Mercy

There was a sign in front of the hospital that said: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” I used to drive by it every day. It was in front […]

Power

The burden of how I might feel on my birthday was gone. At the end of school, I put the flowers my dad and stepmom sent into my bag and walked to the uptown subway instead of the downtown. A girl with her own birthday balloon, in the shape of a giant cupcake, crossed a […]

Fox Hunt

“If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” My tour guide told me I would love the fox. I […]

Weight

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” -Thoreau A monastery isn’t a place of professional goody-two-shoes. It is a place where people live deliberately, so much so that the deliberateness soaks into you if you spend some time there. Everything seems to have been done on purpose. In my guest room, […]