Do we draw on an underlying aquifer of values when we choose where we will live?

The compelling narrative of “Lord, Sky,” set during the time of an election, is also sheer poetry. The writer repeats diction (“light,” “sky,” “moon,” “grin”) and layers language (“heaven,” “rainbow,” “stars,” “night,” “midnight”) to invite us “little trees of heaven / stuck in concrete” to pay heed to the world above and around us, to…

In the video James Corden approaches a podium wearing a dark grey suit and a light grey wig to address a room full of reporters, but instead of making prepared remarks, he launches into song. He’s announcing his indictment of the President, and he and his audience are thrilled. “Robert Mueller’s Indictment Song” is the…

I think it’s good for me when my stereotypes of others are challenged. Like this recent experience. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood and approached a parked Jeep from the rear. Covering the spare tire hung on the back was a huge American flag with the words “The Only One.” My instinctive response,…

In recent months several of us have quipped that the drama surrounding the Trump campaign and presidency would make for a great plotline on the FX drama, The Americans. A show about Russian spies living in D.C. during the Cold War easily brings to mind our present-day episode of America-Russia relations. If you watched the…

Continued from yesterday. This post originally appeared as a web-exclusive feature accompanying Image issue 84. Each chapter of Lauren F. Winner’s book, Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God (HarperOne), explores a single biblical image of God through a mix of exegesis, cultural history, and personal essay. I asked Winner about her…

Five hundred years from now our present political confusions, conflicts, and outrages will become the stuff of high melodrama. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would look back on this period of American history as entertainment, but they’re bound to, I expect. Not Singin’ in the Rain entertainment, but certainly something like Wall Street or…

Why is it that we so often gain courage or cowardice to do bad from other members of a group, but seldom the courage to do good? Why is it that the herd instinct kicks in mostly when the object is to tear something to shreds, like beasts? Or when we’re put in fear by…

I have had it with the rage. It might drive me off social media. At first, I thought it might just be a problem of living in metropolitan Washington, D.C., where the strident opinions held by many are usually interlinked with what they do for a living. No such luck, though: I’ve been on trips…

I refresh the page, I refresh the page, I turn away for a few minutes, I teach a class for seventy-five minutes, I sit in a meeting for sixty minutes, and on the way to the meeting, on the way back to my office from the class, with my iPhone in my palm, at the…