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Racial Justice: A Constant Challenge for an Inconstant People
The challenge is that we’re inconstant. I am inconstant. I walked in two marches on Saturday here on the Eastern Shore, partly because I haven’t had the words to put to my feelings about my country in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands (and knee) of the Minneapolis police. I had the… →
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Saying Their Names: Jesmyn Ward’s Mississippi Memoir
Jesmyn Ward’s memoir, Men We Reaped, derives its title from an arresting Harriet Tubman quote that appears in the book as an epigraph: We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the… →
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Pulling Back the Veil in the Vale of Opioids: Beth Macy’s Dopesick
Three months into our current pandemic we know the scenario. “Epidemics unfold ‘like a vector phenomenon, where you have one individual who seeds that community and then the spread begins.’”(127) Dr. Anna Lembke could have been talking about COVID-19, but the Stanford specialist in addiction medicine was talking about opioids and ace Virginia reporter Beth… →
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Poetry: The End of Corona
I fantasize about an ending, a fitting denouement, Because all arcs descend to resolution, flood tides recede to mud flats, but Some journeys are a one-way ticket and end in distant homes, where I, for one, never intended to rest. –Alex Joyner →
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Starving to See Every Bit: A Review of Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song
There’s a special kind of glory in the writing of those who bring extraordinary attention and a capacious spiritual vocabulary to the business of describing the world as it is. The Irish seem to have such glory in spades, even in the diaspora. And it certainly touched the late Brian Doyle, whose essays have been… →
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Without the Moon, Where Are We?: A Review of Ross Douthat’s Decadent Society
It’s not that Ross Douthat is angry with us, he just seems disappointed. We have the potential to do so much more with ourselves, as a civilization, but we’re culturally exhausted, economically stagnant, and unable to muster the wherewithal even to reproduce ourselves. Really, ever since the moonshot in 1969 we haven’t had our mojo.… →
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Poetry: Holy Saturday
TRIDUUM: HOLY SATURDAY Yes, there’s a day for longing, for lighting candles, looking out. The wind blows back against the creek, but the tide carries it out nonetheless. A spectral cloud lies low on the bay and billows fingers across the sky, Advancing on the unsuspecting land, visiting a chill on all who perceive. We… →
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Finding All Things in Christ: The Belated Review of Colossians
He’s never been known for his crystal clarity, but Paul, (often called the Apostle Paul), has a way of captivating you with the propulsive thunder of his rhetoric. Sure, there are elements of his writing that make a 21st century Christian cringe, (behavioral guides for slaves?!), but there’s also a cosmic vision of Christ as… →
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Colossians: A Translation
A translation by Alex Joyner From: Paul, by God’s will an apostle of Jesus Christ, and Brother Timothy To: The holy and faithful in Colossae, brothers and sisters all Grace. Peace to you from God the Father. We give thanks to God, Father also of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we pray always on your… →
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Heartlands 