It's my 31 year baptism anniversary! "When I stepped out of the baptismal waters, dripping and joyful, I felt not that I had arrived, but that I must travel." I am still traveling on! www.plough.com/en/topics/co...

"The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility – of being unable to undo what one has done though one did not, and could not, have known what he was doing – is the faculty of forgiving." Hannah Arendt www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...

Befriending your backyard sycamore can change your relationship with the natural world. Katelyn Beaty www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

The gargoyles and grotesques on Notre-Dame Cathedral look down and see themselves in us. @theefantomas.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

"Patience, most certainly, can be an attribute of the truly great man – it is, perhaps, the crucial quality which enables him to seize upon reality and to use it." Romano Guardini www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...

The utmost man can achieve on his own here capitulates before the unspeakable simplicity of the methods of God. Evelyn Underhill www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

"What nobody told me was that your conscience, or what feels like your conscience, can be entirely mistaken through no fault of your own." People I know are encouraged by this @oalannoble.bsky.social article. www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...

“Many Westerners are afflicted with what has been described as an “allergy to #sincerity.” We avoid discussing topics of depth or lace them with irony to avoid discomfort.”: buff.ly/5doY4dM from @plough.bsky.social #BirdWatching #humanity #nature #society

"It is no exaggeration to say that without it, the community probably would have succumbed by now to one of the many crises it has weathered over the last one hundred years." Chris Zimmerman www.plough.com/en/topics/co...

Vintage Tolstoy from the end of *War and Peace* "... By loving people without cause, he discovered indubitable causes for loving them."

A good read for Christmastide. www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

A reminder that "fun size" it's not fun at all. It is smaller than usual, miserly, and not at all good for sharing. You have been warned.

May "Festivity and revelry replace fear and freezing," as we celebrate 75 years since the publishing of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

I’m surprised, honored, and encouraged to learn my essay “The Absolutely Absurdity of a Christian Nation” was the 3rd most read Plough article in 2025. @plough.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

"It is no exaggeration to say that without it, the community probably would have succumbed by now to one of the many crises it has weathered over the last one hundred years." Chris Zimmerman www.plough.com/en/topics/co...

This was my first year teaching Adults, and teaching in France. I also got an article published in @plough.bsky.social. My French is still bad but I can function more or less. I also have finished being treated for ADHD and Depression and no longer need meds. What a year.

Probably my favorite @plough.bsky.social opening sentence this year: "It’s 1980 Berlin, the Berlinest of years." I wish the two angels traveling around Berlin could check in on Jackson Lamb and Smiley's people. www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...

"It is only by fidelity in little things, that a true and constant love to God can be distinguished from a passing fervor of spirit." François Fénelon www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...

My favorite Christmas Eve poem. (The Oxen, Thomas Hardy, 1915) www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

This year I wrote about a sister I've long admired: Maria Innocentia Hummel. She looked Hitler in the eyes and didn't blink. www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

Six new poems by Wendell Berry appear in @plough.bsky.social! “Here plowing (and not just in a metaphorical sense—remember, Berry actually plows actual fields) turns up the field of memory and gives us a glimpse of the beauty that comes when we love a place and its people particularly and deeply.”

My latest piece in @plough.bsky.social on scripted vs. revealed beauty

‘The professor surveys the classroom. He squints. “I think our students are getting arrested,” he says. And it so happens that they are.’ Superb essay by Santiago Ramos for @plough.bsky.social on literature under dictatorship. www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

This is indeed a beautiful piece.

"Is not this the final and most secret cause of the joy of Christmas, that the world has been turned upside down?" A beautiful Sigrid Undset Christmas reading. www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

'Only when you have the language for it can you imagine it. Only when you can imagine it can you know that it is real: the angel alight with glory walking among the shepherds half asleep in their watching...' www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

“If beauty is to be true and good, then it must be for everyone. It must be difficult, or complicated, or coarse, or hard to perceive. It must be worth struggling for. And it must exist in all of us.” @theefantomas.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

What if Christian nonviolence isn’t naïve idealism or a policy proposal, but the church’s most radical witness in an age when faith and nationalism are increasingly confused? www.plough.com/en/topics/ju...

The technological mindset is corrupting our souls. It’s time to fight. By Paul Kingsnorth www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

Stanley Hauerwas at his best. www.plough.com/en/topics/ju...

“One of them is married, and the other is engaged. So they’re both sorted.” My mind stuck on that last word – sorted. I guess I know what she meant. But it was hard to avoid the implication. Am I unsorted?" Sam Allberry www.plough.com/en/topics/co...

"If a war is not just, what is it? Take the two world wars. Why don’t we call them World Slaughter I and World Slaughter II. They were not just wars, even though Americans tend to think they were since we more or less won them." Stanley Hauerwas www.plough.com/en/topics/ju...

“Music has a variety of “jobs,” as the other arts do. It can calm, soothe, and delight. It can also provoke, disturb, bite. No one expects the other arts to be beautiful and soothing, only. “ www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

1. Plough Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter Turns One Hundred One thousand pages of love, lust, and spiraling consequences in fourteenth-century Norway mirror the Nobel laureate’s own life. By Cat Hodge May 5, 2022 www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

Learning that one’s job might soon be eliminated by the emergence of an overhyped new technology puts one in good company. @philipchristman.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/co...

"There were always tears, but the people I met as patients came to #therapy with varied needs. Some needed a #listening ear, others a directive word.": buff.ly/vsQMqov via @plough.bsky.social #therapist #counseling #MentalHealthAwareness

"What do we expect when we are in despair and yet go to a man? Surely a presence by means of which we are told that nevertheless there is meaning." Martin Buber www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

When you pursue me, world, why do you do it? How do I harm you, when my sole intent is to make learning my prize ornament, not learn to prize ornament and pursue it? —Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, translation by Rhina P. Espaillat www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

"Nobody told me how your mind can be your own worst enemy. How it can fixate on imaginary sins." @oalannoble.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/fa...

"By far the most important and significant event in the whole course of human history will be celebrated, with or without understanding, at the end of this season, Advent." J. B. Phillips www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

A father reads Katherine Rundell’s The Poisoned King, the second book in the Impossible Creatures series, to his twelve-year-old and six-year-old. By Reynolds Chapman www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

So enjoyed writing for Plough’s Advent Series about one of my favourite sequences in the gospels. Joyous Advent, friends!

"Which is why I think the biggest challenge for Christians today, the biggest challenge for the Church, is actually this: that it’s really hard to have an experience like this today because our televisions won’t turn off." I feel the same.

The image here is the Angel of the Annunciation — Gabriel — by Fra Angelico in the National Gallery of Umbria. We have a similar image of his in Detroit: dia.org/collection/a...

After an angel tells Mary she will bear the Savior, she sets out to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Both encounters are rich in meaning for Advent. @joelclarkson.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

Happy Advent! In this favorite interview, Plough’s Joy Clarkson speaks with Sister Grace Remington, a Cistercian nun at Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Iowa about her artwork *Mary and Eve*: www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

Where should the church say, “Thus far and no further”? Few are truly equipped to assess the deadlock, but as a speech and language AI researcher and a churchwoman, I will attempt the task. @arliecoles.bsky.social www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

Als men in de Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) grijpt naar RK-theoloog #HenrideLubac om de alarmbel te luiden over #WhiteChristianNationalism, is er niet alleen iets aan de hand, maar is er ook hoop (schitterend geïllustreerd met Piet Mondriaan): www.plough.com/en/topics/ju...

The birth of my daughter confronted me with the competition between my autonomy and her demand to be loved. Nafeesa Dawoodbhoy www.plough.com/en/topics/ju...