Bread and Birds: A Reflection on Providence
There is often a shadow of anxiety that catches me at random times every day. It’s a howling voice that tells me to be on guard. It likes to mock my hard work as well…
Category: Miscellaneous Nonfiction
Eternity Begun: A Meditation on St. Elizabeth of the Trinity
The dead can be our friends and mentors, perhaps even more fundamentally and intimately than those we live and work with every day. We have many invisible brothers and sisters who watch us serenely and…
The Test of Adam
Original Poem Transliteration Khabi maqsood-e-Khaliq Adam ko nigah-e-ishq seekhana Khabi imtehan-e-Adam aatish meh baagh milaana Tumhare manzar ko dekh kar shujaat bhi heraan hai Aye be-khabr, teri nigahon meh sar-e-ishq chuppa hai …
Remembering St. Bernard: Theologian of Love
One of my grandmother's favorite medieval Catholics was, as it happens, St. Bernard of Clairvaux. He wasn’t the only Catholic she admired, but he was perhaps the only medieval or post-medieval canonized saint who meant a…
An Open Letter to the Atheist
If you say there is no God, that we are just physical beings meant to return to oblivion and dust, what’s inside us that makes us desire love, appreciate beauty, or laugh out loud? Is…
What Roles Did Women Play in Pagan Scandinavian Society?
Introduction Within this essay my aim is to address the complex and ever-changing roles of Viking women within Pagan Scandinavian society. To do this I will discuss the multiple roles that women played/fulfilled throughout the…
In Heaven as It is on Earth: Thoughts on the World to Come
High on the southern slope of Oregon's Mt. Hood sits the historic Timberline Lodge, an architectural gem and magnet for many winter sports fans. The visitor enters a stone building that in many ways, feels like…
A Muslim’s Reflection on Prayer
Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed by that hard to describe eeriness, I feel like my whole life is a mystery. ‘It must be!’ my overthinking mind shouts out in those moments, for nothing ever seems to…
St. John the Baptist’s Birthday
Saint John the Baptist, a man not shaken by the wind, a man not dressed in the finery of the palace, eater of locusts. Well, that last one doesn’t sound quite as impressive, but he…
Raiders of the Lost Ark: A Look Back At a Film and An Era 40 Years Later
~By Michael Goth Of the ten highest grossing movies of the eighties, two men were responsible for seven of them-George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg directed E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982), the film that surpassed…