Trees communicate with one another. I’m trying to listen.

My favorite is a 100-year-old male cottonwood. I call him Grandfather.

by Belden C. Lane

Hilma af Klint’s new ways of seeing

Years before Kandinsky, a Swedish woman created magnificent abstract paintings.

by Stephanie Paulsell

After the personal salvation gospel

The world won't be saved by my prayers or virtuous desires.

by Angela Denker

Elaine Pagels’s lifelong search for the sacred

Pagels vividly recounts her spiritual experiences. But she won’t let herself be bound by any tradition.

by Aaron Klink

Promise: Essays by readers

We gave our readers a one-word writing prompt: “promise.”

Living by the Word for Sunday, August 4

This is a funny story. We laugh. But we're laughing at ourselves.

by Cynthia Briggs Kittredge

Migrants are suffering. Will increased funding help?

A new funding law gives the Trump administration trust it hasn’t earned.

Sin and grace in public discourse

“We’ve lost the capacity to talk about the universality of brokenness—and belovedness.”

David Heim interviews Serene Jones

Toni Morrison writes about race, religion, and her own fiction

Our language isn’t neutral. It has history embedded within it.

by Amy Frykholm

These UMC deacons are more like doulas than circuit riders

How Sacred Stones Ministries is bringing new ministry models to birth

by Eric Smith