It is a phenomenon that still startles me. On weekend evenings from May through October, as dusk settles down upon my suburban home, small fires appear all around me. The suburban men I call my neighbors spend their weekend days doing what suburban men in the Midwest have done for decades: playing golf, mowing lawns,…

For the last four mornings in a row I have found myself walking the gravel road that runs past our house just as the sun is rising. I would like to brag that this is partly inspired by my recent re-reading of Annie Dillard’s classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but that would be mostly a…

Part One of my Conversation with film critic Steven Greydanus about the film The Secret of Kells was published in a Good Letters post on Friday. Here is the conclusion of that conversation: Jeffrey to Steven, #4 In your review, you wrote, “It must be admitted that The Secret of Kells somewhat short-changes Brendan’s Christian…

Have you ever seen The Book of Kells? I mean, really seen it with your own eyes? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more breathtaking work of art. Photographs can’t capture the way light plays across the vibrant, reflective ink. Nineteen years ago I stood in Dublin’s Trinity College and leaned over a glass…

Sixpence None the Richer is my favorite band. I used to be embarrassed to say this, particularly in 1999, when their bouncy pop song “Kiss Me” became a ubiquitous, worldwide radio hit. I knew, and know, that the band was more than this one song, but “Kiss Me” on the radio, in 1999, was the…

My favorite new word came inadvertently and secondhand through my boyfriend’s father earlier this year. Speaking to his brother at their father’s funeral, he asked, “Do you have a tic-tac or something? Cause your breath’s just kind of medium.” The first time Ben relayed this story to me, I laughed so hard the soymilk I…

This post is my first for Good Letters—hi, everyone!—and I’m going to start with something that is small but, I think, important. “Small but important” describes a lot of what I plan to do in this space—describe little moments of religious reflection and representation in film, TV, books, and music, and see if we can…

City living involves carving out paths—the well-worn routes we travel each day. Whether on foot, behind the wheel, or in the seat of a city bus, we come to anticipate the landmarks of daily life. The construction on the house on the corner; the For Sale sign that becomes Sold; the usual panhandlers and Street…

Humanity is readily divisible into two groups: those who divide humanity into groups and those who don’t. The wise—even those among the dividers—learn to hold their tongue among the former. More than matters of taste, the position one takes in intractable arguments reveals something of one’s interior life. Realist or Nominalist, PC or Mac, Whitman…

The Pill’s fiftieth anniversary year is an odd occasion for me, the daughter of young parents who stoked their fiery love affair with accidental babies. Despite the pink plastic nautilus of Pills in our mom’s make-up tray, despite the condoms we found when we looted our dad’s sock drawer for impounded Nintendo controllers, my parents…