I avoided reading about the trial of Jerry Sandusky—the Penn State assistant football coach recently convicted on forty-five counts of child sexual abuse—because it’s hard enough thinking and acting like a Christian without fighting off the urge to pray that God will make hell especially hot for that man. We’re forgiven as we forgive, and he didn’t even do anything to me, and God knows I don’t need hatred for him added to my already thick to bursting ledger. What... Read more
“Wonderful woman. Horrible children,” I overheard as I was leaving a store, right behind two ladies who were discussing a third. It delayed my exit, in fact, as I didn’t want to break out laughing and cause them to turn and stare at me. But the statement simply seemed so perfect, so apt, so encapsulating of conversations I’d heard before—the plight of some poor parent or couple who had tried and tried, but in the end just couldn’t do a... Read more
For Johnny, of course My mother has been dead a year now, and it has taken me this whole time to begin to find value in her faults as much as her virtues. For much of my adult life, I’ve been in flight from just such a consideration: There’s a book called The Spiritual Advantages of an Unhappy Childhood, but I didn’t want to read it. The short version of the story—as anyone who’s read my posts on Good Letters... Read more
I don’t go to church. I haven’t for a number of years. Apparently that doesn’t make me unusual; I share this absenteeism with an ever growing population in the United States, a group which includes even President Obama. When we were newly married, my wife and I visited some churches, looking for a community of like-minded people to join, but nothing took. We tried one liberal Christian church that my wife liked, but I didn’t. The language of their worship... Read more
May the Lord bless thee out of Zion; and so shalt thou behold the good things of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. —St. Gregory of Palamas Last night, I dreamed that I was in Montana. My neighborhood looked the same—same Tudor house, same cul-de-sac, same wooded corner where I take my dog for morning walks. But there were mountains to the south, gray and wide, and the grass was a rust-colored brush, dry and prickly beneath my feet.... Read more
A Farewell: Kelly Foster is retiring from the Good Letters blogging team with this post. She will soon marry, relocate to Seattle, and spend the next year writing as Image’s Milton Fellow. We thank her for the gift of words and faith she has shared here. My grandfather’s death came surprisingly quickly, and I witnessed his rapid decline over the three consecutive Sundays leading up to it. On the first Sunday, he was still at home, refusing help when sitting... Read more
For over twenty-five years, my husband and I have prayed morning and evening prayer together. They are the hinges of our day, a metaphor I borrow from the introduction to the prayer book we use: The Liturgy of the Hours, also known in Catholic worship as the Divine Office. Our pattern is to pray morning prayer right after breakfast (I don’t pray well on an empty stomach), then evening prayer right after dinner. Of course we sometimes have to break... Read more
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” —Matthew 13:44 As a Lawrence, Kansas, resident, I am proud to live in a place where record stores are not extinct. The MP3 meteor that impacted the music industry over a decade ago left behind the skeletons of stores that once thundered with music—stores that... Read more
Guest Post By Richard Cole —Continued from yesterday. On my second day at the abbey, I bounced around, trying to listen, to feel, to be in the moment like Carmen advised. It was a tough slog. “Waste time. Waste time,” I told myself, checking my watch. At lunch with the brothers, I casually mentioned that I was in the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) now. I waited for congratulations but everyone just nodded. One of the brothers asked,... Read more
By Richard Cole Guest Post In the middle of life, I fell in love. For my forty-ninth birthday, my wife Lauren gave me a three-day visit by myself at a monastery in South Texas. I went there simply to read for a while and relax. I wasn’t a believer in much of anything, I wasn’t religious, and while I was there, I didn’t see any visions or hear voices. But when I came back, I was on a path. Something... Read more
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