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The reflections on John Updike’s work in this issue sent me to my shelves in search of a particular Updike story that I read long ago...

The landmark Medicare drug bill passed by Congress last month has something in it for almost everyone to complain about....

You and the alien shall be alike before the Lord. You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance.(Num. 15:15b-16, NRSV)...

Jessica Lynch resists America’s desire to call her a war hero. “They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff,” Lynch told Diane Sawyer during a television interview on Veteran’s Day....

In the absence of a real, live spiritual director, I often turn to the Desert Fathers for wisdom about living a holy life on earth....

During his visit to London last month, President Bush cautiously addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the ...

Some years ago, I accepted an invitation to referee a book manuscript that defended capitalism. The author responded that my critique revealed traces of my lifelong commitment to socialism....

In the pattern of Jesus’ growing is the pattern to which each of us is called. Even the irony that he first became lost before he experienced this first growing—even this has meaning for every Christian. We live at a time when it is easy to feel lost. Our time and world are daunting and even defeating. But that very lostness can be the prelude to our personal growing.

When I was a small boy in Ireland my parents would take us to our grandfather’s farm near Castlecomer in County Kilkenny. On the farm there was a hired man whose name was John Brennan. John lived in a thatched cottage about half a mile away. In the evening after the cows were milked, he would sit on a large flat stone outside the stable door and smoke a stained clay pipe. Sometimes I would sit beside him and he would tell me stories.

When I was a small boy in Ireland my parents would take us to our grandfather’s farm near Castlecomer in County Kilkenny. On the farm there was a hired man whose name was John Brennan. John lived in a thatched cottage about half a mile away. In the evening after the cows were milked, he would sit on a large flat stone outside the stable door and smoke a stained clay pipe. Sometimes I would sit beside him and he would tell me stories.

In the pattern of Jesus’ growing is the pattern to which each of us is called. Even the irony that he first became lost before he experienced this first growing—even this has meaning for every Christian. We live at a time when it is easy to feel lost. Our time and world are daunting and even defeating. But that very lostness can be the prelude to our personal growing.

Stegosaurus is a dinosaur renowned for the plates that run up and down its back....

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Suppose I told you that for just two cents on the national dollar we could have a ...

Exploring the extraordinary ordinary dimensions of our lives has always been John Updike’s métier, in which he is peerless among American mid-20th-ce...

Relentlessly somber, with the eruptions of teen violence rendered in a hushed style, Gus Van Sant's Elephant—his response to the Columbine shootings—is an art-...

My gratitude for Advent has deepened over the years. I welcome the shorter days, and love the way the angled light of late November and early December makes everything look different....

Backed by conservative Christians, the Florida legislature and Florida Governor Jeb Bush jumped into the case of Terri Schiavo, the 39-year-old women in a vegetative state since 1990....

The most common reason Protestant pastors leave parish ministry is an experience of stressful conflict, usually arising from differences with laity or staff but sometimes with denominational offici...

In a country where the absurd and surreal routinely intersect with everyday life, it was hardly a surprise to find the staff of the Liberia Council of Churches meeting in a room shorn of everything...