More on: community

Obviously, autobiographical experience, even matched to extraordinary artfulness, cannot be the lone standard against which to measure the accomplishment of a novel.

In the Avett Brothers, we share in life’s ups and downs even without blood kinship, and by offering one another redemption born of the generosity of forgiveness, the gift of collaboration, and the freedom to pursue our ideas, our musical family blossoms with creativity.

Old Saybrook, Connecticut, April 1827 Wealthy Ann, Ruhama, Othelia, Harriet, Hipsey, and I took the ferry to the big camp meeting in Old Saybrook, where ten famous preachers took turns exhorting us to find Jesus and to serve him by serving each other. The crowd swarmed like ants taking breadcrumbs home. Wealthy Ann said smelling…

e.g. Abolition, Prudence Crandall, the Amistad, Nat Turner, Indian Removal, Female Complaints: First Congregational Church, Lyme, Connecticut, ca. 1816 Even the pulpit Bible was consumed in the fire that turned the meeting-house to ash. An architect planned the new meeting-house, a steeple equipped with a lightning-rod, a belfry, and a golden weathervane; Ionic columns supporting…

_________Lyme, Connecticut, 3 July 1815 Nor’easter and calm shine, high tide and neap, combined lives shuttled between births and deaths, from baptisms to funerals, amen. Mehitabel, Uriah, Moses, John. Robert, Elihu, Azanaha, Love. Wakes, marriages, fallings-out and laughter, arguments, broken hearts, betrayals, guilt: thus time shaped a community of faith. Jerusha, Wealthy, Esther, Hepzibah. Moses,…

AT the height of the recent sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, a writer friend of mine told me that the whole sorry situation had her in a “white rage.” I knew exactly what she meant: like most people who have lived through these interminable revelations, I have found myself speechless with fury against…

Mark 2 Meaning, not the fey name of a coffee shop cheekily named, but me and the sinners (not “mixed” as in unlike things commingling, but rather the “meh” of our behaviors or consistent confusions, contradictions like breaking news ongoing, over and over with little new to report…) as I was saying, me and sinners…