Prayer

Harnessing the Power of Time

One day about five years ago, when Barak Obama was running for president the first time, I heard him talking on the radio about wind power.  He said that the wind is a cheap,...

New Poems by MargBouvard

HYMNS I think of Falah’s sister in Iraq who lost her husband, her four children, affectionate daughters, proud sons. I think of her empty hands, her empty house that is no longer a home, and I pray. I think there will...

A Deep but Dazzling Darkness

I think one of the greatest of metaphysical poems is Henry Vaughan’s masterpiece “The Night.” The poem takes as its inspiration the scene from the third chapter of John, Nicodemus visiting Jesus by night....

The Other and Julian’s Promise

In contemporary discussions of religion and religious discourse the notion of God’s alterity, or “Otherness,” is often foregrounded. This rhetorical gesture, very nearly a commonplace, derives from the philosophical work of Emmanuel Levinas and...

There is No One at the Center of the Cross (Easter Meditation)

On the cross, Jesus said, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do." Did he carry the sins of the world, or drop them? The center of the cross is a place that...

Reading, Intimacy, Angels of Death

Reading, I think, is a fundamentally spiritual experience. The phenomenologist Georges Poulet once remarked that, when we read, another person’s “I” enters into our own souls. Think about it: when we read the word...