place 206

Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.

Those of us committed to the Midwest and its literature can and should mourn the damages done to our region by our habits of transience. But we must also recognize,…

At the heart of Gracy Olmstead's book is the conviction that roots do not just serve the individual person or plant—they also are vital to the health of one’s soil,…

I have spent considerable time in ravines, drawn to them by an appetite for domestic exploration: though they worry me, I have also been drawn to them; I traverse the…

Even in the midst of this sad era of cold, objective ambition, the possibility of grateful participation in the cosmic life of creation remains for each of us.

We need to reject the myth of Progress that discourages us from ever being settled and content.

Training for a triathlon roots you to the environment, economics, and people of a particular place.

Anyone who seeks to live with integrity in a place ought to seek to know it deeply, yet such knowledge carries with it the risk of disillusionment. It is hard,…

Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio on place, the evangelical mind, and classical music.

If a human timescale—privileging our experience and our hopes—is insufficient to understand the forest, then maybe we will be provoked to reconsider both the human and forestal timescale.

Cultivate. Give order. Name. Attend. Reveal. Craft a parable. Homestead. Welcome. In Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life (IVP Academic, 2018), Jennifer Allen Craft offers these paradigms and…

In his 2017 book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, British commentator David Goodhart seeks to understand the recent populist moments that have shaped the…

Review of “The Power of Place: KU Alumni Artists” at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, KS. The exhibit runs through June 30, 2019. There is a line in…

I remember being held. I remember, though it was the desert, being cold. I remember the feathers of a headdress, coming up like the sun from behind red boulder. My…

Some months ago I stood in a basement bookstore in suburban Maryland and pondered a relic of the 1960s, an artifact of dubious worth to the casual observer which had…

John Gatta is the William B. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Sewanee: The University of the South. He’s the author of several excellent books, including Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion,…

One of my heroes of the faith is dead. Eugene Peterson experienced death, but certainly not its sting, as he uttered his final words, “Let’s go,” on Monday, October 22.…

What you miss out on by not making the climb is too great a loss on such a morning as this.

The first time you read the novels of Thomas Hardy–especially if you read them as a young adult–you’re likely to get a pretty forceful impression. With the story-telling powers of…

When I moved to Poland it was the first time I had left Britain. I have lived in the same town for four years and a month. Tarnowskie Góry is…

I’m honored and excited to be joining the Front Porch Republic in a more official capacity and taking over the editorial duties for this site. When I stumbled across FPR…

“Bawk-bawk be-gehk!” she cries, and I know just where she’s coming from.

Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.

Earlier this year, after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, I reflected on the conversations that may or may not ensue from the changing of a facebook profile picture.  As my facebook…