More on: Catholic

In our solemn conversations about the firemen, in our statements of unconditional loyalty and trust, I realize that maybe instead of the moral authority of God in our household, I have given Toby the firemen. Brave and noble, yes, but a shabby substitute for the Almighty.

I’m lucky to know a lot of really good, generous people, but they don’t fall into any of those standard narratives of saintly lives. They’re people who just keep on trucking and being good in the face of a lot of injustice and ingratitude.

Objects, rituals, and sites make the spiritual present, function as witness or proof of the miraculous, and turn individual perceptions into collective convictions.

The following is part of a book-length collection of poems on the life of Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), a French Catholic religious and priest who lived among the Tuareg people in the Algerian Sahara and whose writings inspired the founding of the Little Brothers of Jesus.   1897–98: Palestine   Remover of rough stones that rise from her flowerbeds, herbalist who thins…