The Nightstand

Between Port Royal and Patagonia

Being wealthy doesn’t make Chouinard a better representative of the values that he shares with Berry, but recognizing that Berry is not alone and that these values can be brought into the wider world, if imperfectly, makes their embrace of limits and simplicity more compelling and their approach to life seem more possible for others.

Wholeness and Gratitude: Working through Scott H. Moore’s How to Burn...

Moore insists that his book about farming is not exclusively about rural places: “the point is not even about farming . . . most of what I’ve said in this book is equally applicable to work in the office, factory, classroom, or home." Moore argues that in each of these locations, the human experience begins and ends with gratitude.

Poems, Essays, Stories, and Songs for a Pandemic

When despair for the world grows in me . . .

The Ordinary Christian Option

Elevated figures in church history have a great deal to teach us, but we should not forget that we can also learn from the early, run-of-the-mill Christians who were as ordinary as we are, yet who, as the collective body of Christ, experienced vibrant faith and incredible growth in an inhospitable environment.

An Artistic Ecosystem: A Review of Makoto Fujimura’s Culture Care

If truth, beauty, and goodness are truly and mystically related, beauty really is dangerous—but only to evil. Reading Culture Care, and contemplating Makoto Fujimura’s art, I can believe it.

Graced Grit: A Hymn-laced Eulogy to True Grit Author Charles Portis

U.S. Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn and Mattie bring a type of vigilante justice to Tom Chaney, and we are glad, but Portis doesn’t allow us to be easy about it. There is always a poison fit for the avenger, even if she is a mere child.

From Decadent to Local

It’s true that we don’t yet have a colony on Mars. But countless people are living very ordinary lives and doing very ordinary things that are true, good, and beautiful.

Christian Ecological Virtues

There is much to admire in Bouma-Prediger’s approach to environmental ethics. If practiced within the context of a robust Christianity, the virtues he recommends would certainly help readers become better stewards of the earth.

Yearning for Eden: Horace and the Romance of Agrarianism

Deep within the Western psyche and tradition is this yearning for return. Horace, more than any other of the grandiose poets of antiquity, captured that call, that cry, for return—a yearning for a restored Eden where the peaceful harmony of life in a garden would be our eternal home.

Power, Friendship, and a Better Set of Democratic “Rules”

For those tired of the fake news and play hate, who are convinced by Austin and their own better natures that accomplishing something better is actually still possible within the American system, Hersh provides a detailed, 21st-century appropriate, set of his own "rules."