Author Archives: Henry Phil

Dangerous Margins

A relatively new show on cable called Portlandia is a sketch comedy series on the Independent Film Channel about “life in hipster enclaves and the self-consciousness that make hipsters desperately disavow the label” (Margaret Talbot, “Stumptown Girl,” The New Yorker, 2/2/2012).

Some Sacred Thread

Do you ever get a phone call during dinner and choose not to answer the phone? Has someone ever come to the door when you’re having sex with your spouse? Has a sick child awoken you from a wonderful dream?

Psalm four begins with a heartfelt plea for God to “answer when I call.” but He doesn’t always answer; why not?

Witness Trees

While visiting Gettysburg on the last day of summer, Labor Day, a few weeks ago, I was struck by a couple of things.

First, Gettysburg has a remarkable cottage industry of ghost stories, ghost tours, and haunted houses. Bet you didn’t know that?

Pain and Poetry

Some people are built to describe things prosaically, others poetically. For the most part, this is a function of our personalities. You know the drill: you’re an engineer, I’m an artist. But when it comes to giving expression to the deepest crevices of suffering and pain in our lives, poetry seems uniquely suited as a medium of expression.

Humility and Hope

The better the story, the more it begs to be told.

Cicero, the ancient Roman philosopher, once said, “If a man ascended to heaven and saw the beautiful nature of the world and the stars, his feeling of wonder, in itself most delightful, would lose its sweetness if he had not someone to whom he could tell it.”