A Divine Comedy
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Gordon Peerman’s Blessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhists About Suffering has been a life-changing read for me. It is helping me learn how to get some distance from my emotions and approach discomfort and even suffering from a…
I went to Bhutan to visit my friend, Linda Leaming (Married To Bhutan, A Field Guide to Happiness). I went by myself to know that I could. I went to learn more about Buddhism. About halfway through the trip, I…
Halloween’s about candy these days. But maybe it’s still a little bit about ghosts and death and the meaning of life, too? In her article “Living among the Dead in Manhattan,” Faith Bottum thinks about how we moderns banish death…
As the days grow short and dark, novels beckon us into their bright worlds. Here are ten to consider for fall… The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell, is a gleaming invitation to 16th century Italy, a world in which court…
An October visitor has lately surprised me, sipping sage in the garden as the maples and oaks and hackberries and dogwoods show red and yellow and gold… Each day I wonder: is this our last together? And think: perhaps that…
Nearly a month without rain in Nashville, the trees in their autumn glory look thirsty. My pups stir up a small dust storm each time they go out, pups and dust both finding their way back into the house. The…
I miss Hilary Mantel already. And I think: it is already later than we think. Today I’d love to share a few reflections on her life and work… From Maggie O’Farrell (“Hamnet”), in The Guardian: We have lost another monarch…
It’s hard when you do the right thing and end up in the wrong place. My friend Mary Raymond stops in at Bacon today with a funny and heartfelt essay on how she got herself into a tricky situation, and…
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced…