This one’s for Carin Ruff, and by way of answering my niece Kate’s question. A little more than twenty years ago, I spent a summer traveling around India under the auspices of the Fulbright-Hays program, a summer fellowship grant program for teachers. Over the course of about six weeks, we traveled to some twelve cities,…

“We are just at the beginning,” Charles Taylor wrote in his lumpy but essential tome, A Secular Age, “of a new age of religious searching, whose outcome no one can foresee.” If we are just at the beginning of a new age, it stands to reason that we are also at the ending of an…

My thirteen-year-old son had seen the Viagra commercials for years, but never understood what they meant, until finally, he asked what Viagra is and does, and I told him. Now he has this new vocabulary that includes the phrase “erectile dysfunction,” and another galaxy of humorous opportunities has opened to him. He begins to explore…

He was born with cerebral palsy and he has it all the way up until he is completely underwater, when, he says, his whole body is pleasantly different, his limbs smooth and loose and elegant. I hold him under his arms in the pool and he can walk and tell me everything. He takes three…

Continued from yesterday. Read Part 1 here. GW: One of the most interesting aspects of The Confessions of X is the way that X herself responds to Augustine’s intellectual passions, from his Manichean phase to Platonism. She’s not an intellectual but she’s no pushover and she instinctively challenges Augustine… SMW: The last thing I wanted…

Earlier this week, HarperCollins/Nelson released The Confessions of X, Suzanne M. Wolfe’s second novel. Image editor Gregory Wolfe interviewed her about the book. Gregory Wolfe: So I guess doing this interview with you is a case of raw nepotism. You OK with that? Suzanne M. Wolfe: I prefer my nepotism medium rare. GW: Your second…

My daughters Lydia and Becca, ages 12 and 10, are thoroughly delighted by the contemporary art collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum. They hurry to the Warhol soup cans and Lichtenstein comics they recognize from art class, a large sculpture made entirely of clear plastic buttons, and plenty of outrageously “simple” pieces they insist they…

When I come to the end of my days, what shall I say I know of life in this world? And what shall God say, when the world comes to the end of days, that God has come to know of life in this one of all created worlds? Carolina chickadee, Kafka, vocoder.    I…

The woman stands in the entryway of our common building just before Sunday worship begins. It’s not a sightly place, but it has every necessity for common intentional community life: a kitchen, a large meeting space, tables and chairs for worship and meals, a bathroom and a prayer room. At first, the woman seems to…

The Glory of the World—now running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music—is about Thomas Merton in the same way The Big Lebowski is about the Gulf War—almost inscrutably. Few plays about pacifist monks need a fight choreographer, a giant rhinoceros, a sprinkler, a ukelele, two air mattresses, and a remote-control helicopter. The original story sounds almost…