Stations of the Cross on the A Train, Part One
Hot town, summer in the city / Back of my neck getting burnt and gritty… goes the ode by The Lovin’ Spoonful, a radio staple at this time of year, its fevered melody symptomatic of the swelter it...
View ArticleJerusalem Risen and in Ruins
Israel surprised me. It met me in Boston where I had traveled to attend a conference. I hadn’t planned on its being there. Laurie was going to join me later in the week. I was looking forward to her...
View ArticleLittle Houses
For Peter and Jackie Cooley, who live in one. “So what do you know about East Pines?” I directed the question about a nearby neighborhood to an acquaintance whom I know solely as a friend on Facebook,...
View ArticleThis Old House
I was raised in a house full of old furniture: old desks, old mirrors, old rugs. There are old paintings on the walls and old linens in the drawers. The silver is old, the lamps are old, and at this...
View ArticleFor the Time Being
Guest Post By Jan Vallone I recently ran into a good friend who’d been battling depression for years. She looked radiant. She smiled and said a therapist had healed her; he’d taught her to live wholly...
View ArticleHeading Home on the Back Roads
Today Good Letters welcomes back former blogger Dyana Herron as a regular contributor. Dyana is a poet who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She served as SPU’s MFA...
View ArticleDon’t Cry for Me, Bethesda
Awhile back, a well-meaning (and very successful) friend said to me, “I just wish we could buy you a house in Bethesda so you wouldn’t have to live so far away from here.” We had been talking about our...
View ArticleLife and Longing in Laramie
Dust…flies free for a moment, then returns, leisurely, to the habitual road—that bruised string which leads to and from my heart. -Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces A full year before our...
View ArticleLiving on the Threshold
Guest Post By Elizabeth Kalman My house sits on the edge of a salt marsh in Charleston, South Carolina. On one side of the house is the street, on the other, the marsh, teeming with life. I have a...
View ArticleCamping with God
The exodus (small “e”) was a family of five fleeing the New York summer in our Volvo wagon just last week. Crossing the East River on the Brooklyn Bridge, a veritable wall of water reared up on either...
View ArticleAll I Needed to Know I Learned from the Phonebook
Sing in me, O Muse: That like Navin R. Johnson—the “I was born a poor black child” character played by Steve Martin in the 1979 film The Jerk—I might cry aloud: “The new phonebook is here! The new...
View ArticleNew World
“There is no death, only a changing of worlds.” —Chief Seattle At night I lie in bed and think of the cemetery gate on Monument Hill. It was a fairly steep climb up a gravel path and always left me...
View ArticleWe All Have a Place on the Great Chain of Being
Somewhere along the Great Chain of Being, we all have our place. That’s an old concept, and perhaps one that doesn’t fit our times as easily as it did in the past, but there’s much of it that still...
View ArticleIn Memoriam
If you live long enough in a place, people will start to die there, but the phenomenon of time’s passage is often framed more romantically. Consider the lines of the classic Beatles song (emphasis...
View ArticleGod in the Godforsaken Places
I live in the shadows of Washington, D.C. It’s a big place and said to be a very important one in geopolitical matters. I trust them on that. But I’ve found that in most cities its size—in most cities...
View ArticleA Holy Habitation for Life’s Story
By Allison Backous Troy May the Lord bless thee out of Zion; and so shalt thou behold the good things of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. —St. Gregory of Palamas Last night, I dreamed that I was in...
View ArticleAn Interview with Newbery Medal-Winning Author Clare Vanderpool, Part 1
Clare Vanderpool, Newbery-Medal winning author of the novels Moon over Manifest (Delacorte, 2010) and Navigating Early (Delacorte, 2013), got her start by attending a writing workshop at The Milton...
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