by Guy Sayles | Jul 27, 2011 |
Maybe this all-too-common loss of wonder is why Jesus (and other wise spiritual guides) told us that we need to become like children to experience God and fullness of life: A young rabbi once said to his teacher that, in the evening, he could see the angel who rolls...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 24, 2011 |
I talked this morning about how closely connected are our capacities for imagination and for faith. I also gave thanks for how great art, of whatever medium or genre, helps us to imagine a different world than this one: to see, for instance, how good could triumph...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 22, 2011 |
Toward the end of Helen Keller’s remarkable public career, after a speech at a Midwestern college, a student asked her: “Miss Keller, is there anything that could have been worse than losing your sight?” Helen Keller replied: “Yes, I could have lost my vision.” Not...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 12, 2011 |
It’s easy, far too easy, to lose track of what matters. It’s easy for lawyers and judges to lose track of justice. In modern-day legal systems (there’s more than one), career-building, deal-making, and system-gaming can push a concern for justice to the periphery and...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 8, 2011 |
We’ve all known, and some of us have been, people who are hard to love. Some people send contradictory signals: “Go away” and “Come closer.” “Leave me alone” and “Why don’t you ever call me?” “I need help” and “Do you think I can’t do that myself? I heard one man...
by Guy Sayles | Jul 3, 2011 |
Maybe you’ve heard it said that the United States is often caught in the cross-fire of its uncritical lovers and its unloving critics. I try for a third way: to be a loving critic—to practice what Lutheran-turned-Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus once called...
by Guy Sayles | Jun 30, 2011 |
Mary Oliver’s prose poem “West Wind, 2” intrigues and moves me: You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me....
by Guy Sayles | Jun 21, 2011 |
In his novel, Miss Wyoming, Douglas Coupland recounts an exchange between a young woman, Vanessa, and John Johnson, a “debauched, disillusioned movie producer who has given away all his possessions” in the attempt to start a new life—to “reinvent” himself. “Do you...
by Guy Sayles | Jun 11, 2011 |
We can’t learn very much—not much that matters, anyway—about love by gathering information about it. Sure, there are mountains of books about love: elaborate philosophies and theologies of love; thorough psychologies and sociologies of love; moving stories about the...
by Guy Sayles | May 25, 2011 |
Midlife is the autumn, the fall, of the human journey. Who knows precisely how young or old a middle-aged person is? Chronologically it starts within sight of 40 and ends within range of 70. But, chronology is not the main marker of midlife. The realizations and...
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