Only this I wish for my students: this semester, I hope you will learn to care for each other. I hope you will learn how to create conditions in which everyone present in the room feels welcome to speak. I hope you will learn how to discern which of two competing voices within you is worth acting on: the voice that cautions you against speaking lest you confirm, for yourself and others, what you suspect, that you are a fool,... Read more
In late October, I had the privilege of teaching two workshops at the Indiana Faith and Writing Conference on the campus of Anderson University. The IFWC, originally known as the Indianapolis Christian Writers Conference, brings together writers of faith to help them develop in their craft and find opportunities for publishing. The director, Liz Boltz Ranfeld, is an Anderson English professor, an essayist, and the mother of two young children. One responsibility Ranfeld hadn’t expected was answering to outrage over... Read more
By Martyn Wendell Jones When I moved into this apartment with my wife after gaining Canadian immigration clearance, I noticed, standing on our balcony, two apartments in the public housing building across from us. The first apartment, near the center of the building and four stories below us, was always visible at a sharp angle from above, and inside it I always saw someone I came to refer to as the Sad Man. He’s there now—I just checked—lying in black... Read more
This post was made possible through the support of a grant from The BioLogos Foundation’s Evolution and Christian Faith program. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BioLogos. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. — Jeremiah 1:5 The role of music in life is so great that to make a point about it is to risk staleness. In fact, it’s one... Read more
Each Friday at Good Letters we feature a poem from the pages of Image, selected and introduced by one of our writers or readers. The much-beloved poet and teacher Brett Foster passed away earlier this week and so I’d like to dedicate “Poetry Friday” to his memory. Image published quite a few of Brett’s poems and the one I’ve chosen to talk about is “Mixed Company.” I chose it because while many of Brett’s poems exemplify an elegant formalism (in part... Read more
From my office window I can see the pale yellow plantation house, its sharply pitched roof peeking from behind a huge conifer, its two Italianate cupolas, one at either end of the house. Since 1901, Sweet Briar House has been the home of the president of Sweet Briar College, a small women’s college in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, a bucolic place of towering trees and beautiful architecture, but also a place that was once home to nearly one... Read more
My daily bike-ride near downtown Tucson is not picturesque. It’s along a bike trail that’s squeezed between a highway and a tattered string of small factories and beaten down neighborhoods. The bike trail is usually fairly abandoned when I ride it. Occasionally I’ll pass another biker or someone walking. But I can always count on passing the man who lives under the overpass that’s an exit ramp from the highway. (more…) Read more
Since I’ve been blogging here at Good Letters I have been contacted by several friends who knew me back when I was a Baptist. My friend Heidi asked, “Are you a universalist now?” Cliff wondered if I was, “denying or seriously doubting Jesus’ claim to be God.” Another asked if I was “still a believer,” and yet another frankly labeled me agnostic. These friends are seeing my musings after many years away—thanks to social media. Their own journeys seem to be keeping... Read more
First of all, it makes everyone hate you at parties. We all know that it’s downright rude to correct the person who’s standing next to you holding a glass of white wine when she says, “for him and I.” Grammar is one thing. But sometimes the problem is facts, and facts matter. I was in a situation recently where someone noted that film director Douglas Sirk’s magnificent film Imitation of Life—the heartbreaking story of the saintly African-American maid, Annie Johnson,... Read more
Each Friday at Good Letters we feature a poem from the pages of Image, selected and introduced by one of our writers or readers. I like a poem to surprise me, and Marjorie Stelmach’s “Canticle of Want” (Image issue 86) is full of the unexpected. Recently I’ve been praying St. Francis’s famous “Canticle”: “All praise be yours, My Lord, through all that you have made.” But Stelmach’s initial address to the Lord is far from praise; it lists images of a... Read more
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