Posts Tagged ‘prayer’
Maybe Tomorrow I Will be a Mystic Mom
November 23, 2015
I am outdoors in the late afternoon and sitting cross-legged on a quilt from which I can view the garden. This spot, under the shade of a large sugar maple—the setting idyllic and agrarian—should be perfect for quiet prayer. But it’s not. I think I am emerging from the haze of an anxiety that caught…
Read MoreThe Rothko Chapel: The Dark Before the Dawn
October 21, 2015
The few years I lived in Houston’s Menil neighborhood, right behind the University of St. Thomas, I felt like I’d been invited to live in a sacred garden, a nearly prelapsarian environment. It is a beautiful space, near the art museum known as the Menil Collection and its park, and bordered by several streets of…
Read MoreLet Me Die Like This
September 21, 2015
When I die, Lord, let me go in a plane crash, spiraling down, earthward, earthward, apportioned enough time to pray but not nearly enough to forget what we’re all prone to forget: that the end comes, it rushes up to greet us, every one in flight. What I’d pray in my downfall is: forgive, sweet…
Read MoreMorning Prayer and The New York Times
July 7, 2015
Summer morning routine: a cup of Awake tea, the Opinion page of The New York Times.
What am I looking for to get my day going? Information to spark the brain? A needle to inject righteous indignation into my sleepy heart?
The flag is coming down. You know which one.
Read MoreLearning to Pray
June 29, 2015
I do not want to be a good person. I want to be a holy person.
Read MoreHis Murderer and His Keeper
June 15, 2015
Some days I can’t remember: am I Abel or Cain?
Read MorePrayers in the River
June 11, 2015
I am not the kind of man who routinely stands hip-deep in anything, but the kids are still asleep, and I need to pray somewhere—God knows—so here I stand. The water is frigid and it soothes my feet, sore from stumbling over stones to rescue my lure. All I’ve caught in this damned river are rocks.
Read MoreGrapes of Wrath
February 11, 2011
As I wrote last year, I know that a novel has me hooked when I start praying for the characters. And such it was again with my recent return to John Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939. My husband and I listened to the CD of the…
Read MoreHe Shall Be a Light
December 16, 2010
On the day after Thanksgiving my dad would disappear into the attic while I waited at the foot of the ladder for him to bring them down. One by one, I wiped the dust from their crowns. We had the full set in faded plastic, melted in spots from summer storage in the Louisiana heat:…
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