by Guy Sayles | Jan 9, 2018 |
When Anita and I were in seminary, we served a small and loving congregation in southern Indiana. One of our next-door neighbors, a generous man in his late fifties and a faithful member of the church, was crustily cynical about the possibility of change. At...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 23, 2017 |
Even though we lose track of in the glitter and sweetness of our celebrations, Christmas is intensely and insistently political. It’s about who’s in charge.Jesus was born in an occupied land and under the shadow of Rome’s Emperor. It was his decree that Mary and...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 19, 2017 |
I’m allergic to sentimentality.I break-out in heart-hives when I brush up against counted-cross stitch samplers of motivational quotes, with greeting cards that feature babies, puppies, kittens, and balloons, and with rhyming love poems printed on a pastel background...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 4, 2017 |
This post is the last of three in which I respond to themes in Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful book, When Breath Becomes Air. Kalanithi’s said: “Severe illness wasn’t life altering; it was life-shattering” (120). I agree.To observers who don’t have (because no...
by Guy Sayles | Dec 2, 2017 |
Here is the second of three posts in which I respond, out of my own experience with serious illness, to a few themes in Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful book, When Breath Becomes Air. I ended the first with this resolve: The only way to live is to live.In tension with that...
by Guy Sayles | Nov 29, 2017 |
A friend recently invited me to meet with a book group that was reading the late Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful memoir, When Breath Becomes Air. It describes his heartbreaking but heart-mending sojourn through cancer into an all-too-early death at age 37. ...
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