The Barbershop

It's rare to have the opportunity to look at another person, especially a stranger.

As the work wore on, my hands, feet, and knees blistered.

Before the deportation, Chechnya belonged, in a significant sense, to the old world.

The surveillance state is meant to be like God: all seeing, all knowing. An essential third attribute—all loving—seems to have never been considered.

I cannot imagine a better metaphor for, and a better invitation to, the forming and renewing of cultural connections and communities than bookish places.

What if our galactic neighbors have never come for a visit because they simply feel quite at home in their little corner of the universe?

My father was the pastor, and he was not above reprimanding his children from the pulpit if we didn’t sit very quietly.

We didn’t raise our children to keep them for ourselves. We raised them to go make a home, to share grace and love.

And then I noticed that she had a Children’s Hospital visitor sticker on her sweater and that, hardly before I finished my admonishment, she began to sob.

The saddest pair of words in the English language is the phrase never again.

To truly listen to locks requires the love of a locksmith.

When the scoreboard lit up at my son’s game yesterday, it felt like a small miracle.