When David Foster Wallace committed suicide in 2008 there was much speculation and spilling of ink over how someone so gifted and so beloved could take his own life. With the arrival of his personal papers in 2010 at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, hundreds of journalists and scholars (1,500 in the last year alone compared to 650 for Tennessee Williams) have come to Austin to search his papers for clues that might answer the many... Read more
The day before I left on vacation, the front page of the New York Times showed something (well, two things) unusual: black-and-white photographs. The photo on the left showed a gentle-sloped mountain rising from a desolate plain; on the right, vehicle tracks through rocky dirt. The composition of the photo on the left—framing, shape of mountain, spareness of other detail—reminded me of prints and paintings I’ve seen of Mount Fuji. But that’s not why I tore off the page, scribbled... Read more
(Continued from yesterday.) I’m not ready to leap from my son to your son, God. But am I ready to relax my grip on any other parts of the self that define me? You have not withheld, have not withheld, withheld . . . You say Greater Israel, Judea, Samaria, and as you speak, even while you are still speaking, before your last sentence is finished, I’m composing, revising, rehearsing my response to you while my chest tightens, my muscles... Read more
Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son. Genesis 22:12 Because you have done this and have not withheld your son. Genesis 22:16 I wouldn’t have done it. Wouldn’t do it. It’s not in my nature. What’s not? Generosity. There it is. I said it. If you want to stop reading now, fine. Why should I expect you to read further, given that reading is an act of generosity giving attention to someone else’s... Read more
This post is adapted from my manuscript, The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind, currently searching for a publisher. In my mind, I can still hear the girls on the playground at recess chanting, “Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars, and boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.” As a third grader, I was insulted. As an adult, it occurs to me that the girls who spoke them were immune to... Read more
After the initial cleansing ceremony, they worked in silent concentration. Hour after hour they knelt in their maroon robes and yellow shawls, bent over their meticulous labor, creating designs and pictures with brightly colored sand. They were Tibetan Buddhist monks from Dehra Dun, India, making a stop in my hometown as they toured America. They had set up in the chapel at Randolph College and spent a week creating an elaborate Medicine Buddha mandala. From the reading I’ve done about... Read more
What does it mean to write poems in the Christian tradition? Creative writing teachers at Christian colleges wrestle with this question every day, as do many poets who write out of their grounding in Christian faith. If I were teaching poetry at a Christian college, I’d hand my students the new anthology Imago Dei, published by Abilene Christian University Press. The poems—selected by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, who teaches at Wheaton College and is Poetry Editor of The Christian Century and... Read more
I was there. I should know better than to go about my days like this. This day of all days. If this isn’t an emergency, please hang up and dial 9/11. Chin forward, shoulders hunched, blowing by the given while chasing down the made. Snowed under at summer’s end by all that remains unattained and not yet accomplished. If this isn’t an emergency, please hang up and dial 9/11. I wasn’t there there, not at Ground Zero. But close enough,... Read more
By Jessica Eddings-Roeser Guest Post My husband is asleep in bed, snuggled under our powder blue quilt. It’s twelve thirty a.m., and he has been home just twenty minutes. He will be up before daylight to operate on infants with heart defects, to ensure that their tiny and irregular hearts beat and pump the needed blood throughout their bodies. As a cardio thoracic surgery fellow he returns home with just enough time to eat, prep for the next day, and... Read more
Between 1994 and 2004, strip search prank call scams happened several times. In each scenario, a perverse prank caller phoned a small business—usually a fast food joint—and persuaded employees to perform acts of sexual abuse. His targets cooperated, convinced they were assisting law enforcement. I remember the news reports. I remember feeling disbelief, then disgust. How could people be so spectacularly gullible, so hard-hearted? When they put security camera footage of the crimes on television, I flinched. What could be... Read more
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