time in eight years. This move was just a few blocks down the street, but has... Read more
With relation to time, Walker Percy once compared the present to the tape head on a recorder. Into that receptacle, the pristine potentiality of the future is fed—a blank magnetic strip streaming across an apparatus that captures the clamor of the known world. In this way, the present is akin to the mouth of time. For Percy’s Lancelot Lamar, musing about life from his insane asylum, the past’s consumption of the future was a horrible thought. For the process is... Read more
Continued from yesterday. Paul faced the winter of death, and Timothy faces the winter of lost opportunity. If he doesn’t come before winter, the ships will go to dock to wait out the harsh months. He won’t be able to journey until spring, and by that time Paul believes he will be dead. Now is the time, he tells Timothy. Before winter. When Joseph Campbell lectured on Dante’s life chart in the Convivio, it was in the context of his... Read more
Every year when I was young, as the vibrant colors of West Virginia’s fall foliage dulled to gray-brown, my dad would preach his sermon “Come Before Winter.” He did it for a number of years, and it became so popular that people in the region would abandon their home churches on that Sunday morning to come hear him preach. Paul is under house arrest in Rome, writing to his protégé Timothy. He writes, “Come see me, and bring my cloak.”... Read more
An Encore Post ABC recently ran its annual showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, one of the defining Christmas rituals of my childhood. After the cartoon aired this year, my Facebook feed overflowed with love for Charlie Brown, and for Charles Schulz: “Thank you, Charles Schulz,” wrote one friend, “for telling me the truth.” I knew exactly what she meant, and feel the same way. I have a special attachment to Charlie Brown, and more specifically, to Linus—he was the... Read more
Israel surprised me. It met me in Boston where I had traveled to attend a conference. I hadn’t planned on its being there. Laurie was going to join me later in the week. I was looking forward to her visit, looking forward to her seeing her enjoy the rather luxurious conference hotel—tenth floor corner room, windows facing north and east, the east facing window delivering up a stunning view of the spires of Trinity Church—and the luxury of time to... Read more
On December 10, 1968, Thomas Merton stepped out of the shower in his Bangkok hotel room, reached to adjust the speed of a fan, and was fatally electrocuted. In many ways, Merton foresaw his own death. And though he could never have imagined it exactly, it was filled with the kind of intent irony and poetry that his life as a contemplative monk/author/peace activist embodied. As a Trappist monk, he was, by definition and order, cloistered. According to the Rule... Read more
When my husband was told he’d have quadruple bypass surgery the next day, we were—believe it or not—overjoyed. He’d been feeling lousy for months, and after a zillion tests the docs still couldn’t find the reason. Finally an angiogram the week after Thanksgiving showed major blockages, and we shouted halleluiah! While he was in the hospital for the bypass surgery and recovery, I of course created an email list to keep friends and family in touch. What a joy to... Read more
Center-frayed I begin to ponder—in the way one probes an aching tooth with the tongue—whether my presence causes more pain to those I love than my absence. It feels as if my hands and feet and jaw are pierced with hooks and strung with piano wire, and these wires pierce their hearts, so that no matter what I do or utter, I make them bleed. The more I struggle, the more I rend their flesh. There is no making things... Read more
Last year my husband and I celebrated our first Christmas with our infant daughter. She couldn’t understand the holiday, of course, but that didn’t stop us from discussing Advent calendars, wreaths, and Jesse Trees in depth, continuing a friendly argument about Santa Claus that has been going on since our engagement. Citing our childhood experiences as rationale, we hashed out the significance of the Incarnation in the form of felt, cardboard calendars filled with chocolate, and a fat man driven... Read more
Good Letters
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