The Commons

Public reflection, unhurried.

Chronological. No algorithm. No trending. Read slowly.

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The Examen, as I actually do it

Ignatian prayer has a 500-year-old practice called the Examen. I was taught it at twenty-three and spent two decades doing it wrong — which is to say, doing it as an itemized audit of my sins. Here is how I do it now, b...

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Letters I never send

Once a month, on the new moon — which I did not learn from my tradition, and which I still feel a little silly doing — I write a letter to someone who hurt me in the old house. I write the whole thing. Everything. Then...

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