Friday we took the kids out of school early and hit the road for Aiken, South Carolina. We were going down to attend a memorial service for my sister’s stepson Tyler. Tyler was sixteen years old. The service was nice. The pastor had lost a six-year-old daughter to asthma, and was particularly tuned in to the family’s pain. My nephew Jesse wrote a letter to Tyler, which one of his friends stood and read for him. He wrote to Tyler,... Read more
Guest Post By Cathy Warner Jaws is released the summer I turn fourteen, and my friends and I spend every afternoon bodysurfing and reenacting the young woman’s death scene at the beginning of the movie. We yell, kick, jerk, wave, scream, pretending a great white has hold, dragging us down for the kill. We sputter, shriek, and wait for a lifeguard—glistening and tan—to come running with a lifebuoy as he leaps the surf to save us. But rescue never comes.... Read more
So profound are Christian Wiman’s pensées in the current issue of Image that I feel impertinent even engaging them. But they are so deeply engaging that I can’t refrain. Pensées is my term to describe these reflections, not Wiman’s. He calls the essay “Varieties of Quiet.” When I first read the title, I thought it would be about meditation. But no, it’s about what language can’t say, especially the language of faith—and even the language of poetry. I say “even”... Read more
This blog post is adapted from my manuscript, The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind, currently searching for a publisher. As the son of a minister, I grew up on a musical diet that consisted solely of albums by Christian artists. In a way, I was the musical equivalent of a vegetarian. When I was in junior high, however, a high school senior at church named Brad introduced me to musical meat in the form... Read more
Three minutes, maybe four. Six minutes, maybe seven. A little bit of time. This morning open Google chrome to my homepage the University of North Carolina Asheville. Once it’s loaded, a quick glance at upcoming events. A post Civil War lecture. First thought: Living in the South, I really should know more about the Civil War and its aftermath. Click. The link takes me to the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement’s Appalachian Studies Authors Series. I’ve already received an... Read more
As a child, I was a finicky eater, pushing around on my plate those items that didn’t appeal—too mushy, too mealy, too pulpy—and concentrating on the eccentricities I favored. Sauteed mushrooms on toast. Black-olive and cream cheese sandwiches. A casserole my mother made from canned clams, crushed Saltines, and lots and lots of butter. I ate artichokes and asparagus happily enough, but peas and I had an on-again-off-again love affair, although my mother always fixed them the same way—out of... Read more
“You’re the sort of man who can’t know anyone intimately, least of all a woman.” That may be the most stinging, hurtful reprimand I’ve ever heard. Thank God it wasn’t aimed at me: Those words were spoken by Miss Lucy Honeychurch to her fiancé, Mr. Cesil Vyse, in 1985’s A Room With a View. The insult broke their engagement. It also broke the poor man’s heart, just as it would have broken mine. As I wrote yesterday in Part One,... Read more
This two-part post is dedicated to the summertime brides of Good Letters. Congratulations to Allison Backous Troy and Kelly Foster! Twenty years ago this week, Batman Returns ruled the box office. I bought a ticket for something else: A film about two married women and a grumpy widow who take a holiday and, as The Seattle Times put it, “rediscover their sensuality on the sunny Mediterranean.” Strange, I know. But there I was, a twenty-one-year-old male, spending what little money... Read more
Part One: Resistance With the recent move of our Good Letters blog from the Image website to the larger platform here at Patheos, I’ve had to confront the fact—publicly, no less—that in the sphere of social media I’m something of a recluse, if not a misguided Luddite. It was one thing when hosted at Image to see that while some posts of mine garnered a mere one or two comments, others received none. Yes, there were those that precipitated a small... Read more
Today Good Letters welcomes back former blogger Dyana Herron as a regular contributor. Dyana is a poet who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She served as SPU’s MFA Program Coordinator and Development Associate for Image Journal before relocating to Philadelphia with her husband last year. We are glad to share her words with you once again. Since I retired as a regular contributor to Good Letters almost exactly one year ago, I’ve moved from Seattle... Read more
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