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Nov 4, 2024 | 
cincinnati.com | Jen Pollock Michel
When our ESOL students line up for class outside the doors of the Metanoia Center in Lockland, they crowd around the registration table. The process is sluggish and slow, as teachers match nametag to newcomer. On the day a longer-term Lockland resident arrives with a gun, complaining that the line is crowding the sidewalk, our Mauritanian friends remain largely unaware.
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Oct 6, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Michael Reneau |David Wolpe |Jonah Goldberg |Jen Pollock Michel
Last week marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, the first of Judaism’s high holy days, with Yom Kippur coming this week. But Monday marks the anniversary of a tragedy: Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel last October 7. We often take time to remember such tragedies years, decades, and even centuries after they occurred. In this week’s Dispatch Faith, Rabbi David Wolpe explains why remembering such tragedies is integral to the Jewish faith.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Charles Hilu |Michael Reneau |Jen Pollock Michel
At the beginning of every month, a different Dispatch staffer fields questions from members and compiles his or her answers in a mailbag a few weeks later. This month, it was Dispatch Politics reporter Charles Hilu’s turn. To ensure you’re able to submit questions for October’s mailbag, click below to become a full Dispatch member. What’s up, Dispatchers! Thank you for submitting your questions for this month’s Mailbag.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
thedispatch.com | Michael Reneau |Jen Pollock Michel |Mark Tooley |Luis Parrales
The greatest civic good a believer can offer might not be her vote. By and Published September 29, 2024 Hello and happy Sunday. As Hurricane Helene and its remnants made their way into Florida and through the South, my neck of the woods in East Tennessee is hurting (as are nearby places like Boone and Asheville, North Carolina).
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Aug 3, 2024 | 
commongoodmag.com | Jen Pollock Michel
I arrive at my friend's house just after sunrise. She's left a blue Dutch oven on the table in her carport. I lift the lid - and steam escapes; the scones are still warm. My friend has invited me to pray here, in her garden, because this is the ground she began tending when the world split at the seams. A single Job-like weekend left her bereft, and the aftershocks of grief were noisy atThe rest is in the pages of Common Good.
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Feb 15, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Jen Pollock Michel |Alex Mark |Andrew Wilson |Derek Rishmawy
When Virginia Woolf delivered a series of lectures at Cambridge in 1928—lectures later published as A Room of One’s Own—her subject was women and fiction. “A woman,” she argued, “must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.” Women needed at least 500 pounds a year to permit them experience beyond the confines of cramped domestic life. They also needed space more private than Jane Austen’s sitting room, where she wrote most of her novels.
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Oct 30, 2023 | 
jenpollockmichel.substack.com | Jen Pollock Michel
Before I tell you about what I’ve been learning and reading this month, I have a few housekeeping notes:You are receiving this end-of-the-month learning letter from my Substack, which I’ve recently renamed A Habit Called Faith. (Yes, that’s the name of one of my books, too.) If you’re not familiar with Substack, you should definitely poke around and see some of the substantive writing that’s happening in this space.
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Sep 2, 2023 | -getting-things-done&sz=64)
faithtoday.ca | Jen Pollock Michel
The pandemic taught me a new measure of time, writes Jen Pollock Michel
→en français
Every Christmas Eve my children look forward to my purple plum torte. Along with roasted turkey and Walter C. Scott’s A Christmas Carol, the simple yellow cake crowned with plums and sprinkled in cinnamon sugar is tradition. Every year the challenge remains the same – in December plums are not grown in northern climes.
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Jul 14, 2023 | 
christianitytoday.com | Jen Pollock Michel
Our church's lament service took place in March; we had moved to Cincinnati the previous summer. I didn't attend the service with my own sadness in mind-but it found me, in the dark and somber silence consecrated for those who showed up. The grief of our recent uprooting caught up with me in the pew that late winter night. Leaving home, even voluntarily, incurs a litany of losses.
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May 11, 2023 | 
christianitytoday.com | Jen Pollock Michel
So, let's get this straight. You two were the mistakes?" My twin sons looked quizzically at their high school teacher, who was joking good-naturedly. He explained that he, too, was a caboose child, born years after his older siblings. "Did your parents give you the talk yet, about how a surprise is different from a mistake?"Sixteen years ago, our three children were all nearly school-age, and I was planning a return to graduate school. We gave away the crib, the car seat, and the baby gear.
