Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and American Exceptionalism

July 7, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

I will readily spend countless hours explaining to other American citizens why other countries do things the way they do them, and why the way other countries do them isn’t really so bad. I even have a Ph.D. from Duke, for crying out loud, which is nothing if not an institution dedicated to the production of woke overlords .And down in my heart of hearts, I suddenly discovered that I had a deep-seated patriotic ideological commitment to eating hot dogs with buns. Read more

Coronavirus Monastery

July 5, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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Sabbath is necessary, and this one was overdue. But the thing about sabbaths is that they end. This is no longer a sabbath. Read more

God is Extravangant

June 30, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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It’s an oft-repeated truism that it’s actually people who have very little who give the most away. The story of the widow’s mite even gives that truism Biblical support. Lack of money, not piles of it, is what’s supposed to produce extravagance. Piles of money is supposed to produce Malfoys. Read more

My Name is Karen, and I Want to Talk to the Manager of the Universe

May 16, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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We have a desire to create art, to sing and talk and act and breathe in community. We have a desire to break bread together. We even have a basic mammalian desire for grooming. We may need to deny fulfilling those desires for a time, but we deny acknowledging that we need to fulfill them at our peril. Read more

Ten Things About Work We’ve Learned From COVID-19

May 11, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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Many things most essential to being human turn out to be things that require close human contact and breathing the same air – changing bedpans, performing Hamilton, the Eucharist. Read more

I Want to Bless People. In Person.

April 1, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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It cut me like a knife with the imperfection of it all – not the imperfection of the blessing which is whole and perfect and Jesus and not me, but the imperfection of the distance. Read more

Coronavirus Sabbath

March 16, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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The world has pushed itself to its limit, and now we, collectively (though not yet me personally) have gotten sick. Read more

Late Capitalism and the Chromebook Charger

March 10, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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What I don’t know is if this is a praiseworthy tale of the ability of late capitalism to deliver what I needed, when I needed it, cheaply and well – or a cautionary tale of the ability of late capitalism to make me need it at all. Read more

What If I Never Catch Up?

January 24, 2020 By Jennifer Woodruff Tait

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What if the world operates in such a way that if we ever try to aim our life at any other end than productivity we will fall off the hamster wheel and spend the rest of our life chasing the hamster wheel down the road yelling, “Hamsters, stop! Let me back on!” Read more