When I subjected my body to limits beyond what felt reasonable, I discovered that faith is embodied, that its strength can be expressed in the movement of muscle.

My old friend Gina, one of the loveliest ladies I know, lived for years with her family in a large co-op apartment overlooking Riverside Drive in New York City. The building, on its lower floors, was like a wedding cake swathed in white icing, but once you made it through the dark Gothic lobby and…

This post originally appeared on “Good Letters” on October 14, 2014. Continued from yesterday. The Way of Saint James—El Camino de Santiago—is a pilgrimage that began in the Middle Ages and remains popular today. Each year pilgrims from all around the world walk from points throughout Europe to reach the tomb of Saint James in…

Before a metastasizing cancer had fully whittled away her quality of life, my mother left me, on a cold November morning. I found her slumped over the bathtub in my New Hampshire home, just steps away from the guest room where she often slept. I did not rush to her rescue, or to move her…

Still Pilgrim. Just the title of Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s new poetry collection makes you pause. Pun and paradox reverberate through the title terms. A pilgrim is someone on a journey…a spiritual journey. “Still” can mean unmoving, motionless (definitely not journeying). But, further, “still” can mean ongoing, as in “I’m still doing that.” These contradictory concepts…

We stumbled onto the bus in Lisbon, sleepy after the overnight flight from New York. The pilgrimage tour guide handed out rosaries while the priest told the bus driver to play a recording of the rosary prayers on the sound system. I fingered the pink beads, following along with the Hail Marys and Our Fathers.…

My Uncle Jimmy died in September at the age of ninety. Born in Sicily, he immigrated to New York when young and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was the husband of my aunt for sixty-one years, the frolicsome father of my two cousins, a regular part of my life until…