Posts by Staff
Artists Show Us Jesus as Refugee and Refugees as Jesus
December 12, 2018
It has to be one of the most extraordinary Christmas trees ever imagined. Twelve feet high, glowing in brilliant oranges, this “tree” was created by artist Ben Quilty out of the lifejackets of Syrian refugee children who had safely reached the island of Lesbos on boats. For the current Christmas season, this sculpture has been…
Read MoreSearching for Campfires in a Season of Darkness
December 10, 2018
“My church and my country could use a little mercy now,As they sink into a poisoned pit it’s going to take forever to climb out.They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down.I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now.” …
Read MoreMaterial Christianity
December 5, 2018
“Churches are the mansions of the poor,” the novelist Oscar Hijuelos stated in his 1995 paean to New York ethnic Catholicism, Mr. Ives’ Christmas. Lately, though, it seems that in many cities, the churches are now simply becoming mansions. In Washington, D.C., where I live, the gray stone church, with its sober round tower, has…
Read MoreAdvent: Through the Door, into the Dark
December 3, 2018
The facades of the buildings in Vilnius, Lithuania, are captivating, with peeling paint and doors covered in colorful bursts of blue, pink, green, and golden yellow and bricks crumbling where the building and sidewalk meet and graffiti scattered all over the ancient architecture. When I visited for the first time last summer, it looked to me like a…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Rusted Chain”
November 30, 2018
Each element in Haven’s poem returns to the visual of childhood games, like hopscotch or tic-tac-toe. The image of boxes containing “Xs and Os” haunts the poem, creating a pattern that compartmentalizes our speaker’s reckoning with the past. This reckoning is “a tally where no one / should ever win.” The poem speaks to a…
Read MoreThe Prophet of Unadilla, New York
November 28, 2018
There’s a highway that goes the strange way through New York State. It sends you out west and eventually into Pennsylvania, but not before a kind of slingshot move that starts up around Schenectady and then skitters down into the southern central part of the state. This is Interstate 88, a roughly 117 mile stretch…
Read MoreWhen Publishers or the Public Reject You
November 26, 2018
“Van Gogh did not sell a single painting during his lifetime, became increasingly unhinged, and shot himself at the age of thirty-seven.” So writes poet Jeanne Murray Walker in her engaging essay in the current issue of Image (#98), “Sandals on the Ground: My Pilgrimage with the Sonnet.” Walker’s sentence about Van Gogh reminds me…
Read MoreClimbers and Conquerors: Reading The Ghosts of K2 and Into Thin Air on Thanksgiving
November 21, 2018
One night after rifling through my tilting mountain of bedside books and coming up short, I sifted through my husband’s stash. I pilfered The Ghosts of K2, the library book he’d been reading about the first decades of expeditions to climb the second highest mountain in the world. While I attempted K2, my husband moved…
Read MoreNow is the Perfect Time for Catholic Horror
November 19, 2018
Of the Western faith traditions, Catholicism most strongly bears the marks of our pagan past. Sites sacred to local pagan religions were “adopted” by the church as it spread, and Pope Gregory I, circa 600, even encouraged his charges to utilize such places in the conversion effort. The Catholic panoply of saints resembles pagan polytheism,…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “World”
November 16, 2018
Like an increasing number of congregations in the U.S., the urban church I attend shares its space between two local faith groups. Our building hosts both Mennonite and Jewish services and education classes. My pastor’s weekly email sometimes weaves in stories from our female rabbi space-mate or the Torah. We mourned with this community after…
Read More