Christmastide is a time of re-enchanting. The frankly supernatural aspects of Christianity can’t be swept too far under the rug, this time of year. The season comes laden with glimpses of the heavenly realm intersecting with earth; the light casting away the works of darkness.
COVID-19
From Revelation to Imagination
Anne Snyder
If June to December was a time to try to make sense of truths we were seeing, truths too long veiled beneath the hum of “normal,” 2021 will be a time for mapping a way forward.
Apocalypse, and After
Susannah Black
We’re nearly at the end of a year that has felt, sometimes, like the end of the world. And that calls for reflection: what has just happened, and what comes next? Our two pieces this week attempt an answer. Joel Heng Hartse offers a month-by-month retrospective of...
The End of the World, One Year In: Notes from (Off) Campus
Joel Heng Hartse
“There is more I want to say into those blank screens, but I feel so lost as I watch them watch me, one small, brightly animated square among the black. In this moment I hardly know who I am without them. They are the black holes, but I am the one floating untethered in space.”
Joel Heng Hartse offers a professor’s perspective on the pandemic.
Small Apocalypses
Alexi Sargeant
Some of us might hesitate to call our present moment apocalyptic, but it is. An apocalypse is an unveiling, and we should expect many apocalypses to rock our world before the end of all things. Some of these apocalypses can be filled with grace, even as others unveil many dark corners of our nation.
God Has Heard
Joshua Bombino, Chelsea Langston Bombino
This has been a year of ambiguous grief. How do we situate ourselves within the experience of loss, personal and communal, when it feels like that loss slouches toward nothing? Here is an offering for those who mourn. It is a timeline, a gallery of grief and hope in dialectic.
The Politics of Friendship and Thanksgiving
Susannah Black
This year’s Thanksgiving is a strange one: it comes amid what continues to feel like a penitential season, both because of COVID and because of America’s ongoing reckoning with its own past, and with its future together. COVID had originally seemed to me as though it...
Politics Strike Back: Survival in a Pandemic
Jake Meador
The flourishing of individuals is premised on relationships of mutual care and fidelity that radiate outward. COVID-19 exposes the death of our current order and calls us back to that mutual love, writes Jake Meador.
The Complicated Grief of Advent
Heidi Deddens
One of my favorite Advent hymns is “O Come O Come Emmanuel”—though for much of my life, I must admit, that love stemmed more from the haunting beauty of the melody than the rich meaning of its lyrics. This year, though, the words feel particularly apt. The first verse...
Leadership in Uncertain Times
Ed O'Malley
Uncertainty reigns. The pandemic and associated economic strife define the era. We face collective questions: What do we value most? What is the connection between health and the economy? Personal questions are ever present too. Should I attend the funeral? Should we...