From “What will survive of us is love,” published recently at Thrive Global: We enjoin each other to remember with frequently fraught if well-intentioned formulas, and too commonly imagine the results as inevitably healing. When things turn out otherwise, as they often do, there are those who quickly tell us that we’re just not doing it right — that we need another form of confessional practice, a better set of beliefs, an alternative mode of truth-telling, a different discourse of memory. And maybe we do. Yet when we need them most urgently, we understandably reach for whatever inherited or borrowed words we have at hand.

When I first moved to New York City almost two decades ago, I would not have expected the annual New York City Marathon to become one of my favorite things about living in the city. …

The glimmer of an idea, not even half-formed, that I might write about truth and reconciliation first began to take shape while reading a borrowed book on a sunny beach in southern California. …

“All poems use craft; careful choice of words, linebreaks, metaphor and form. I love these elements of poetry, but I know that such technicalities are not the only way to love a poem. Most people remember a poem because it reminds them of something: a grief of their own; a moment of love in their life; a decision they had to make; a time of wonder and delight; a landscape they had forgotten; a pain they carried. Somehow, those little clockworks get into the heart, and help it go, help it rhyme, help it in ways we can’t define.”

Reverend Berton VanAntwerpen — known to many as Pastor Van (or “PV”), and to his family as Papa Bert — passed away peacefully at Butterworth Hospital on January 10, 2023, with his dear wife Marie, two of his children, sons Michael and Jonathan, and his daughter-in-law Jill, at his side…

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

“Somebody once said to me that in relation to religion that I come across like I’m totally lost. And I took it as a deep compliment. I was delighted, because I have no interest in being found. ‘I once was lost, but now I’m found’ is a phrase that echoes throughout so much hymnody in the Christianities of the world. And I sometimes have deep suspicion of the idea of being found, because I am interested, perhaps artistically, in the idea about what happens when you know you’re not found. What do you begin to observe?”

Johno Wells is a life-long musician, composer and sound designer from Southern California. His music “is focused on themes of textures and transitions and searching for sounds that have never been heard before.” Johno created and hosts Modular World, a global modular synthesizer event with performers from all over the…

Sweet Darkness by David Whyte When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your home tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.