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Articles 355

The Final Prayer of Jim Barry  

—it took 40 years for me to begin to realize these words Jim silently put into my hands on that last day of class were a prayer.

Remembering Family History: A Mess, a Murderer, and a Matriarch

Knowing your family’s past fugitives and pretty boys is the kind of localism anyone can aspire toward and practice.

Great Balls of Fire

With a clear sky above us, no one restricting our movements, we learned—sometimes flailingly, like chickens with our heads cut off—how to marvel.

A SNOOT’s Dream Deferred: A Review of Dictionary of Fine Distinctions

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

A Garden of Children

If you understand that a child’s growth comes from a spark within, just as does the growth of a flower, a crystal, or a mighty oak, you might take a…

Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Review

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.

The AI Mousetrap

AI promises free cheese, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Although we often boast about AI’s ability to create, we should instead focus the conversation on…
June 28, 2024

Fatty Bolger, a Local Hero

Perhaps Pippin is right, but none of the friends call Fredegar Fatty anymore, and those chaps know something about heroics.

Beyond the Scoreboard

Here, on a little patch of field in a North Texas suburb, I found life being played out in simple but significant ways.

Emerson’s Grief

Wallie is gone; no visible scar remains. Mourning provides no lesson, no answers, no closure. The poet is not decrying grief for its lack of utility.

Sore Mouth Pond

In this way, “idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; quite the contrary, it is a truly divine way of life so long as one is…

The Census Taker In a Church Pew, Part 5

Her heart is for those little ones, that they might come to know The One who became a child for our salvation and for the glory of God.
June 20, 2024

Against the Florida-fication of the World

And this progression from the raw, unabated natural Florida to the ever-more artificial Florida, has grave consequences for both the geographical locale and the people who inhabit it.
June 19, 2024

Don’t Bite the Hand That Taketh Away

God is perverted in our minds from a giver into an imminent enemy. He becomes the all-knowing one who alone reads our hearts’ desires and who alone, in His power,…

Speaking Responsibly about Religion and Politics: A Review of Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism?

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…

A Son’s Journey to His Father

Men often reflect on their relationship with their fathers during these coincidences of milestones; a similar thing often happens when a son reaches the age his father was when the…

Lincoln’s Grief  

The healthy sorrow of our most melancholy president

The False Promise of 3D Printers

As is clear to see, Business Insider's portrayal of 3D printing as a panacea for America's housing crisis falls short upon closer examination.

Scenes From a Stolen Childhood: A Review of Kinderszenen

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…

Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s Georgic Mode

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…

One Hundred Years of Obscurity

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.

Pentecost and AI: Being Human in a World of Disabling Algorithms

Rather than empowering us to live in humble confidence in relationship with others and our maker, AI offers us a choice similar to that which confronted Esau.
June 5, 2024

“An Indissoluble Union Between Virtue and Happiness”: A Review of The Pursuit of Happiness

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…

98.6 Percent of Us Sense our Dead

We’re not crazy — and we’re not alone
June 3, 2024