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. No one is fooled by... Read more
Did you know that you’re meant to be a saint? So says Pope Francis, in his latest Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad). An Apostolic Exhortation is a communication to Catholics throughout the world; but this one speaks to all Christians. Gaudete et Exsultate‘s very first paragraph announces: “The Lord… wants us to be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.” Before you shake your head that this is an impossible goal, let... Read more
Hank’s trembling confession that he’d be killing God if he killed another inmate had charged the small jail visitation cell where I sat discussing the image of God with three men from the infirmary. I pulled out the last of three “icons” and passed it around. It was a color printout of the crumbling Sphinx in Egypt—its nose fallen off, all color worn away by sand and time. “How have we, have you, become like this? If we were made... Read more
In clear, resonate language, Li-Young Lee celebrates longing in his poem “I Loved You Before I Was Born.” In its repetition and earnestness, this poem reminds me of e. e. cumming’s poem “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in.” Unlike cumming’s poem though, Lee’s emphasizes the bitter-sweetness of longing and places it on a cosmic scale of time and being. Lee’s poem is playful and sincere. The lines yearn to connect to the reader, just as the... Read more
The jail staff asked if I would meet with some of the guys in the infirmary. I sat down at the small, bare table in a cramped lawyer visitation cell, and three men in red scrubs squeezed by each other to take their seats with me. One of them was Hank, an old man with a scraggly white beard stained yellow around his mouth, gray and white hair hanging over his sagging face. The long beard and long white hair... Read more
Recently, I was wandering around some of the less travelled corners of Tuscany with a copy of Goethe’s Italian Journey when I found myself struck, powerfully and without precedent, by something Goethe had written. But I have to touch first upon W. H. Auden, the great English poet, who, for reasons not explained anywhere in the Penguin Classics edition of Goethe’s Italian Journey, was involved in the translation of Goethe’s work and in the writing of the introduction to... Read more
I feel bad about my neck. Those are not my words; they’re the title of writer/comic Nora Ephron’s final book about the indignities of aging. And I did a double take when I looked the publication date up: I Feel Bad About My Neck is already ten years old. Such is the passage of time. But the truth is, ten years after the publication of the book, I now feel bad about my neck, too. On the gray June day... Read more
If I could have only one poet, I’d choose Yehuda Amichai. He’s the poet of the city where I came to life in my twenties: Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity…. Jerusalem is the Venice of God. Jerusalem stone is the only stone that can feel pain. It has a network of nerves. The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams like the air over industrial cities.” It’s hard to breathe. He’s... Read more
With their white beards and deep lines in their faces, the older men stand out in our jail Bible study’s circle of usually-young men with either tattoos on the outsides of their arms or track marks on the insides. I’m always struck by the old men’s humility, how they don’t tell the whippersnappers to shut up. They listen. There is a sorrow about them. Take Merle. He’s only in his late fifties, but his questions speak to this sorrow. Someone... Read more
On a festive Sunday evening in what should have been spring (nearly sixty degrees at the zenith and sunny), as neighbors were crossing the road to feed apple cores to the cows, I left our house after dinner for a walk. Our house is 150 years old. It needs work at all times. It’s made of orange clay brick with limey mortar, white gingerbread cutouts on the gables, and rotting soffits and sills. About a mile down the road... Read more
Good Letters
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In