Posts Tagged ‘questions’
The Skirt of God
April 17, 2018
Dear Saint Francis, I imagined I saw you today out of the upstairs window. Your cowl had slipped off your head, and you were fighting uselessly with the wind to put it back up again. The recently fallen leaves around your feet likely understood the inevitability of your struggle. Your habit, patched and torn and…
Read MoreQuestions for the One Who Waits
September 25, 2017
I wait only for you. –Psalm 27, translated by Norman Fischer Psalm 27 is read by Jews from the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul through the Jewish High Holidays: Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year; and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is a psalm about how fearlessness and fearfulness come…
Read MoreAs Petals Fall
July 25, 2017
I met a little boy new to the neighborhood this evening when I was pulling weeds in my yard. “Why are you in the dirt?” he asked, trundling to where I crouched. “I’m pulling weeds.” “Why?” “So that there’s there more room for the flowers.” “Why?” “Because I like the flowers.” “Why?” “Because they’re pretty.”…
Read MorePassover and Government Presence
May 1, 2017
“In what ways do you experience the presence of government—city, county, state, federal—in your life, your daily life, your professional life?” That’s how we began, with that question. Asking questions, that’s the practice, isn’t it, that leads to liberation? And that’s why we were there that night, wasn’t it, to recount an experience of liberation…
Read MoreCalling the Lapsed
March 21, 2017
The parish party was a bust. As a member of the Parish Council, I had promised—yet not followed through—on calling the database of lapsed Catholics the Council had acquired by asking parishioners to fill out notecards during Sunday Mass, listing friends and family members who had fallen away. Of the targeted invitees, the lapsed…
Read MoreWhy We Write
July 20, 2016
What is it about words that so moves those of us who are writers? We take the most common of media—language—and can’t resist caressing it, playing with it, taking it apart and putting it together again in some new shape. Why do I love to write, even need to write? I’ve been pondering this question…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Ex Nihilo, Then Us”
December 4, 2015
Each Friday at Good Letters we feature a poem from the pages of Image, selected and introduced by one of our writers or readers. This poem is crafted as a conversation: among an unspecified “they,” an unspecified “we,” and God. The “we” is skeptical about the good actions traditionally attributed to God. (“From nothing God…
Read MoreThat Kind of Love
October 25, 2011
As of October 18, my fourth novel, How to Save a Life, is officially out in the world. The plot involves a death, a pregnancy, and an adoption. Recently, a fellow writer said he thought it interesting that I, the same person who wrote about not being a mother here at Good Letters, had written a…
Read MoreThe Four-Day Layover
September 27, 2011
I am between flights. It’s a four-day wait in this case, and I can spend it at home, so it probably doesn’t constitute a proper layover. But it feels like a layover, and I have a difficult time concentrating on anything but my connecting flight, the one that will unite me with my sister. I’m…
Read MoreWhen It Comes to Love, We’re Beginners
June 15, 2011
During a lecture last March, I spoke fondly of a friend whom I had recently lost to cancer. Halfway through the anecdote, I suddenly recognized his wife, the mother of his two young children, in the audience, listening in rapt attention. She was far from home, a surprise visitor. I almost choked. And I suddenly…
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