Ashley Makar
Ashley Makar works with refugees in Connecticut. She does community outreach for IRIS--Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, in New Haven. She has an e-book of essays, You Were Strangers: Dispatches from Exile. Ashley has published essays in Tablet, The Birmingham News, The Struggle Continues (the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute weblog), Religion Dispatches, and The New Haven Register.
Recent Posts by Ashley
Ash Blessings
No need to profess a thing.
Embering
What to do with this grief over what happened to you? I don’t know, so I’m making a ritual.
How We Are Holding
I keep turning to trees these dead-of-February, unending pandemic days.
The Dust of Us
I love walking around with a sign of dying on my face.
End-of-Life Lullaby
Grieving is a lit cave.
Celebrate the Death
Dust to dust, the stuff of us, before and after life.
Aleppo Is Us
With the recent “What is Aleppo?” gaffe by Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the news cycle has long moved on from the child whose image quickly became an icon of that city’s daily disaster. I first saw Omran Daqneesh on the front page of the New York Times, sitting bolt upright in an ambulance. I…
Holding Light
Waging peace on terror, with refugees.
Praying with Refugees
A sermon preached at Trinity on the Green, August 23, 2015
Easter, A Bright Sadness
Death is a kind of light.
A Beautiful Belief
A change of heart on the subject of bodily resurrection.
Homeless for the Holidays
A palsied mouth, stammering to say these words matter.
Homeless for the Holidays
A palsied mouth, stammering to say these words matter.
Strangers and Friends
A conversation with Ashley Makar and John Green, on the occasion of her new book, You Were Strangers.
Religious Baggage
An excerpt from Ashley’s new e-book You Were Strangers: Dispatches from Exile
Am I a Survivor?
I was ambivalent about wearing the word survivor on my sleeve, until I put on my biking jersey for Smilow Cancer Hospital’s “Closer to Free” ride. I’m a stage-IV cancer patient, currently in treatment at Smilow—not the kind of survivor who’s cancer-free. I didn’t want to wear the label that tends to be on the…
Leaves of Ash
You forget and then remember: you’re dying.
Heresy at Gethsemane
I found myself at the foot of an olive tree, my body folding into a crouch.