🎁Give a Plough Gift Subscription for Christmas! 🎁 Take advantage of our lowest rate of just $15/year to give a Plough gift subscription to a special person. (Offer available in US and Canada only.) subscribe.plough.com/flex/PPH/YGL...

“Giotto’s ‘Nativity’ not only depicted the birth of Christ but gave birth to a new Christian humanism in the visual arts that would remain one of Christendom’s greatest cultural triumphs.” —Elizabeth Lev

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. Wendell Berry #AdventAngels

In this short story, a nagging wife is horrified when her husband fixes a neighbor’s roof instead of going to church on Christmas Eve. Who is right? 📻 The Carpenter’s Christmas by Peter Rosegger: open.spotify.com/episode/308K...

Read six new poems by Wendell Berry, illustrated by Stephen Crotts: www.plough.com/en/topics/cu...

‘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...

“Trocmé’s gracious, expansive voice and willingness to live out his deep commitment to nonviolence offer modern audiences committed to human dignity a three-dimensional mentor for our own troubled times.” —Englewood Review of Books englewoodreview.org/andre-trocme...

“Too often, we have embraced our culture’s false gospel that happiness really depends on the absence of inconvenience and suffering. From there, it’s a small step to seek to bypass the infirmities of old age and disease by engineering one’s own death.” —Reuben Zimmerman

“A stunning ode to nature poetry. Peters employs a wide variety of artistic styles and media, reflecting varied themes of connectedness to nature, including celebration, grief, and love. The thoughtful execution infuses the verses with new meaning and lends itself to rich discussion.”—Kirkus Reviews

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.”

I wrote an article for this issue. It’s available to read if you’re inclined.

Today is Jane Austen’s 250th birthday! “Conversation, according to Jane Austen, undergirds human flourishing; it is in fact a profoundly Christian practice which recognizes another’s humanity, even when the topic is shallow or unimportant.” —Grace Hamman

“Our appearance-obsessed culture trains us to measure ourselves and others by very particular forms of beauty – at the cost of health, freedom, and even love.” @brvnathan.bsky.social

Our Winter Issue: The Call of Beauty is out now! Read it here: www.plough.com/en/subscript... Subscribe to Plough: subscribe.plough.com/flex/PPH/YPS...

“Any beauty that excludes humankind’s imperfection and vulnerability is prone to becoming subhuman. And even the wholesome beauty of nature is only a partial truth in a world where children starve in war zones or are trafficked to abusers.” —Peter Mommsen

Christmas is just around the corner, so if you’re considering getting a Plough book for a Christmas gift, now is the time to do it! 🎁 In the thread below, are some of our most popular titles for gift-giving: some seasonal, some for the literary friend, and some for children.

“The human mind is magic, or might as well be, and it is by this magic that we can defeat the AI. Not by outwitting it, or by unplugging it, or any such thing, but by the sheer weirdness of the human mind.” —David Schaengold

“Like Lewis Carroll’s wonder-struck Alice, I feel as though I could pass right through the looking glass into some technicolor realm, so clear and full of light as it is. Here in this alley between the broken-down home and the defunct Bowl-O-Rama, some heavenly alchemy has broken in.”—Heath Hardesty

"Eighteen years among Somali Muslims in the Horn of Africa taught an American Christian much about prayer." Observing Muslim prayer here in southeast Michigan has had much the same effect on me. I decided to start praying the hours largely because I admire the daily cycle of prayer in Islam.

Loving the titles. Can’t wait!!

“This is how some Christians respond to Islam: it can contain nothing good and should be feared or defeated. This is also, I would learn, how some Muslims respond to Christianity: ready to argue, quick to believe misconceptions, primed for violence.” —Rachel Pieh Jones

Our Winter issue, The Call of Beauty, will publish online next Tuesday, December 16, but you can get a start by enjoying three articles that do not appear in the print edition. Read them here: www.plough.com/web46

“The ‘transcendentals’ – truth, goodness, and beauty – are so called because they are the fundamental and universal qualities of reality that point us beyond this world to God.” —Benjamin P. Myers

“God creates more than just humans as conscious intelligences. We’re not alone. The heavens, the skies, the universe, the earth are full of angels. And I think that’s very important. And I also think it’s important because it says we’re not the only pebble on the cosmic beach.” —Alison Milbank

"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...

Our Winter Issue, The Call of Beauty, is at the press. Subscribe to Plough Quarterly: subscribe.plough.com/flex/PPH/YPS...

“Looking around, it’s easy to conclude that Pacem in Terris has fallen prey to evolving tastes. The items in the gift shop are dusty. I only meet one other visitor. But solitude is appropriate for a sanctuary, and gems lose no value through concealment.” —Coretta Thomson

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...

“If we are shocked by suffering, if we are repulsed, then we will try to eliminate it at all costs, including killing the person who suffers.” —Lorenzo Albacete

“The beauty of the Paimio Sanatorium came from within its movement toward justice. For patients with tuberculosis, the aesthetic excellence of the place was not isolated from the ways their needs were being met in their suffering.” —Kelly W. Foster

“Our task is always to try to build a home – a place of peace, justice, and community – and to extend the greatest possible compassion to those who cross borders in search of one.” —Santiago Ramos

“What we are in fact celebrating is the awe-inspiring humility of God, and no amount of familiarity with the trappings of Christmas should ever blind us to its quiet but explosive significance.” —J. B. Phillips

www.plough.com/en/topics/ju... - English

🧵An Internship for the aspiring farmer-philosopher next summer. Where: Plough offices in Walden, NY When: June 1–28, 2026 What: Intern at Plough while also learning the basics of regenerative agriculture. Apply here www.plough.com/en/about-us/...

Three boys play the Three Kings who deliver gifts on the eve of Epiphany. But what will they give the poor children they pass on the street? A delightful story of strong tradition broken by the power of love. 📻 Listen to the Three Young Kings by George Sumner Albee: open.spotify.com/episode/1eKc...

🧵 Thank you to all our donors! In the past year, support from donors has enabled Plough to host 21 Reader Meetups in cities across the United States and United Kingdom, convene 22 other in-person & online events, bring out 4 issues of the magazine, & publish 7 books.

“Rundell is aware of the weight of anxiety borne by young people today. She is concerned about the ways our world of violence and corruption, ecological neglect and Big Tech have failed young people and stolen their attention from healthy avenues to navigate the world.” —Reynolds Chapman

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...

“Between me and my Korean identity lies a perpetual lacuna. I am forced to interpret as both heir and imposter. Halmoni passed down Korean food names to her children, but she kept the rest of the language to herself.” —Amelia Buzzard

“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

“There are two questions on which the abortion debate hinges. First: When do we become a person? Second: When is it permissible to take a person’s life?” —Nafeesa Dawoodbhoy

“As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.” —Henri Nouwen

www.plough.com/en/topics/fa... - English

“While I love the winter ducks, the season I most eagerly anticipate is spring migration. It starts with a trickle: the robins staking out the lawns, the killdeer in the fields, and red-winged blackbirds around the ponds.” —Caleb Scholtens

“The thing that I’ve come to realize about marriage is that just like with the gospel, it’s love that changes you. You can’t get there by your efforts. You can’t get there by talking yourself into it. But actually, the thing that changes us as human beings is encountering love.” —Sarah Killam Crosby

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...

“During the many hours I spent with Sally, I struggled with what I thought was a strong inner resistance to her. Now I realize that the resistance was to Christ, who was knocking insistently on the door of my heart.” —Patricia Barber

“Instead of considering whatever crisis is hanging in the air as a problem that needs to be solved, like a puzzle on a coffee table between you, we ought instead to be with the suffering more in the manner of gazing at a complex painting together.” —Zac Koons

“An extraordinary, unique, informative and fascinating read from start to finish. It is an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists, as well as community and university library collections.” —Midwest Review of Books www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/nov_25.h...

We read this book in Theology classes. It's fairly short, but very impactful.