Adonai and I Approve This Message

Last updated on: August 20, 2012 at 6:02 pm By Richard Chess

Listen to me: America doesn’t need an outsourcing pioneer in the oval office. Listen to me: When a president doesn’t tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead? Listen to me: _____’s Own 2002 Testimony Undermines Bain Departure Claim. Listen to me: The article is not accurate. Charges, denials, countercharges. Reporting, spinning. Disclosing, withholding. It’s noisy out there. (Or should I say it’s noisy in here, a house with three televisions, two radios, three computers, two daily newspapers,... Read more

Halos and Other Important Things

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 11:32 am By Jessica Eddings-Roeser

By Jessica Eddings-Roeser Guest Post In second grade my mom put me in an art class taught by a fluffy-haired blonde who took us to a museum to sketch a Madonna with child. Before we began, our teacher asked us what we noticed about the painting. I raised my hand. “She has a golden crown.” “It’s a halo, not a crown,” my friend Sarah corrected. “I want one,” I said. “You can’t have one,” she said. “Only angels have them.... Read more

Rediscovering Rilke

Last updated on: August 20, 2012 at 11:09 am By Lindsey Crittenden

Like many people, I discovered the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke in college. I took a yearlong Western Civilization class—nine months on history and literature from ancient Greece through Freud—and during the spring term we read Letters to a Young Poet. When I remember the course, certain images stand out: Reading Oedipus Rex on the lawn outside the life sciences building and overhearing a student pronounce “Khomeini” with the same initial sound as “challah” (this would have been a month... Read more

My Online Footprint

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 11:28 am By Bradford Winters

Part Two: Repentance In Part One of this post, aptly subtitled “Resistance” by our new Good Letters editor, Cathy Warner (who deserves a shout-out for the various transitions she has navigated), I explored the practical side of my abstention from all forms of social media except email. While acknowledging the theoretical cost on both personal and professional fronts of my anti-social stance—all those missed connections and lost opportunities, fewer Shares, Tweets, Likes and whatnot compared to other GL bloggers—I had... Read more

Gethsemane Companions

Last updated on: August 13, 2012 at 6:52 pm By Dyana Herron

To David T., David R., Anna, Tyler, Jamie, Jenny, Jake, Jillian, and the rest Over the past couple of months, facing two family crises that impact the whole relational web of my tribe down in Tennessee, I’ve learned something about myself: I’m not very good at fessing up to my own needs. Instead I am attentive—sometimes over-attentive—to the needs of others. Instead of saying, “I need help,” I ask, “How can I help you?” Instead of saying, “I need someone... Read more

Parenting 101

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 11:23 am By Tony Woodlief

The latest fashionable parenting wisdom is that a parent’s wisdom doesn’t matter. Some public intellectuals have staked out the claim that genes and circumstance vastly predominate any effect parenting might have on a child. They base this on studies indicating that identical twins raised by different parents become adults with similar health, wealth, and happiness—suggesting that nature far outweighs nurture as a determinant of life outcomes. The results aren’t predetermined; if your kid is hard-wired to have self-restraint, foresight, and... Read more

Shaping the Heart

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 10:26 am By Gregory Wolfe

The following post is an edited version of the commencement address given at the graduation ceremony of the Seattle Pacific University MFA in Creative Writing program on August 3. I’d like to share a few thoughts that have emerged from the two texts we’ve been studying together: Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and Richard Rodriguez’s Brown: The Last Discovery of America. Though they are vastly different books—one an old-fashioned Western elevated to the heights of tragedy and the other... Read more

Making Do Has Its Place

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 10:19 am By A. G. Harmon

When I was in college, some group or the other sponsored a blood drive. I’d never donated before, so when the nurse told me I had type B, I was mildly surprised. Everybody before me and after had been type O, that of the universal donor. I’d just assumed I would be too. Later, when I asked my father, a doctor, he said that I’d inherited that blood type from him. It’s not the rarest, but he laughingly told me... Read more

The Final Chapter in a Promising Young Life

Last updated on: August 8, 2012 at 4:20 pm By Caroline Langston

I was driving when it occurred to me that it has been twenty years since my old friend Geoff Sanders was murdered. I was headed home from work, public radio blasting even though I really wasn’t listening, the rosy beginnings of sunset blooming over the abandoned warehouses of gritty New York Avenue, the route I take every day. Then a piece came on the radio—I’ve tried in vain to find it since. How my memory fails me—about a mentoring program... Read more

Taming the Busy Trap

Last updated on: August 8, 2012 at 4:04 pm By Allison Backous Troy

I’m emerging from one of the busiest seasons of my life. My wedding and a move from Michigan to Wyoming have filled my summer with enough checklists and tasks to keep me running around until one in the morning, until I finally put myself to bed, the set of tomorrow’s tasks stuttering in my ear while I try to sleep. I’ve been asked numerous times how I’ve held up under the stress. How I deal with feeling overwhelmed and exhausted... Read more