Here is a poem about making a poem. The first stanza, a single sentence, stretches out through cosmic imagery: “light sift[ing] down,” “erasable darkness seep[ing] up,” “the crack to the radiant world closing in on itself.” The diction here is high, poetic. Then suddenly the next stanza plunks us down to earth with “One way…

Did you know that you’re meant to be a saint? So says Pope Francis, in his latest Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad). An Apostolic Exhortation is a communication to Catholics throughout the world; but this one speaks to all Christians. Gaudete et Exsultate‘s very first paragraph announces: “The Lord… wants us…

I happened to be in the midst of re-reading Homer’s Odyssey when the current issue of Image (#96) came in the mail. At the end of the issue are the rich reflections, by various poets, on poetry and worship. After sinking into them (even being drawn into deep prayer by Emmett Price’s powerful reflection on…

The Reverend Dr. James H. Cone, known as the originator of black liberation theology, died of cancer on April 28 at the age of seventy-nine, just two days after the grand opening of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama on April 26.…

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math—hyped now as the crucial core of an educational curriculum. I don’t have anything against science, technology, engineering, or math. They’re useful for some things. Just not for the things that really matter. President Obama was more positive than I am about how much STEM matters. In 2015…

“Without the traffic, silence / itself would sound red birdsong…” As I’m reading these lines in the poem “Seeing in Silence” in Murray Bodo’s latest volume, A Far Country Near: Poems New and Selected, I pause and ponder. How can silence “sound”? I could get literal and say that without traffic’s noise we can hear…

How did I first hear of lectio divina? It must have been from the monks at the Trappist Abbey near my home, who engage daily in this ancient practice of “holy reading”: the prayerful reading of Scripture, just a short passage at a time. This is my guess, because I at my second meeting with…

At first I didn’t know that I was dying. I’d been rushed to the hospital emergency department because I couldn’t breathe, put on oxygen and wheeled right to Intensive Care. The week or so in ICU is a blur now. But ICU must have been where it was discovered that my kidneys were failing—because I…

It is Martin Luther King Day, and I muse about how my relation to African-Americans has been shaped over the years. When I was a child, my father would sometimes take me into work with him on Saturdays. He was a physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he ran a research lab (with…

What made me pick up Ralph Ellison’s classic 1952 novel, Invisible Man? Had I ever even read it before? I don’t think so, and when I recently noticed a reference to it somewhere, I immediately thought: now is the time. To refresh your memories: the novel is narrated by a nameless protagonist, a young black…