Yesterday, a man might have killed me. Both receptionists were away from the counter when I entered the waiting room for a physical therapy appointment. The waiting room, shared by several different offices, was lonely in mid-morning with only one man wearing all black and headphones sitting slightly hunched. I took a seat as far away as I could and picked up a magazine, anticipating a few minutes of quiet before my appointment. The man was talking quietly, perhaps on... Read more
In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was a desolate waste. Chaos. Smoking rubble. Like after a war. Our beginning, we Bible readers should understand, was post-apocalyptic. That’s what I tell the guys in jail, as a regular chaplain there, when someone pipes up now and then with the Genesis and evolution question. I back us up, and—depending on how much time we have before the guards come and pop the heavy door... Read more
As part of our tourist rounds in Chicago my wife and I visited the Art Institute, which is far too large to take in in a single day. As happens every time I go to a large museum, by the time we walked out I was in a state of melancholy existential astonishment. One installation was a meticulous recreation of the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, some of them estimated to be as much as 20,000 years old. Until we... Read more
Contingency…subject to chance…uncertain…right down to the molecular level. — Christian Wiman It is one of the most confounding paradoxes of parenting: do we show our children, or do we tell them? From that question, of course, the nuance and degree of difficulty increase rapidly. When and how to show? When and how to tell? Watching my sixteen-year-old son come of age as a cultural observer, I’ve found myself wanting to introduce him to films whose prevailing ideas are held together,... Read more
Early on Friday morning, the first full day of my recent trip to Israel with Congregation Beth Ha Tephila, Asheville, NC, six of the forty-three participants gathered on a momentarily quiet Metzitzim Beach near the Tel Aviv port for twenty minutes of mindfulness practice. When we finished, we noted, just to the south of us, what seemed to be a privacy fence. What for? My guess: it was for ultra-Orthodox Jews to create a space where men or women could... Read more
In examining her simple subject, Bohince expands the scope of an egg. The poem’s title, “The Egg of Anything” lets the egg become the root and symbol of large and small images: “sun and moon mixed,” or “little o / in hope or love.” Bohince’s descriptions radiate through her abstract comparisons and playful word choices because the poem’s subject matter is so concrete, tangible, and familiar. The homey, comforting egg is like a catalyst, undoing its own simplicity under Bohince’s... Read more
For the past several days—until today, alas—we’ve been having a spell of entirely uncharacteristic weather in the Washington, D.C. area. The days have been in the 70s and the nights, pure bliss: in the high 60s, a temperature for open windows and a thick breeze that feels like it’s straight from the Atlantic, and I am opening the casement windows in my cottage on Martha’s Vineyard. Which, I should note, does not exist. Now we’re back to Hell Season again.... Read more
The day is hot and musty but everyone is celebrating. After all, everyone can enjoy a small town fireworks display, right? I used to think so. But in revelatory moments, the sheen of this small town—with its beautiful park and festivities—is pulled back to reveal what was always present. Life isn’t always so bright for those who have been pushed to its edges. My small Midwestern town wakes at dawn’s early light, gathering and preparing for Independence Day at the... Read more
The line lurched forward one vehicle at a time, halogen halos radiating from headlights. Although it was eleven o’clock at night, I could not help but think of the funeral processions I saw as a boy, cars coursing through town in the daytime with lights aglow. As I sat in the drive-thru lane at Taco Bell that night in 2008, I began to think of that line of cars as a fast-food funeral procession. But who—or what—were all of us... Read more
I’ve never really been into crosses. Like fire hydrants or Starbucks, there are so many, I don’t even see them. Sermons or songs that ask me to meditate on the cross might as well ask me to meditate on the church snack table because that’s where my mind wanders as I wait for the cross, cross, cross (say the word enough, and it deflates to a hiss) to go back on its Precious Moments shelf. When we traveled to southern... Read more
Good Letters
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