Recommended by Bryce Tolpen
"But I do believe in the meeting of idea and fate in the creative hour." Martin Buber's conclusion to his Paths in Utopia's final chapter reminds me of nothing so much as The Elysian by Elle Griffin, a journalist investigating our modeled futures. Now just might be her hour--and our hour with her.
Beth Adams's writing is a great reading habit, and her Substack has been for me an important refuge and habitation. Beth was the big sister of a cadre of bloggers I hung with for a decade until social media's advent scattered most of us. But Beth kept blogging. Her delightful mix of art, music, and words along with her presence at Cassandra Pages has brought me joy for over twenty years.
"I think our professional-class politics has made our own public lives inconceivable. Politics has become nothing better than another source of noise, disassociated from our capacity for silence and action." Don't you think that's profound? Well, I wrote it! But only in a comment, in a response to Lindsey Deloach Jones's Substack Between Two Things. She examines all kinds of interstices that leave lots of room for great, further thinking.
William Green's weekly posts are condensed soup for the political, religious, and philosophical soul—for our corporate soul, too. Each sentence carries a paragraph's worth of reflection. The references are first rate, and the points are often surprising and always free of ideology and cant. I read every word of every post for my own education, edification, and sanity.
I first read Kristin Du Mez through her book Jesus and John Wayne. She doesn't stop after addressing that American amalgam. As her Substack says, she explores "the intersections of religion, gender, and politics." She also polices those intersections to bless all of us who traffic there.
Mark knows a lot more about writing devotions than I do: he is currently editing my favorite devotions, those penned by Richard Rohr. Mark, of course, is a practicing contemplative and works toward social justice. In the holy ordinary, Mark speaks freely and deeply outside of his role as managing editor with the Center for Action and Contemplation. As far as I'm concerned, it's not to miss.
If you want to encounter someone from the safe distance of the written word, go to Black Eyed Stories. Her words are fierce and accepting and beautiful. If you're old and white and me, Marcie Alvis Walker is a welcome and necessary counterweight. Read for a few weeks, let your eyes adjust, and see.
Rabbi and philosopher-poet Zohar Atkins’s weekly meditations on Torah bring me fresh encounters—intellectual and spiritual—with favorite ancient characters and stories. If I were asked for examples of what William Cavanaugh calls “theopolitical imagination,” I would point first to Etz Hasadeh.
I’m a big fan of Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and each time I read LegalTowns, I feel as if I’m revisiting Jacob’s combination of journalistic curiosity, passion for public spaces, and urban planning knowledge. Like Jacobs and Jeff Speck, Theo Mackey Pollack thinks through how policy and planning can make or break a city. I’m thrilled to learn that he’s now on Substack.
Henry Hines's writing, like Blake's, helps me "see a world in a grain of sand." Worldsmith Weekly, Hines's new Substack, picks up with essays where his outstanding first novel, The God of Make Believe, leaves off.