• Poetry

    What the Soul Misses: Andrea Gibson’s “For the Days I Stop Wanting a Body”

    July 23, 2023 - By 

    If you’ve ever been grievously ill or incapacitated and cursed your fate and your body, this poem is for you. If you’ve ever suffered from a chronic disease, this poem is for you. If you’ve ever been near death, or been with a beloved who is, and bounced back, this poem is for you. If you’ve ever waited in vigil and beheld a loved one’s last days and breaths, this poem is for you. If you’ve ever wondered and remained mystified by questions of mind and body, mortality and immortality, earth and the heavens, this poem is for you. And…

  • Film/TV - Religion

    A Pastor Grapples With Faith and the Future: Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed”

    July 16, 2023 - By 

    A young eco-activist confronts the massive evidence of humankind’s abuse of the earth, and he spirals downward in a doom loop of despair. The new life growing in his wife’s belly offers no solace. Quite the contrary—he’s not at all sure he wants to bear the responsibility of subjecting a child to the hellscape he is convinced life on earth is destined to become. He can’t bear the thought, he confides, that his daughter might look accusingly into his eyes 20 years on and ask, “You knew this all along, didn’t you?” His wife suggests counseling with the minister of…

  • General Nonfiction

    Great Art From Bad People: Claire Dederer’s “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma”

    July 9, 2023 - By 

    The theme, rendered in the form of a question, recurs over and over again in the history of the arts: Why are so many creative geniuses such terrible, mean-spirited human beings? Then the second question rising from its wake, forcing a decision by all admirers of any given artist’s work: “Can I still love the art if I come to hate the artist for all his misdeeds?” (I use the masculine pronoun there with purpose, given that most artists whose creations have been admitted to the canon of so-called Great Works over the centuries have been male [and been chosen…

  • Film/TV - History - Religion

    Freedom, Fanaticism, Retrenchment: John Brown and the Southern Baptist Convention

    July 2, 2023 - By 

    Two events drew my attention and stood in severe contrast last week. One was coming across the 2020 Showtime mini-series, “The Good Lord Bird,” about pre-Civil War abolitionist John Brown and his star-crossed effort in 1859 to spark a slave revolt that he convinced himself would spread from Harpers Ferry, Virginia throughout the Southern states and effectively bring an end to slavery in America. The second was news out of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual meeting last week in New Orleans, at which delegates voted on an amendment to the organization’s constitution that would bring it in line with…