Category: Uncategorized

Behind me in the palm trees, planted by the communist sabras before their country demanded they be something else, macaws croak a melodic scale. Before me, in the lapping waves of the wind-tossed afternoon sea, small fish bob underneath the translucent crests, quicksilver intimations of the life teeming underwater, of the schools of fish who…

If you keep goingand goingand going and goingto meet the poemOne day she will come to meet you. You are spent, but she, still fresh, serenely smiling in crepuscular welcome of your foolish faith of effort,the wisdom of your yearning, Pausing, blinking,No doubt you’re unsure of how to moldand mete the momentNow it’s here Where’s…

The greatest creed ever professed is the psalmist’s, who believed God said “I do not desire the death of any living thing.” When you are younger, it is very easy to love—choosing tenderness is second nature. But love is more brittle, it is more fragile, so susceptible to snapping. Old wineskins, about to break. Love…

Our bodies are filled with so much intimacy.  I was in the doctor’s office, looking at x-rays of my hips that his research assistant had pulled up on the ancient medical computer from the dawn of computers. I sat on the cushioned swivel stool in the empty exam room waiting for the doctor, which feels…

I think the most important spiritual commitment I ever made was to no longer tell any white lies. I began this on a particularly decimated retreat in the middle of the Minnesota prairies in the darkest days of winter. I opened up the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and thought I’d begin with week one (I’ve gotten…

This is nothing more than an impression, but I have just begun Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Dare We Hope, I’ve been reading a lot about David Bentley Hart (still), and I have been thinking about universalism, a concept that anyone should be open to being hopeful about—a stance that is a few steps removed from…

This morning, after going to bed stressed out about my window and how quite literally unhinged from its track the window is, I noticed a man sleeping in his car. I am ashamed to admit it, but I was distressed. A slender—and not altogether sturdy—pane of glass was the only barrier separating me from this…

I just want small tendernesses:sunlit slatting onto bed covers,dust motes catching sunlightin immobile air The tiny violences of killing flies and ants,welcome everywhere butwindowsill and indoor walls, Unwritten routines:walking across the street,to the park,with a cup of coffee,in the haze of sunlightwaking up to spring. I wantthe moments whenthe living is easy It hasn’t been…