Family, Death, and Life
On celebrations and empty chairs at the table in three films: Still Walking, Summer Hours, and Rachel Getting Married.
View ArticleThere’s no place like home. Even at home.
“In a number of recent broken-family films, “broken home” is not just a metaphor. Like Dorothy’s, uprooted in fairy-tale response to her running away, physical houses in one family film after another...
View ArticleThe Fantasy of American Innocence: Little Boy (Alejandro Monteverde, 2015)
Before I begin, an obvious warning: I will discuss spoilers here. Another obvious warning: this is a long piece and it goes into the brush at various points. My hope is that, in the end, it comes...
View ArticleThe Advent Conspiracy: An Interview with Josh Butler
The Christmas shopping season is upon us. But perhaps there is an alternative to the culture of buy, buy, buy. Perhaps there are other ways to remember the Incarnation, forge community, and partake in...
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Silver Linings in Dark Financial Clouds: Discovering Spiritual Gold in the...
Like the worst of rubber-neckers passing a twenty-car pileup on the interstate, I have watched our nation’s recent economic turmoil with a strange mixture of sorrow, fear, and (here comes the strange...
View ArticleTasting the Animal Kingdom
Editor’s Note: In 2010, The Other Journal published The Spirit of Food: Thirty-Four Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, a collection of essays and recipes that colorfully depict how our acts of...
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There's no place like home. Even at home.
“In a number of recent broken-family films, “broken home” is not just a metaphor. Like Dorothy’s, uprooted in fairy-tale response to her running away, physical houses in one family film after another...
View ArticleThings that Fall and Things that Stand
Editor’s Note: In 2010, The Other Journal published The Spirit of Food: Thirty-Four Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, a collection of essays and recipes that colorfully depict how our acts of...
View ArticlePainlove
The past spring, my fourteen-year-old cousin died huffing keyboard duster. Her sister found her in bed, nostrils taped shut. I picture it, the rooms of her house nightsodden. Her young legs gathered...
View ArticleLos Angeles
My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call. —Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides There is a spot on the downslope of Colima Road in Hacienda Heights, in southern California, where, if...
View ArticleThe Fantasy of American Innocence: Little Boy (Alejandro Monteverde, 2015)
Before I begin, an obvious warning: I will discuss spoilers here. Another obvious warning: this is a long piece and it goes into the brush at various points. My hope is that, in the end, it comes...
View ArticleThree Prayers and a Consummation
While her husband tried to explain to their two kids why they had to skip their Little League tournament in order to attend their grandmother’s church (and that, no, they couldn’t wear their uniforms,...
View ArticleSplit Me Open
I am caught between dengue fever and boarding school. Circumstances beyond my control have left me for weeks without internet and no hope of connectivity in the foreseeable future. I can’t Google the...
View ArticleAfter the Rapture
“After the rapture, are you gonna serve the beast?” my older sister, Katie, asked. I was only half paying attention, coveting her room instead. Hers was prettier, I thought, her sheets and coverlet...
View ArticleLooking at Family through a Resurrection Lens
We are relational beings, often hurt and healed within the context of relationships. This is clearly revealed in the Christian theological tradition, which understands relationality as the cornerstone...
View ArticleJesuit Life, Family Life
One could say that as a member of the Jesuits I trace my lineage back to 1540, when Pope Paul III confirmed the founding of our religious order, the Society of Jesus (Societas Jesu), or to 1534, when...
View ArticleCareer and Calling, For Better and Worse
Mandy: To say that my entire family was relieved when I completed my most recent book project is an understatement. I am not someone—for better or for worse—who takes stress in stride. It seeps into...
View ArticleFortunate Fall
The first time Paul Martindell brought his new wife, Lauren, to Bill’s Ford—they were in their early forties, a second marriage for both—she said she thought she was being taken to an automobile...
View ArticleA History in Bridges
I. In 1930, my great-grandfather Ike built a bridge across the Branch. He hired a crew to pour a concrete foundation, put up iron crossbars, and set a wooden deck on top. His wife, Roan, carried sweet...
View ArticleHow the Water Holds Us
My brother Bill tells me to put the thing on the thing and hands me a rope before he shuts down the runabout’s motor and allows momentum to carry us to his pier. I lean into his words, whisper his...
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