Maura Ives: How an American magazine helped launch one of Britain’s favorite Christmas carols
Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ didn’t begin life as a song, but being set to music helped it find fame.
Kelly Denton-Borhaug: The Intolerable Price You Pay
More than 17 of you veterans take your own lives every day. And you live with all of this, while so much of the rest of the nation fails to muster the will to see you, hear you, or face honestly the American addiction to war.
Judith Baumel: The Last Judgment in which Enrico Scrovegni is Seen Presenting a Model of His Chapel to the Blessed Mother
Like a litter of mice born bare and squirming
the resurrected emerge from the cracked ground,
their bodies so very pale and hairless
so small and scrawny, stunned and scrambling
to comport themselves.
Video: Indigenous Elders Predicted Climate Crisis. Will Native Voices Finally Be Heard?
Indigenous communities are among the most vulnerable to climate change, yet they still struggle to be heard by governments around the world. Their spiritual teachings might help civilization to change course and prevent disaster.
Michael Simms: Elderberry Magic
In the Native American tradition, the elder is sacred. The soft whistling song I often hear in the branches has been heard by others as well. Elder’s long association with wind instruments suggests that the magical sound comes not from the wind but rather from the tree itself, as well as any instruments carved from elder branches.
Anne C. Fowler: Talking with the Other
The opportunity to spend vast expanses of time talking with people with whom you strongly disagree, about the very issue you disagree on, is an unusual privilege, I would even say, a luxury.
Doug Anderson: Be Whole Again Beyond Confusion
The young blame us for everything that is wrong
with the world, as if we’d plotted it that way
just to torment them, as if poisoned
the very land we’re standing on. Some of us did.
Charles Davidson: Sea Saga
Shipmates, friends, and family affectionately called him “Captain.” Throughout his long years in the merchant marine, and until his dying day at the age of seventy-five, Thomas Cromwell spun many a captivating yarn, enthralling the hearts of young and old alike.
Video: Truth | Kamasi Washington
Directed by AG Rojas, the music video features a series of scenes that appear to have one foot rooted in everyday life, and another reaching for something beyond it.
Terry Blackhawk: My Father Goes to Sunday School
What are you doing here?
an elder asked, a deacon perhaps, or prayer leader.
Kenyatta R. Gilbert: John Lewis and the masks Black preachers wear on the public stage
Preaching, in their understanding, tells the truth about suffering in the contexts of fear and death. Ultimately it declares that evil and despair have an appointed end. Because of this, as John Lewis said in his posthumously publishe op-ed: “Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up, and speak out.”
Martin Edmunds: Personal Mythology
You’re Adam. She’s Eve.
You fuck up: cannot conceive
Yahweh’s anger.
John O’Donohue: Beannacht
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
Jericho Brown: Nativity
Come trouble’s birthday,
I think of every gift people get
They don’t use. Oh, and I
Pray.
Vox Populi 