I didn’t know how unprepared for motherhood I was. The nine months spent waiting for my first baby were so magical that it never occurred to me that the business of raising children would be so uprooting.
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The Pascal Homily of St. John Chrysostom
c. 400 A.D. Are there any who are devout lovers of God?Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival! Are there any who are grateful servants?Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!Are there any weary with fasting?Let them now receive their wages! If any have toiled from the first hour,let them receive their due reward;If any have come after the third hour,let him with gratitude join in the Feast!And he that arrived after the sixth hour,let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.And if any delayed until the ninth hour,let him not hesitate; but let him come too.And he who arrived only at the…
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Three Poems
⎺ Original Poetry from Dietrich Balsbaugh
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Ducks, Rails, and the Great Identity Crisis: A Quick Take on Waterfowl Confusion
I eventually discovered that coots aren’t ducks at all. They just blend in the way a toupee blends in—convincing from a distance, questionable up close. Ducks belong to the Anatidae family, while coots are in the Rallidae family, which means they are technically rails. In a genealogical sense, they’re more closely related to cranes than to mallards. But try telling that to a coot surrounded by actual ducks.
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Tilting Time and Shifting Space: Learning from JoAnn Verburg
Finally, after a month of working with TTArtisan 50mm 1.4, I was able to take it on a trip to New York City. While there, I wanted to give this way of seeing the world the ultimate test. Could I use these tools to explore and communicate a new experience of what it means to be human?
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“Trajectory”
⎺ Original Poetry from J.D. Smith
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On Changing Lifespans and Hobnobbing with Poets
Articles of note from the world wide web.
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Reckless Hope
Too often, people try to reduce Revelation to a riddle to be solved, as though the beasts and bowls, trumpets and thrones could be decoded into a neat timeline. To be sure, apocalyptic language has a logic to it—a symbolic grammar that can and should be studied, much like one might analyze poetry or music. Understanding the meaning of those symbols is part of engaging the text; in some ways, Revelation is like a puzzle. But it can’t stop there. Once you’ve “figured it out,” you don’t simply close the book, heave a sigh of intellectual satisfaction, and move on. To do so would be like pulling apart the pieces…
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Self-Portrait After an Election
This process of testing myself in front of different pieces wasn’t just a matter of finding an image to fit my mood—the way you might scroll through a streaming service at the end of the day, hoping to find something that will scratch your particular itch. It was a process of clarification, of clarifying what I really thought and felt. In testing my own frame of mind against the framing of these artworks, I was distinguishing between what I was really experiencing and what I thought I should be experiencing, or saw others experiencing around me.
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Happy Public Domain Day, 2025
Happy New Year's Day, readers — and Happy Public Domain Day. Every January 1st, we get to celebrate not only the greatest day of college football but also the greatest day for release from copyright of great works of literature, music, art, and other previously copyrighted material — at least in the United States.
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“The Solitary Walk”
⎺ Original Poetry from Henry Lewis
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On Revival, Reading, and “Fruit Detectives”
“Is the World Ready for a Religious Comeback?” by Ross Douthat in The New York Times So the world seems primed for religious arguments in the same way it was primed for the new atheists 20 years ago. But the question is whether the religious can reclaim real cultural ground—especially in the heart of secularism, the Western intelligentsia—as opposed to just stirring up a vague nostalgia for belief. “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that,…
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Featured Artist: Stephanie Hunder
Stephanie Hunder’s art is inspired by memories of growing up in the woodlands and prairies of Minnesota. Her work often begins with forms and textures drawn from landscapes, which are then combined with scientific diagrams as a way to investigate our contemporary relationship to the natural world.
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Bored at the Museum
When you enter the room where it’s hanging, even before you fully register what the painting represents, the pleasure is already there, just as you turn the corner and see it on the wall.
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Victor Hugo on Springtime
Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain and wiped by the rays of sunlight; it is warm freshness. The gardens and meadows, having water at their roots, and sun in their flowers, become perfuming-pans of incense, and smoke with all their odors at once. Everything smiles, sings and offers itself. One feels gently intoxicated. The springtime is a provisional paradise, the sun helps man to have patience.
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Russel Moore on Tom More on Love (and Hope) in the Ruins
We can begin again only when we are willing to be asked—and to answer—the question “What are you seeking?” In this way, catastrophe becomes the precondition for hope.
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Richard Rorty on Poetry
I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts — just as I would have if I had made more close friends. Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully human — farther removed from the beasts — than those with poorer ones; individual men…
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Charlotte Brontë on Cultivating Happiness
No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato.
