Jonathan Simcoe

I’ve known pastors who were absolutely convinced that they were faithful men—right until the moment when they made a “connection” with the attractive woman in the front pew. I’ve known Christian leaders who believed they were honest—right until the moment when honesty might harm their ministry. And I’ve known celebrities who believed they were

WHOSE HEART ISN’T prodigal? One of the gifts Augustine offers is a spirituality for realists. Conversion is not a “solution.” Conversion is not a magical transport home, some kind of Floo powder to heaven. Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road; it just changes how you travel.

Loneliness—often a factor of social isolation—has become a societal epidemic in late capitalist societies.

For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo’s mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Eärendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. The darkness

It’s like all we ever do is leave. “Honey, all I know to do is go,” the Indigo Girls confess in “Leaving.”

We shut out incursions of the divine and demonic to carve out a privatized space to be free on our own terms. We didn’t realize the extent to which we were shutting ourselves in.

“Beck was so hopelessly blind,” Groom reports, “that every ten meters he’d take a step into thin air and I’d have to catch him with the rope. I was worried he was going to pull me off many times.

according to the Tom Nook doctrine, pastoralism and capitalism coexist perfectly. You can fish for high-value red snappers and sell them to buy espadrilles for your character, or 1950s-diner furnishings for your house. Or you can fish for never-before-seen specimens, to donate them to the museum. Or you can cast a line just to enjoy watching the