Essay: Pentecost and the fruit of the Spirit
Last month, for Pentecost Sunday, one of the choices for a second reading was from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and its high point, for me, was this sentence near [...]
Last month, for Pentecost Sunday, one of the choices for a second reading was from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and its high point, for me, was this sentence near [...]
About five years ago, I read two books that knocked my socks off — the exquisitely evocative Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and that massive, epic, beautiful whale of [...]
He hasn’t been canonized, but I think of Michelangelo as a sort of saint. William Shakespeare, too. And Emily Dickinson, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Frank Sinatra, Beethoven, Aretha Franklin and Chaucer. I [...]
You’ve heard it, probably as often as I have: Christmas is for kids. The idea is that Christmas is a time when the eyes of children grow large with wonder [...]
Make no mistake about it. I love physical books. I love the weighty feel of a book in my hands. I love the aroma of a book when you open [...]
Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) thinks the little free libraries along many Chicago sidewalks are bad — very bad. They are “unregulated”! And they’re “popular”! And many of them are planted [...]
Near the end of last Saturday at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest, an 80-year-old Italian painter from the North Shore told me she’s going to have a huge party [...]
The American culture celebrates the rich and powerful. Just look at the news and notice how much is about entertainers and politicians and millionaires and billionaires. On Labor Day, though, [...]
When I used to come to the door at my granddaughter Emma’s house, she’d hide, usually behind the legs of her mother or father, peeping out on one side or [...]
Abraham Lincoln and my granddaughter Emma have gotten me curious about Jesus. I mean, about Jesus’s curiosity. It started when I was reading the review of a new biography which [...]