Un. Well it’s too lateTonightTo drag the past outInto the lightWe’re oneBut we’re not the sameWe get to carry each otherCarry each otherOne Read more

GODSTUFF “SEX AND THE CITY”: A LOVE LETTER TO OUR GIRLFRIENDS In the end, it wasn’t about the sex. Or the Manolo Blahniks. Or men with nice buns, bank accounts or bubbes. For the ladies of “Sex and the City,” there was but a single item listed on the bottom line: love. Not with the men of their dreams, but with each other. Thousands of single 20-something women arrive in New York City every year in search of two things... Read more

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR THE TRANSCRIPT OF MY 2004 INTERVIEW ABOUT FAITH WITH BARACK OBAMA … CLICK HERE Read more

A RING AND A POEM. BUOYANCYLove has taken away my practicesand filled me with poetry.I tried to keep quietly repeating,No strength but yours,but I couldn’t.I had to clap and sing.I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,but who can stand in this strong windand remember these things?A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.That’s how I hold your voice.I am a scrap wood thrown in your fire,and quickly reduced to smoke.I saw you and became empty.This emptiness, more beautiful... Read more

And the Pulitzer goes to … Congratulations to Crime Boy and the rest of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune “Hidden Hazards” team. (That’s Crime Boy — IN A SUIT WITH A TIE! — on the far right.) Read more

“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” Photo by David Vanderveen, a k a “Aquavita Man” It’s Pulitzer Day in NYC. The sun is out, soft morning breezes blowing on lower Manhattan. Spring is here. And I have Rilke on the brain. Grace to you this day,GG _______________________________________________ God speaks to each of us as he makes us,then walks with us silently out of the night.These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out... Read more

BEET FARMS, BLESSINGS AND BAHA’I I love Rainn Wilson. One of my favorite theater-going experiences was from five or six years ago when I went with my best girlfriends to see a production of “Taming of the Shrew” in San Diego where Rainn (pre-“The Office”) played Tranio. It’s still the funniest performance I’ve seen on stage, with the possible exception of Mario Cantone’s one-man Broadway show, “Laugh Whore.” Rainn is Baha’i. I’ve heard him speak about his lifelong faith a... Read more

GODSTUFF HATING THE WAR, HONORING THE WARRIORS Dan’s wife, Christine, attaches his captain’s pins Memorial Day this year, for me, was as conflicted as the weather on the outskirts of Chicago. Sunny and bright one hour; overcast and threatening the next. In the last six weeks, I lost a dear friend to a roadside bomb in Iraq; my little brother became a major in the Air Force and received his orders to deploy, for a second time, to fight in... Read more

ANOTHER EARLY REVIEW FOR SIN BOLDLY HITS THE ‘NET Joel over at the blog “City Grace” posted a lovely review of Sin Boldly last night.The pastor of Chicago’s Sunshine Gospel Ministries said, in part: Falsani’s book made me think about a recent argument made by Tim Keller that religion advocates typically are so disconnected from disbelievers that they caricature one another in argument, find no common ground, and therefore have meaningless conversations that are more attack than discussion. Keller would... Read more

11:11 — Pay attention to what gives you goosebumps Frederick Buechner says that which sends shivers down our spine or brings tears to our eyes may be the holy drawing nigh. There’s just something about this song … always does it to me. And this version – from Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” with Robbie Robertson, the Band and Joni Mitchell on back-up … There is a town in North Ontario,With dream comfort memory to spare,And in my mind I still... Read more