In early April in 1994 a missile shot up from the hillsides near the Kigali airport and brought down a small plane holding Juvenal...

We walk now in the coldest, the cruelest of winters, this winter, with its deep sorrows. But it will not always be this way, and we must...

We have passed the time for silence We have passed the complacency of safety and sanctuary. We can no longer convince ourselves that...

I spent Saturday morning embedding bricks into the muddy rim of our garden, the first layer of a decorative divider that would highlight...

I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where...

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life those the art of living...

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? - Mary Oliver, The...

A few weeks ago I headed up to New Jersey to attend a book fair, part of the wondrous new sensation of calling myself a writer. I spent...

This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a...

Sixteen years ago we made the move from Minneapolis to Virginia. Lynn and I flew out for a few days in early December to find a place to...

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” - Martin Luther King I live in Northern Virginia, which, for the...

In February, when much of the world digs out from snow or splashes through dirty gray sludge, the Bay Area sparkles. On most mornings...

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings -The...

In an election season that has spoken to our worst instincts rather than our highest aspirations, it’s been a struggle to conclude that...

I wanted him to love the game as much as I do, so we started when he was very young. When he was three he had a plastic bat and ball,...

Lucas bounded into our lives several years ago, an eight-week old puppy with one floppy ear, the fluffiest tail I had ever seen, and a...

Outside my apartment early this morning, well before sunrise, a homeless man was staggering about. He woke me first with his anger, a...

On March 4th we lost Pat Conroy, and on that day the world became a bit duller, a bit less expressive. I thought he’d have more time. ...

My father never told me how to live. Instead, he led his own life, and let me watch it. From him I learned loyalty, integrity,...

The great Irish poet Patrick Kavanaugh once commented, “One feels the impertinence of writing ‘I’ this or that as if we thought ourselves...