Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm was published in 1977 – the year of my birth. Twenty years later, I wrote a paper on it for

Part of me believes we’re all doing the best we can. But there’s another part of me that feels deeply unsatisfied with this sentiment.

I found value in the kept-things. I also found value in the empty space left behind by the things I let go of.

Brené Brown sometimes defines humility with this sentence: I’m not here to be right, I’m here to get it right.

Through making this map, I wanted to surface the things I currently find to be most true in my relationship to God.

I share this story because in it, I experienced something true.

In our grief we become cartographers, locating our dead beloveds – however mysteriously – on a map.

What if our varying experiences of grief are not progressive points along a line of time but places to which we travel and in which

There are many kinds of darkness, aren’t there? And still yet, many more ways of experiencing and perceiving the different kinds of darkness.