Essay: We are all Us
The gospel reading this weekend in Roman Catholic churches around the world is a very familiar one to Christians — and with good reason. In Mark’s telling of the life [...]
The gospel reading this weekend in Roman Catholic churches around the world is a very familiar one to Christians — and with good reason. In Mark’s telling of the life [...]
The year is 1962, and a tall, drowsy boy opens the front door of his family’s crowded two-flat to the grey darkness of near dawn. The sidewalk along Leamington Avenue [...]
Christianity is a radical endeavor. Jesus was a revolutionary, not of the violent sort, but a revolutionary of the heart and of the spirit. Just listen to his words from [...]
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 [...]