Seeing the World/1 [from The Book of Mev]
The second week of that Summer Program at Maryknoll, Mev made an announcement after one of the morning sessions that she was going to present some of her photographs in a slideshow/meditation on a night…
Good Clean Fun
My friend Te Martin shared this photo of a Diane di Prima broadside she encountered on her travels…
The Beatitude of Playing Bach
Arnold Steinhardt, Violin Dreams, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 Like the hundreds of other people who had gathered at Saint Pius V Church for Dan Horkheimer’s funeral last August, I was moving between despair and disbelief…
“Reds and Yellows” by Parvuna Sulaiman
Jennifer Lowe invited me to be on the collective of readers to decide the winner of SLU’s Library Associates Undergraduate Writing Award this spring. I encourage you to read “Reds and Yellows,” the creative nonfiction…
The Good News, 6.4.2017: This Leads to That and That Leads to This
A couple years ago, Andrew Long suggested to one of his Barat Academy students that she read The Book of Mev. So she did. And through social media we got in touch. She just…
Lexical Luxury
Take such words as “A poor man.” How many expressions are there in English for poor? You can say: “a poor man, a pauper, a beggar, a mendicant, a panhandler,” and this exhausts all that…
Realization Stepping outside the House Heading down the Street to the Community College
There are three bodhisattvas (that I know of) On the 4500 block of Chouteau Avenue Joanie French Chelsea Jaeger Jean Abbot Bodhi Svaha!
When We Were Young
The old days of Enneagram exchanges The old days of “noisy contemplation” The old days of Wendell Ford The old days of the FSLN The old days of Buzz Parsons The old days of home-made…
Share the Wealth with Lizzie Corcoran
Did you ever invest a lot of time and energy doing something you loved? Do you still do that thing? For the first 18 years of my life, I was trained in classical ballet and…
Learning by Heart, the Joy of Music, and the Power of the Prophetic
Dear Lauren, I received your letter today about the online Good News class and your hand-written adaptation of Kipling’s famous poem. The fact that you have had “If” as a companion in your work and…