Jesus, deeply silent, watched the flames
Jeffrey Essmann
Jeffrey Essmann’s poetry has appeared in Dappled Things, U.S. Catholic, the St. Austin Review, America, Grand Little Things, and other venues. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website. He is a Benedictine oblate and lives in New York City.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
This Advent season, listen to your hometown prophets
Prophets are those people who through gentleness or annoyance (or some combination of the two) have called us to who we really are and pointed to where we were supposed to go.
Posted inFaith in Focus
The Mystery of Sadness: Coping with a sudden loss
The day my niece died grammar was nearly salvific to me.
Posted inFaith in Focus
Finding the music in praying the rosary
My grandmother’s rosary was of amethyst-colored beads and a small silver crucifix, gray-black with tarnish. She kept it on the bureau in her bedroom near a holy card of St. Jude and a talcum powder box made of imitation satin. She’d put it in a special pouch—an old change purse, ac
Posted inFaith in Focus
Stumbling Onward: Learning from my third graders
There has been an ontological honesty to my stumbles, and they’ve usually landed me in places confidence never would have brought me.