Columns
| Something Medieval, Something New
How a Puzzling Medieval Text Taught Me More About God Than Going to Church Ever Did
I tried to put the institution of religion aside to better understand God, but the two were so inextricably linked where I grew up, it felt impossible.
Columns
| Something Medieval, Something New
My Year with Julian of Norwich
In the midst of terrible isolation, reading Julian’s feverish words about her visions helped me feel sane. Here was another woman, enclosed.
Columns
| Something Medieval, Something New
Why Canterbury Tales Is the Ultimate Road Trip Story
How do we pass the time while traveling from Point A to Point B? What stories do we tell one another, and how do those stories connect?
Places
| Migrations
Manhattan’s Vanished Little Syria, and the Work of Preserving My Family’s History
Raji Lian, my great-grandfather, came over from Syria in 1899.
People
| Believers
Freeing Myself from Grad School, I Rediscover Flannery O’Connor and the Medieval Mystics
I try to use my master’s thesis as a way to find myself in women’s writing—the mystics, Flannery—but, ultimately, I fail.