The Wittenberg Door

They may all, in their imperfect ways, bespeak our yearning

The classic era of film noir, the 1940s and 1950s, is a great reservoir of sin. We sometimes forget that all of the Biblical traumas and warnings can be found in this…

On keeping yourself.

Something of those Christmas Eve services arises in me every time I watch a sacristan light a candle.

Offering a way forward.

There are things that we actually cannot bear—and things that cannot be borne will break us. . . . What then is to be made of unbearable suffering?

While I’m past the point of burning my records and musical books, and I’m no longer having to evacuate coffee shops because “Sympathy for the Devil” is playing, I still struggle with…

There is nothing greater in which to delight and nothing vaster in terms of the scope of His Being or understanding than God.

A room once filled with my son and his belongings was mostly empty. It wasn’t the absence of his stuff that hurt; it was his absence. But as I ran my fingers…

Between places.

Smith's poem has returned to my mind several times, especially in moments, like our current one, of cultural and political turmoil.

Returning home on any other evening, I might have noticed the gold leaf edges of the icons on the shelf smoldering from the sun through the window.