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Decades of sorrow and searching for clinical evidence have strengthened his resolve, tempered now by experiences that add up to more than disparate bits of empirical data.

My addiction, rather, is of a more respectable variety.

Like the very young and the very old among us, we must forget the learned delusion of independence that revolution prefers and accept the radical dependence of the human condition.

Her work is certainly redolent of sorrow and, as she describes it, the eternity that dwells within her. But her words also carry hope and surprising faith that she will…

Williams reminds us of a lesson that we should have already learned good and hard, namely that rejection of Christianity does not result in blissful liberation and self-expression.

Zoning laws, housing codes, and a culture marked by suspicion and antisociality make it difficult to revive the boarding house, a living arrangement that once applied to nearly half of…

A machine can read books out loud to the baby. A machine can rock the baby to sleep. Smart devices and apps can do these and many other things. But…

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…

In expressing his love through epistolary lament, it may be that Freud discovered the precise meaning he felt he had lost.

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…

Perhaps in the coming decades we shall have, so to speak, not a straightforward demographic slope downward, but more of a dip and a levelling off in the next century.

Behind this type of play, though, is a genuine longing for beauty—a desire not only to appreciate the beautiful things one has seen or read or heard, but also to…

Yet at times, if only for a moment, I feel the shadow over my days is transformed into pure spirit. Such thoughts give me a surprising sense of quiet joy.

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

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.

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

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.

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…

The healthy sorrow of our most melancholy president

And so the shotgun sits in our home like a quiet benediction. It dreams—as I do—of long walks in the valleys of my youth and whispers of future pastures that…

Our mothers and our children will always be part of our lives, in life and death. Surprisingly, grief does not dominate our existence, it informs it.

Reading for the shape of a life can be medicinal, especially when we allow that life to diagnose and heal ourselves. And maybe then that understanding can encourage doctors of…

What We Can Learn from a Society Where Community Still Matters

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.