Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

Voice #1: Thank you for the sympathy card and letter. I don’t have time to respond right now, but know that I appreciated it. Voice #2: Thank you for the sympathy card and letter. What you wrote was very meaningful to me. We haven’t been in touch in a long time, so it would have been easy for you to ignore the fact that my father died. But I appreciate that you took the time to write from the heart. Thank you. Voice #3: It was really nice to get your letter. Even though things have been rough on and off between us for so many years, I always know that when it matters, you will come out of the woodwork and say the words I need to hear. One time, long ago, you told me you weren’t really a writer, but that’s crazy. What you wrote was comforting and disturbing and ugly and beautiful at the same time. You were brave to write it. Voice #4: Nobody sends cards with actual letters in them anymore except my 86-year-old aunt and random elderly friends of my dead parents, so it was so nice to get ...

Once, my friends P and J and I went out to eat with my father. They mentioned Santorini to him—how beautiful it was. He replied, disgustedly, in his signature thick Greek accent, “Santorini is NOTHING.” He then proceeded to explain to them that if they really wanted to see the most beautiful place in Greece, they ought to visit Ikaria. If you ask S what she remembers about Ikaria, she will mention one of the following: the large number of totally ignored and flea-infested stray cats, which had never been fed or loved as consistently over a two week period as they were during our visit; the two faced man dream that many of us had, which we concluded was proof that our hotel was haunted; the bagful of rocks she picked at the beach on a walk with her college buddy J. Sometimes she’ll say she was stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere for much too long; most of the time, though, she’ll say she had the time of her life. This isn’t the story I’d tell, but I am glad she has her own. For ...