The Nightstand 451

With California burning, Antarctica melting, and a death-toll spiraling, we’re left with a looming question: Can a people walking in darkness yet be made to see?

Much of the novel reads like this sentence—the internal struggle of someone who wants—not forgiveness, nor salvation, really, but rather to not need to be forgiven, to not require salvation…

I encourage readers to give Dreher a fair hearing and consider the evidence he offers in support of his arguments. The phenomena he cites are real and disquieting, and he…

Both Prior and Gibbs agree that ultimately virtue orients us toward one end, to “love God and enjoy Him forever.” Loving God is difficult; it too requires our attention in…

At their best, local papers “help provide a common reality and touchstone, a sense of community and of place.”

There are second chances for some of us, but even second chances bring new losses. For me, it is the grace and hope of these stories and others like them…

One need not be a Nietzschean to recognize that something is rotten in the states of America and in the West more broadly. It was Nietzsche’s view that the civilization…

Alan Jacobs is right that if we would receive a blessing from the dead, we will have to wrestle with them.

The lens through which Eric O. Jacobsen views the three pieces of glass that serve as the basis of his book—the windshield, TVs, and phones—is in need of a good…

One of the spiritual dangers of Trump is that he can come to be seen as the only danger. Such “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic then…

Those who do know her work might be a bit surprised if I suggest that Le Guin has a real porcher sensibility.

Bromfield, like many farmers interested in sustainability, did not desire mere primitivism in cultivation, but a more intelligent way of farming that did not degrade the resources the farm depends…

In some ways Good Husbandry stands as a kind of bildungsroman for Essex Farm and, by extension, the support-your-local-farmer movement.

Tempe, AZ. “Why do soldiers miss war?” This is the provocative question at the heart of Scott Beauchamp’s essay collection Did You Kill Anyone?: Reunderstanding My Military Experience as a…

In our current moment of social media activism, we must ask ourselves what kind of learning, real learning—the kind that involves your body and takes root in your soul—can take…

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,…

What Sanders offers might be called the imagination of hope—a means of acting to stem disaster.

Houellebecq describe those aspects of our world that swarm us now, beleaguer us, pen us in. They are the products of a world suffused with technology, and of the attendant…

Evans, GA. Christian authors have been proclaiming the death of Christendom since at least 1989, when Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon made such an announcement in Resident Aliens. Thirty…

What strikes me overall about The Slumbering Host is the open-heartedness, hopefulness, and steadfastness of the editors’ approach and selection. This is a collection that is true to itself and…

When institutions can’t serve their social function, our social problems are harder to address. And a society that cannot adequately respond to its problems is not a society that is…

Jane Kenyon was foremost a poet of place. Not of the State of New Hampshire, though she was its Poet Laureate, but of the much smaller and less abstract corner…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Recently, Tablet Magazine published a lengthy essay by Eric Kaufmann, heralding the revival of "left-conservative" thinking, which the author defined as "a conservative view on…

As Sarah Orne Jewett knew, "everyday tasks” and the celebrations they engender are the condition upon which many other arts rest, including poetry.