By Phoebe Farag Mikhail Toy catalogues rarely make it into my house. I intercept them at the mailbox and promptly recycle them before my children know they exist. Catalogues are kindling to the fire of consumerism, one that has overtaken... Read More

By Phoebe Farag Mikhail If you’re an email newsletter subscriber, you’ve already gotten a sneak peak at some of the books on my annual Lent reading list when I sent it out on Ash Wednesday a few weeks ago. Want... Read More

by Phoebe Farag Mikhail Forgiveness, reconciliation and love are the features of three books I’ve read this year: The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs by Martin Mosebach, From Read Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and... Read More

by Phoebe Farag Mikhail Today might be St. Valentine’s Day (or another saint, depending on your liturgical calendar–in the Coptic Orthodox Church it is St. Febrianus Day), but if you know anything about love, you know that it is not... Read More

By Phoebe Farag Mikhail Art. Intrigue. War. An underground trade on the black market. Spies. Police. Politics. Religion. Family. Love. All of these can be found in Tasoula Hadjitofi’s memoir, The Icon Hunter: A Refugee’s Quest to Reclaim Her Nation’s... Read More

By Phoebe Farag Mikhail A few weeks ago my nine-year old son tripped and fell at school, cutting a hole in his favorite pair of russet red cargo pants – a pair I had just recently purchased for him. He... Read More

by Phoebe Farag Mikhail A board member stepped down. Another volunteer quit. Why? Someone misspelled the name of my town in the newspaper ad for our first ever town-wide garage sale. They didn’t quit their roles in the town community... Read More

by Phoebe Farag Mikhail I am thrilled to announce that Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church will be published by Paraclete Press, God willing, in early 2019! I have been working on... Read More

By Phoebe Farag Mikhail I just finished Anne Bogel’s new book, I’d Rather Be Reading, and I just loved it. It’s a book you can savor for a few days, or read in a couple of hours. And even though... Read More

By Phoebe Farag Mikhail In the span of two weeks, two women I love and admire passed away. Both were older–great-grandmothers—and both had fallen ill in the months before their deaths, so they weren’t surprises. But these were women that... Read More