During graduate studies in English many years ago, I came to love certain academic books, the first of which was Northrop Frye’s The Anatomy of Criticism. Frye, who applied archetypal analysis to classic literature, labeled comic drama as “the mythos of spring,” a celebration of a

There I was, a 50-something woman of privilege, in front of the Salvation Army homeless shelter in a seedy neighborhood of Austin on a sultry summer evening, dutifully putting bright orange traffic cones out in the street. I was startled by a tough-looking female police sergeant, who pulled me aside

No one cares that Al died—not his family, not the folks at the halfway house where he lived, not even those of us who had served time with him. Only old man Bob on the third floor of B-Building mourned Al’s passing. Al used to clean Bob’s cell and wash his laundry. But Bob is as cr

Its the water. The large windows that flank our sanctuary at Tautra Mariakloster in Norway look directly out on the Trondheim Fjord. Each of the seven of us Cistercian nuns here has felt our primordial connection with the water all around us. Being in our church is like being in a womb, with the wat

A husband's journey through grief

I am an American, happy to be home; but in many ways I am almost a stranger.