My daughter Anna Maria was born on Orthodox Easter Sunday—Pascha—six years ago. That year, the date fell on April 19. While her brother had blasted his way into the world at the very bottom of the night, in a delivery that was swift and surreal and un-medicated, my daughter arrived in the late afternoon as the sunlight was just beginning to dim. I latched her to my breast and asked my husband to run go get me a hamburger, fries,... Read more
In my Catholic faith, Easter lasts for seven weeks, until Pentecost; so I’m not too late with this little Easter offering. This year for Easter, instead of hunting for colored eggs, I hunted through my book The Poets’ Jesus for some of the many ways that poets have seen Jesus over the centuries. I found hundreds; but here, lined up chronologically in their carton, are a key dozen. As indeed He sucked Mary’s milk He has given suck—life to the... Read more
In the beginning was a wedding. The ceremony began with light. The ceremony included the separation of water from water, and it included the formation of land followed by the breaking apart of continents. The sound was terrible, and it was heard beyond the sky and in the perfect garden, the expensive venue chosen for the wedding ceremony and reception. The ceremony began before there was a brain, a human brain, before there were two human brains, even before there... Read more
I’ve never left North America, seen the Statue of Liberty, or dipped a toe in the Atlantic. Nor have I ridden a motorcycle, bungee jumped, snorkeled, or skied. I haven’t eaten beets, bratwurst, bread pudding, or anything with tentacles or pincers. I’ve never had an actual, entire, beer. I’ve never completed Harry Potter, Moby Dick, or A Tale of Two of Cities, nor seen The Godfather, Braveheart, or one episode of Star Trek. And never—not once—have I dived. And I’m... Read more
At the community college where I teach—actually in the state capitol two hours away—a massive overhaul of the English curriculum is underway. As I understand it right now, a diagnostic test will determine student placement, and three levels of developmental reading and writing are being added for those with low scores. Those students will be taking nine credit hours, almost two hours a day five days a week, of developmental reading and writing. Faculty members are groaning—two retired the week... Read more
I was standing with a Palestinian Muslim and three Jews. Jericho. The ancient city. Some say Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Others say that distinction belongs to one of the cities in Egypt, or Syria, or Turkey. Either way, the old city of Jericho is astoundingly old. Settlement activity dating back to 10,000 BC. The further you look down into the archeological pits of Jericho, the further back in time you’re looking. You travel the... Read more
“Prayer…is always available to us.” –St. Seraphim of Sarov I I sit atop my red metal bunk bed, thumbing through the orange, vinyl-bound pocket Bible that I received at a friend’s Vacation Bible School party. Tomorrow morning, I have an appointment with the doctor, who will examine a cyst on my left breast. I am ten years old, and my mother cannot tell me what the cyst is. On my bed, the ceiling light spins in a crooked circle above... Read more
This past week, I taught my last English class for quite some time. Three years ago, I moved to my new city in the Midwest. Almost right away, I started teaching literacy to people (mostly women, mostly older, all East African refugees) who have been denied access to education. The levels of trauma, displacement, oppression, and prejudice contained in that single educational qualifier “non-literate” are hard to explain. I taught in the corners of crowded libraries, classrooms, computer labs. I... 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. My suspicion grows apace with the slickness of a presentation. This is one reason I squirm in a megachurch. PowerPoint slides, emotion-tugging video clips during the pre-game show, music crafted to feel edgy and relevant—my skin crawls like I’m about to hear a... Read more
A couple of weeks ago, a German man decided to kill himself. There are thousands of such occurrences every day, except this time the man was a pilot, and in the process of his self-destruction, he also killed everyone on the plane along with him. Nobody seems to know why—he was depressed, disillusioned, etc.—but not to the degree that anyone thought him capable of such an act. The black box of the smoldering wreck reveals the co-pilot’s pounding on the... Read more
Good Letters
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In