“I am writing this letter from the terrace of our tiny but lovely courtyard, with my back to our tiny but lovely 19th-century workman’s house in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Ghent.…

“Fast forward to Weird Easter 2020. I live next to a church in Athens whose Easter program has always been the usual elaborate Friday beeswax-candlelight procession with the bell tolling and the heavily overdressed…

“A dear friend of mine, a Southern woman long expatriated to England, sent me the following letter, and I would like to share it, anonymously, with a larger readership . . . for…

“It took 20 years and a series of chance events. Adjacent cubicles. Adjacent streets. An overheard comment. Then, 20 years passed me by, unaware that Cupid had targeted me. Sometimes you just get…

“Allergic to their stings, you see my words as bees./For all their softness, you see something hidden./They ask for what you can but will not give: a child,/And hidden in the mildness of…

“Come back to me. Please. More than ever before, I need your wisdom, your strength and your bottomless love. You know where to find me, sweet exile.  I’d leave a light on for you,…

“In Mark’s version of the temptation story, just before Jesus is driven into the wilderness, he sees the heavens open and the Spirit descending like a dove. Mark tells us that Jesus, still…

“Her name was Georgia. I called her Thia-Ghia—Aunt-Ghia—short for Georgia, pronounced in that cat scratching sound at the back of your throat very present in the Greek language—the definition of the accurate and…

“I suspect few people know that The Population Bomb, published in 1968, was co-authored. Professor Paul Ehrlich is credited as sole author of the book because the name of the other author was…

“The older I get, the more I can relate to Odysseus’ need to forsake the thrill of adventure and return to home and family, to recover, after so long, a sense of belonging.…