The Nightstand 451

If the sky clears above us, we won’t suddenly find ourselves saints. But at least, perhaps, we’ll be able to see the stars.

Without God, a spiraling fertility rate seems certain. But on spiritual grounds, there’s always room for hope and renewal. When the seed is sown on the good soil, it bears…

It’s ironic that this whole Impossible Question — whether to have children in this age of climate change — springs from the same mentality underpinning the forces tearing the world…

But even a novice like me—hobbled by an ignorance of veterinarian science and perennially pulled toward too many projects—found the book interesting and useful.

...the real artist, for both O’Connor and Ference, is one who sees and expresses gratitude for what is already there, and deals with it in such a way as to…

We cannot give into the temptation of thinking that our times are so different that basic civility must be cast aside. Once we have done that, we are lost.

Plant biology seems to be revolutionizing our understanding of what a plant is and can be. This is a gift that may help us grow in wisdom, in reverence, and…

To counter dogmatic worldviews, we should read prudently and widely across time periods and cultures and not avoid difficult content because of fear.

But I reckon that eÞanðun can mix with Beowulf and Paradise Lost and not feel out of place.

I found it to be profound and moving, the work of an author who is not lost in flights of fancy but who is deeply receptive to the world and…

I suppose when it comes to discussions of the English language, I prefer sterner stuff.

There ought not be unnecessary opposition between Indigenous and Christian perspectives. The creative work of caring for our ecology is hard enough; let us not also misunderstand one another.

This driving principle of love and human flourishing, rooted in the Christian understanding of humanity being made in the image of God, has spurred the great social and political reform…

Only in Israel, I think in retrospect, would twelve-year-olds be this intimately familiar with the history of the Holocaust, the violence and suffering of oppression in the Warsaw Ghetto, and…

Do we love the soil and the creatures put in our stead, or do we prefer the images our devices project at us? While the choice is not always so…

Eloquent and nuanced, never pompous, The Rector’s Daughter sets before us the inexhaustible mystery of persons and the ways they manage to live together.

Rosen contends that we have lost touch with a classical understanding of happiness, in part because of a shift of cultural emphasis from “being good to feeling good.” Fortunately, social…

Kennard himself, though worrying about his legacy during his last illness, seemed remarkably free of bitterness. Concerning a prison guard who had abused him, he thought that the abuse had…

That’s the great cultural task now: to relearn this old language, to keep it from dying out, to nurture it and refine and expand it, to develop new idioms and…

Disagreements aside, however, Byung-Chul's argument remains a valuable one: the cultures of consumption that rule the modern world are death to the cultures of community that give life meaning.

Seen through his most redemptive lens, Bjartur stands as a cautionary tale for those who would pursue independence as an end in itself.

When we refuse to engage our fellow citizens, we are also taking a public position. There is such a thing as non-partisan economics. But there is no such thing as…

This is the story of a bruised soul touched by grace but still frustrated by the passivity that others continue to show in response to the unspeakable.

After a pandemic took his son, the Bard would never be the same