Flannery Accounts for Counting“He held him under while he said the words of Baptismand then he jerked him up again and looked sternly at thegasping child. . . . ‘You count now,’ the preacher said. ‘Youdidn’t even count before.’”—Flannery O’Connor,“The...
BEYOND DOUBT “Truth!” said Pilate. “What does that mean?”—John 18:38The minute the preacher named it, I knew:Thomas was a hero, not the foil. It took gutsfor him to offer his hand to Jesus’ slitside, to poke his fingers into the...
I was named for a dead priest, my father’s uncle. Some few years after surviving the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, he got “the call.” (“Vocations follow famine,” an Irish bromide holds. No less the flu?) He went to seminary...
DREAMING OF STONES In the world before wakingI meet a winged one,feathered, untethered,who presses in my palmthree precious stones,like St. Ita in her dream,but similarities end there,her with saintliness and certainty,me asking questions in the dark.All I know isI am...
YOU ARE HERE(after Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours) You are the now and not-yet, the darkened dawn just beforethe first rays rise and you are the rays that pierce and prod.You are the siren screeching through city streetsdropping...
A WILD EMBRACE From Luci Shaw's The Generosity How creation dares us intoa wild embrace of what istoo beautiful to ignore. You openyour front door.Breathe, and all the old dust and confusionof your life falls behind you.You are not to obsess...
