Jeff Munroe

I might be mistaken, but I believe I am the only member of The Twelve who regularly asks people for money. I’ve learned asking isn’t begging and giving brings joy. Asking and giving aren’t necessary evils but wonderful parts of…

Did you know Sylvester Stallone wanted to use the Queen song, “Another One Bites the Dust” as the theme for Rocky III? Queen wouldn’t give permission, so Stallone went with “Eye of the Tiger,” which kick-started that song on its…

Last June, I presented a seminar on Frederick Buechner at a writing conference. One of the attendees happened to be the head of a publishing house. One thing led to another, and by the fall I was under contract to…

Please indulge me and accept yet another, “What I did on my summer vacation” post. Since today is Labor Day, it’s the end of summer and really the last chance to post something like this, and I have a story…

In Sarah Arthur’s new book A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L’Engle, she tells of a frequent interaction L’Engle’s daughter Josephine had with fans who had read L’Engle’s memoirs and felt they knew her family well. “You…

Cogito ergo sum, Descartes famously said, but sometimes I think recordor ergo sum might be more accurate. “I remember, therefore I am.” I have a sense that everything–every person, place, event, moment–is locked in our brains somewhere, whether we are…

By Jeff Munroe Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, 2006-2015 Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, was troubled about a decade ago by the admission of then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he didn’t read much. (Sound familiar?)…

By Jeff Munroe “Why write a poem at a time like this?” a poet friend asks, and if you are like me, you intuitively feel the answer but cannot always articulate it. Makoto Fujimura’s new book Culture Care: Reconnecting with…

by Jeff Munroe We want a motive, because we want the senseless shooting in Las Vegas last week to make sense. We want there to be some reason, however perverse, that those innocent people were massacred. But there isn’t a…

by Jeff Munroe Brian Doyle had me at The whole weasel question. (As opposed to “You had me at hello.”) I was undone by the powerhouse poem, which ends with his dying brother asking, “And what was it you did…