Sterling, KS. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), the humans believe in science. The titular character, however, believes in the Sun. Klara is a solar-powered robot whose purpose is to be an Artificial Friend (AF) to a teenager, and as she waits anxiously … | Continue reading
“My Pandemic Book Club Changed the Way I Think about Literature — and Community.” Christopher Frizzelle writes about the goods that came from a Zoom-based book group he’s been leading. I tend to see such digitally-mediated communities as “tinned fruit” goods, but his description … | Continue reading
It’s hard to escape from beauty if you’re ready to observe the biotic activity and geologic history of the world. Beauty is essential, and I’m saying that, even with the desecration of the ecosphere going on right now, it’s still there. | Continue reading
A final benefit of the liturgical lifestyle is its uniting force. Liturgical and sanctoral calendars vary among Christian confessions, echoing more divisive pieties and doctrines. But when the things Christians have in common include commoner things—walks and bonfires, buns and r … | Continue reading
Fran Liebowitz suggests that “a book isn’t supposed to be a mirror, it’s supposed to be a door.” Universities are the same. They are not meant to simply reflect the times and trends. They are intended to open doors to existing knowledge and doors to a reimagined future. | Continue reading
“I Practise Philosophy as Art.” Gesine Borcherdt talks with philosopher Byung-Chul Han about his recent book: “I think trust is a social practice, and today it is being replaced by transparency and information. Trust enables us to build positive relationships with others, despite … | Continue reading
The only thing that can save the world from a lost Christianity is a Cross-centered Christianity. Can Christians take the truths from both Life Is A Miracle and Sophia In Exile to not only reclaim our farms and our science, but to soften our hardened hearts towards the real, livi … | Continue reading
In the balance, Hayhoe’s book makes a positive contribution to the climate conversation. The book encourages dialogue rather than hectoring. In that sense, though the targeted topic is climate change, Hayhoe’s advice is good for any sort of persuasive argument. | Continue reading
Frank Mulder is preaching the same Gospel. Pictures of Frank Mulder make him look like he could be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, on a bicycle, planting sycamores instead of apple trees, helping people, one by one, break free from the threefold madness of money, planning, and cro … | Continue reading
“Fare Forward Interview with Jack Shoemaker.” I somehow missed this fascinating conversation between Fare Forward and Jack Shoemaker that came out this past summer. They discuss correspondence and literary friendships, and Shoemaker talks a bit about Berry’s new book: “Wendell an … | Continue reading
My least-favorite bumper sticker of all time reads, "If you're not outraged you're not paying attention." As a remedy for this sort of dopamine-fueled attitude, the author suggests that we refuse to bow to the media outrage machine. | Continue reading
Here are three novels about three places in the world. Each conveys not just a perfunctory setting but a web of topography, livelihoods, pastimes, and lore. And in each the experience of arriving at that place endures in memory and self-understanding. | Continue reading
Holding up a sign, sitting at a lunch counter, sticking a flower in a gun, setting up a tent, and occupying a space in the face state and corporate power is an act of utopian belief and faith. A belief, to go back to Berry's insight above, that something may not be--and should no … | Continue reading
Belfast is a lovely movie for remembering the power that places have in defining who we are and the beauty of belonging well, even to a broken place. | Continue reading
Van Rys hopes readers are shaped by his tales of domestic comedy to see that love for the long haul, difficult as it is, is not only possible but greatly to be desired; to see that through our weakness and brokenness a certain glory shines. | Continue reading
Dunstan Thompson's poetic prayer reminds me how necessary Advent is and leaves me grateful for Christ’s work that makes his former foes members of his household. | Continue reading
This is poetry that focuses its readers on the true, good, and beautiful. Here, we are reminded that Christ took on flesh like ours, that he was born as we are, that he died as we will. | Continue reading
Perhaps activism needs such determined gentleness, illustrated in the pro-life students’ hours of prayer and the work of adoption agencies like my grandmother’s. Activism must be framed by an understanding of common grace, shared depravity, and our implications with each other: o … | Continue reading
There aren’t easy answers to the problems fracking creates, and, like many industries, fracking generates losers and winners. But by spending time up close with the issues, Jerolmack models a good approach to complex problems. | Continue reading
Life is ambiguous, murky, rife with situations that elude dogma’s capture. When the seas get rough, however, our tolerance of this is one of the first things hucked overboard. For example: have we felt into what it’s like to be a five-year-old walking into school in the morning? | Continue reading
If you do follow Woodlief's advice, you'll need a thick skin and a dogged commitment to first principles. Self-government takes time and effort, and too many people really do want to leave the driving to the experts. | Continue reading
Examining, with Paul Kemeny, Richard Gamble, and Ben Faber, fraught moments in history where questions about communication and censorship, politics and propaganda, freedom and government intervention came to a head. What might we learn from such moments? | Continue reading
Immortality might not last forever. But I contend that Ed will—through his words and through the lives of those he touched with his generosity and his grace. All of which leads, to a simple blessing, a benediction. “Oh, wow.” | Continue reading
Neither Columbiana nor Sewickley perfectly realize the role of Cram’s ideal walled town, but Sewickley comes much closer. While not perfect, it offers a real-world example of an economically vibrant, urban community. | Continue reading
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Advent, which is also the start of the Christian year. I’m taking the month off from compiling these Water Dippers as I’ll be spending more time offline reading old stuff. Look for these to resume after Christmas. “Why I Am Fleeing to the Hills.” A … | Continue reading
The imagined student’s intentions are honorable: to promote racial justice. But when the conversation begins, she has already set herself against the teacher and the course. The task of the teacher is to encourage her pursuit of justice while showing that the Great Books are not … | Continue reading
John Kennedy Toole denies Ignatius such a happy ending, subverting the traditional redemption narrative. In so doing, he arguably gives us a better portrait of what life actually tends to be like. | Continue reading
Michael J. Astrue has earned degrees from Yale and Harvard. He had a long and distinguished legal career and held several government positions as well as leadership posts in biotech companies. From 2007-2013, he served as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. A … | Continue reading
Is there an alternative to the Ted Lasso cynicism-versus-optimism dichotomy, an alternative that recognizes human limitations but nonetheless offers hope? I might start with becoming attentive enough to our ignorance, and expectant enough of our own mistakes that we not overshoot … | Continue reading
“George MacDonald: a Life of Relationships.” Radix Magazine interviewed Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson about George MacDonald and what lessons he might have for us today. MacDonald and his circle “intentionally sought relationship with those around them even, perhaps especially, if they … | Continue reading
I had seen the worst of America: the brittle surface of “good design” shattered by rage, and the reverse snobbery of the rest of America. Still, I wasn’t about to permit myself a trip like this, with such visual and emotional assault, without some kind of further insurance. | Continue reading
As we come to the supper table to feast upon pheasant breast or the backstrap of a whitetail deer, we gain an inkling of that invitation to the true Table of Hospitality, where the Lord looks upon us lovingly despite our attack upon him. | Continue reading
I didn’t intend to welcome two children into an era marked by so much bleakness and turmoil. With James’s help, I’ve remembered that there is no project more local, no gift more world-changing, than the calling of parenthood. | Continue reading
“In Memoriam: Gerald Russello.” Susannah Black remembers the life of a fine man who, among other things, served as the editor of the University Bookman: “He was convinced that this writing and reading and talking and arguing and institution-building and movement-making, and these … | Continue reading
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get close to the woods, get close to God, get close to real community. All of the small, old things. Build networks of grounde … | Continue reading
Catullus is not a saint. He is not a moral poet. But his crudity and madness still dance with the shadows of truth and echo with the cry of the human heart. | Continue reading
Alan Noble is author of the new book You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World from IVP. Dr. Noble is a professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and a founder of Christ and Pop Culture. Cultural Debris Patreon – Support the podcast! You Are Not Your Ow … | Continue reading
What makes Blythe a joy to read is this rare combination of literary erudition, keen observation of both men and nature, and a reserved, peaceful piety. What is immediately apparent and most appealing about his work is his obvious care for everything he writes about. | Continue reading
“We are What we Eat.” Aruna Uprety describes the deleterious effects of advertising and packaged food on the health of children in rural Nepal: “The traditional practice of growing and consuming locally grown lentils, soybean, millet and buckwheat is being replaced even in the re … | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
The tragedy of the hold Hoover’s rugged individualism continues to have on the American psyche in our increasingly atomized age is that his formulation risks presenting a false dichotomy between state control over an increasingly large swath of our lives on the one hand and socie … | Continue reading
Host: John Murdock Guest: Will Hoyt Will Hoyt, author of The Seven Ranges, discusses his journey along the Ohio River into the physical, historical and philosophical interior of the strip-mined region where he lives. In the book, Hoyt transforms the area’s colorful past into a … | Continue reading
Thinking as a practice places a check upon the self. It offers us a way out of our "res idiotica." If our universities are faithful to their missions, they must foster conditions where truth is free to be heard and sought. | Continue reading
“I Tried to Prove that Small Family Farms are the Future. I Couldn’t Do It.” Sarah Mock published a long, thoughtful examination of the viability of the small, family farmer (thanks to Russell Fox for drawing my attention to it). It’s a sobering essay and worth reading carefully. … | Continue reading
Valetudinarianism connects arguments about the pandemic and the climate, with, on the one side, a distrust of experts and politicians, and, on the other, the belief that science (however defined) is paramount and must dictate, not simply advise, policy. | Continue reading
Michael Knowles: “Free speech cannot be an open plain; nor can it be a jungle; it must be a delicately manicured garden." | Continue reading
My guest is Professor Todd Hartch of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond. A specialist in the history of religion, particularly Latin American religion, Todd has written a new book A Time to Build Anew: How to Find the True, Good, and the Beautiful in America. You’ll enjoy ou … | Continue reading
“Growing things are good” isn’t a sufficiently coherent claim for a book. While the questions and problems that Andrew Peterson raises in The God of the Garden are thorny and complex, his ideas deserve greater development. | Continue reading