prayer
Dear Flannery
Letters to friends, God, and Ms. O’Connor. Republished in honor of Briallen’s first book, Hard To Love: Essays And Confessions, out today from Bloomsbury.
Not Weird Enough
According to the author of a new Catholic handbook, eucharistic adoration should be the new yoga.
Words to Live By
I got another tattoo. A black and gray owl with wise eyes rests on my right bicep. A locked heart lays on its chest. Its claws grasp the key. I get tattoos to mark the transitions, those shifts in my life that suggest nothing will ever be the same. Tattoos make endings and beginnings concrete.…
On Labels and Returning to Church
This past winter I started going to church again. Emotionally exhausted and spiritually drained from current events and personal circumstances, I made a point to actually set my alarm and show up to the 10:45 service of a congregation within walking distance of my home. It was the second Sunday in Advent, and the congregation…
![windyroad[Editor's note: you can read about Ashley's experience with biking as a "survivor" in the 2014 Closer to Free ride here. She has written more about cancer and her work with refugees here and in her KtB e-book <em>You Were Strangers: Dispatches From Exile</em>.]](https://killingthebuddha.com/wp-content/uploads/you_were_strangers_560-e1414546347525-300x175.jpg "you_were_strangers_560")
Not For One Side Alone
Yesterday morning, the morning after the grand jury failed to return an indictment against Darrell Wilson in Ferguson, MO, I had to appear in family court. My son’s father brought false allegations of “Alienation” (a charge made largely by middle-class white men against middle-class white women and one that is enough to trump anything else…
Televised Prayer: Rev.
People don’t pray on television. Let me rephrase that: when people pray on television, they pray badly. They ask God for stuff, and then they get it. Television prayer is usually depicted as a quid pro quo. That’s why it was surprising, in one of the final episodes of the BBC series Rev., to see…
The Praying Habit: Final Week
After four weeks of experiencing other faith traditions’ prayer texts and rituals, switching back to praying however I wanted was an unexpectedly dramatic shift. While I didn’t struggle as much as I did my first week of Lent, I was far from perfect. For one, I was indecisive about which tradition to attempt each day.…
The Praying Habit: Jewish Week!
I think I chose to attempt Jewish prayer my last week of this project because I subconsciously hoped it would be the most spiritually rewarding. I should have known better. I’ve found that anticipating or hoping for spiritual fireworks leads to the exact opposite: boredom and sometimes even frustration. So why did I have these…
The Praying Habit: Catholic Week
This was the week I was most looking forward to doing when I made this Lent commitment. Catholicism has been an ongoing presence in my life despite not being raised in the faith myself. Many of my friends and classmates growing up were Catholic—I was extremely jealous of their beautiful First Communion dresses (I got…