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He Shall Be a Light

By Jessica MesmanDecember 20, 2018

I could see the glowing nativity from my bedroom window, the whole set in molded plastic: Mary, Joseph, three wise men, two sleeping sheep, a donkey with a saddle, Baby Jesus in the manger. My dad arranged them reverently in the front yard and lit them with a long orange extension cord plugged into a…

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Which Body?

By Kaya OakesNovember 5, 2018

There are three large cysts growing in my ovaries. The doctor says “oh my,” before asking if I’d like to take a look. I would not like to take a look. This feels like a parody of pregnancy, something my body would not let me do, because errant uterine cells began spreading across my inner…

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Reynolds Price and Me: The Tale of Two Rhodes Scholars, Part 2

By Casey N. CepJanuary 11, 2018

I found myself returning to the work of Reynolds Price in 2011, the year he died. Price passed in January and that summer I served as hospital chaplain.  Within a week of starting at the hospital, I went looking for one of Price’s books. After A Palpable God, Price had mostly left religion alone, writing novels, stories,…

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Poison Ivy and the Path of Grief

By Christiana N. PetersonNovember 1, 2016

Though its fruit should’ve been in season, too many harsh Midwest winters left the leaves of the apple tree to wither. At the time of harvest, very little fruit hung from its branches. But my daughter climbed anyway, her arms wrapped around the low-hanging branches, her feet bouncing against the trunk so she could swing…

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The Neglected Garden, Part II

By Caroline LangstonAugust 16, 2016

Continued from yesterday. The dollhouse my father was building for me was still unfinished when he draped a boat tarpaulin over the top, to protect it against the summer rain. The doctor had told my parents that there was a tumor in his lung. He was being sent to the M.D. Anderson hospital in Houston,…

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The Neglected Garden, Part I

By Caroline LangstonAugust 15, 2016

When my father built the house where I was born, the land was flat and there was little vegetation on it. It had once been the Curran family’s cotton plantation, my mother later told me—sold and subdivided for a row of little Cape Cods and ranch houses, all arrayed in pastel asbestos siding. Including the…

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The Long Regretful Wait

By Tony WoodliefMay 19, 2016

My mother’s quavering voicemail was right: I hadn’t called in a long time. I justified my neglect with the assurance that I’d called on her birthday, I’d called on Mother’s Day, I’d made my dutiful calls even though I suspected she was mad at me. I made them and she didn’t answer. I hadn’t called…

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The Wounds of Resurrection

By Christiana N. PetersonApril 19, 2016

As my husband prepared for an Easter sermon a few weeks ago, our dinnertime conversations during Lent turned to Jesus’s appearance to the disciples after his resurrection, to the episode where poor Thomas is saddled with his unfortunate moniker. Carravaggio painted a terribly potent picture of Thomas probing Jesus’s wounds, his lord’s flesh curving over…

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Thawing at the Edges

By Christiana N. PetersonMarch 8, 2016

When the spring teases me one day, outplaying the winter dullness for just an afternoon, I go for a solitary walk. In my seven years in the Midwest, I’ve come to dread this part of the year. It’s not the liturgical season of Lent or the lament that comes along with it that I dread (lament…

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Above Calcutta

By Laura BramonDecember 3, 2015

The summer before you died, I hid on the roof in Tollygunge. I walked part of the way home from Sudder Street and by the time I got to the apartment building where I was staying, the sooty red sunset had spent itself. Dusk sifted in the quarter’s dim air, and from the park by…

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