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The National’s Secular Heaven

By Jack NuelleMay 25, 2019

Religious imagery has long been a mainstay in the National’s lyrics, and with the release of the band’s eighth album, I Am Easy to Find, it’s clear that frontman Matt Berninger still sees religious language as the best prism to articulate the ever-present human desire for transcendence and salvation. But if the band’s songs are…

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Halos and Other Important Things

By Jessica Eddings-RoeserMarch 22, 2018

In second grade my mom put me in an art class taught by a fluffy-haired blonde who took us to a museum to sketch a Madonna with child. Before we began, our teacher asked us what we noticed about the painting. I raised my hand. “She has a golden crown.” “It’s a halo, not a…

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Fit for Immortality?

By Peggy RosenthalAugust 9, 2016

“How’s your health?” my long-time friend asked me with concern. “The leukemia is creeping toward trouble zone,” I answered, “and I’m not sleeping much, so sometimes I’m pretty wiped. I don’t deal well with physical discomfort.” Then I added, laughing but serious, “I feel ready for eternal life.” That evening I opened to my bookmark…

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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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Imitating the Saints

By Elizabeth DuffyApril 7, 2016

St. Therese once wished aloud that her own mother would die. When her mother scolded her, Therese explained that then she could sooner go to heaven. My children received this anecdote with perverse joy, telling their siblings to jump off a bridge, run out in the street, and let go of the tree branch…that you…

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Poetry Friday: “Meditation on the Evangelista”

By Karen An-Hwei LeeMarch 11, 2016

What if God turned up at your door in the form of a brush salesman? That’s the premise that Karen An-Hwei Lee’s prose-poem plays with. Mystery and comedy merge in this delightful meditation. First, an unnamed “He” does not do certain everyday things, like shampooing your carpet. Then “God” slips into the poem as the…

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The Thirst Is Good

By Elizabeth DuffyFebruary 26, 2016

When my husband and I were in the very early stages of our relationship, we both hid from each other that we used tobacco. He chewed. I smoked. But we’d been set up because both of our families were churchy. He thought I was a pious Catholic girl who might be turned off by his…

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