What Should I Do with My Life?

What Should I Do with My Life?

“What are you going to do with your life?” can be a terrifying question. One summer, while giving retreats on Ignatian spirituality, the most popular talk we gave was on Ignatius’s “Rules for Discernment.”1 It indicated that most of us are hungry for guidance. I was...
Imaginary Friend Jesus

Imaginary Friend Jesus

  I had been talking around it for weeks.  My spiritual director, on the other hand, was ready to get to the point. “It sounds like you just really want her,” he said. His voice lingered on the words really and want to make it clear that he was...
Who Killed Amy Winehouse?

Who Killed Amy Winehouse?

  There are some music albums that become the soundtracks for particular moments in our lives. You know the kind I mean: the ones where simply hearing one of its songs – even years later – transports you instantaneously to a particular moment in the past. Amy...
TJP Reads: The New Jim Crow

TJP Reads: The New Jim Crow

During my years in Chicago, I was a volunteer at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.  It is a place where people, mostly young African-American males under the age of 18, are awaiting trial. My goal was to offer aid to these individuals, as well as to...
TJP Reads: American Psycho and Anna Karenina

TJP Reads: American Psycho and Anna Karenina

I… Just… Want… To… Be… Loved… I’ve spent this summer reading two emotionally-draining novels: American Psycho and Anna Karenina. The first is a disturbing excoriation of 1980s yuppie values that is a paragon of postmodern stream of consciousness storytelling and...
Our Claim: What We Need And Want

Our Claim: What We Need And Want

“But how do you know I’m forgiven?”, he said, blinking away tears, his head hanging, not wholly convinced. Or rather trying to refute my insistence of mercy, not wanting to claim something false or unorthodox. I was a Jesuit, he reminded me, and that, in his mind, was...