The Mud of Us

by Ashley Makar | March 30, 2024 |

Grief calls for outlandish acts of love.


In swells of grief I address the dead as you. Over 12 years ago, my dad called from the ICU, with fluid collecting in his lungs. Before we hung up, it was as if he mustered all the wind left in him to say, “See you Saturday.” By the time my flight arrived in Birmingham, his heart had stopped. For forty days, I wrote him a letter everyday. Whenever my words faltered, I scrawled See you Saturday, over and over.

I’ve only seen tears fall from my dad’s eyes twice: when his sister died, and after our yellow lab mix Sandy passed. In my dad’s Egyptian culture, men don’t grieve pets. He called my Alabama grandmother to ask, “Is it ok to cry over a dog?”

Sandy’s ashes sat on

continue reading
labyrinth at Chartres cathedral

Holy Thursday Pop-Up Foot Clinic

Listen while two feet soak.

embers and ash

Ash Blessings

No need to profess a thing.

11 Questions: Heretic: A Memoir by Jeanna Kadlec

Restorative, queer, unfuckablewith. 

The Balm of Proximity: Churchyard Haunting Past, Pandemic and Potential

If a religious building is in itself a threshold…what possibilities are uniquely latent in the threshold’s threshold…what wisdom lies on the church steps, in the side alley, in the far corner of the graveyard, on the margins, and nowhere else?

Emily Mace places flowers at the memorials for the 7 killed in the Highland Park parade shooting. Photo credit: CNN Politics

Flowers for Fireworks

The Highland Park I knew blurs with the Highland Park that so recently was, and yet the memorials that frame the ends of this street reveal the Highland Park that we will yet be.

Plague Psalm 19

Bees needle our sin-stung flesh in your hive
Yet some kind of sweetness
still touches the tongue.

What Wondrous Love Is This: Finding Queer Religion in Muncie, Indiana

We expected to hear about shared experiences of homophobia and isolation, but much to our joy and surprise, we have also heard, time and time again, about how our narrators have found and cultivated communities that affirm the lives of queer people.

On Gratitude

But there was love, love, love,
dripping from our hands.
We both gripped the sharp edge,
and it was painful

Two Poems by Joe Gross

Sometimes
multiplication
of loaves
just means
splitting
one loaf
between
two people.

Follow Killing the Buddha

Subscribe to Killing the Buddha

KtB is much more than an online magazine. We work to increase understanding about today’s living religions in relation to pressing social issues through public engagement and education. Subscribe to get the latest news from KtB delivered straight to your inbox.

Please enter a valid email address.
Something went wrong. Please check your entries and try again.