Even if it is helpful to know that deep grief is quieting, it is consoling that some are closer to our particular pain. Most people immediately become awkward when I mention the miscarriage. It makes sense to me, as I act similarly around people who have more extensive familiarity with death than I do. I have never experienced the death of a child I have given birth to, have never yet experienced the death of a parent or a spouse. I am not old; I still cannot, as my professor told me in college, really understand Lear. But at twenty-five, watching Lear carry the body of Cordelia and cry, “Why…
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Travel That Shatters Our Images: Revisiting Brideshead
The way out of a tiresome tour bus and onto the pilgrim road is an odd, unpredictable combination of grace and a mind willing to leave preconceived frames at home.
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A Streak of Sadness
“I believe the right books find us at the right time,” a former professor of mine likes to say. It’s true. The right books find us at the right time and they speak to us in the right ways. Some books sit with us for years, bringing wisdom in each new season until they become old friends. Some books wait on our shelves until we finally notice them, which always turns out to be when we need them most. Other books strike like lightning.
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“A Longer Ladder Yet to Climb:” De-creating the Self in Dante’s Inferno
What if the biggest obstacle that stood between you and who you were made to be was…yourself?
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Chess, Jazz, and Renga
Each of these artists were working with an understanding that almost everything improvisational is ephemeral. Little lasts. Most is lost.
