welcome . . .
where wisdom gathers, poetry unfolds, and a divine light is sparked…since december of 2006 that’s been the reason for being of pull up a chair. i plucked the name, pull up a chair, because i was intent on this being a place where all are welcome, and wisdom is shared, where we look at the quotidian through the lens of the sacred and often find shimmering light.
i imagined an old maple table, set with mugs waiting to be filled, and plenty of chairs. we’ve filled them gloriously over the years. if you’re new here, welcome. if you’re leaping over to here from where “the chair” used to live, thank you for coming along.
the chair has always been a quiet place, where curiosity is the propellant, and kindness the coin of the realm. i was a staff writer at the chicago tribune back at the chair’s beginning, and i believed then and now that we needn’t look too far beyond our quiet little lives to stumble on big questions and profound moments worth pondering.
over the past two decades, i’ve become more and more of a literary magpie, a ragpicker of ideas, exercising an insatiable quest for gobsmacking beauty and wisdom by plucking poetries and passages so breathtaking you’re stopped in your tracks. it’s an old, old literary habit, tracing as far back as pliny, the great naturalist of first-century rome, and it’s known as the commonplace book, a gathering place for snippets and bits of wonderment, curiosity, and esoterica, and it’s become one of the wonders of my writing life. you’ll find plenty of clippings from my commonplace book here.
these days, too, i write books—six, so far. the newest will be landing in february, 2027. its title is Broken Open: How Our Most Fragile Seasons Invite Us to Extravagant Love (Brazos Press). my first book, Slowing Time: Seeing the Sacred Outside Your Kitchen Door (Abingdon Press) was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the top ten religion books of Fall, 2014. and my 2023 book, The Book of Nature: The Astonishing Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text (Broadleaf Books) has been called “a spiritual classic of the twenty-first century.”
if you’re curious about me, here’s what else i can tell you: i started out as a pediatric oncology nurse at children’s memorial hospital in chicago, and not long after my beloved papa died in 1981, i found my way to northwestern’s medill school of journalism and in the summer of 1982 walked into the chicago tribune’s newsroom and stayed for nearly 30 years. i met my beloved husband there, blair kamin, the pulitzer prize-winning former architecture critic at the tribune. and we have two glorious boys: will, a law professor at the university of notre dame, and teddy, an aspiring journalist, line cook, and the creator of chefs’ tribune, his chronicling of stories from chicago restaurant kitchens.
if you’re inclined to pull up a chair, please subscribe. all here is free for the asking. and you can find twenty years of chair here at the publication archives.
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