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      “How dark and hurt and deep the world.”         —Sebastian Barry, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty But how to help, to say nothing of being reconciled to the fact of our present paralysis, the heroic desire for purposeful life now strung on the clothesline, parked in the garage, or misplaced, lost on that departing train ..read more

Amid all the preparations to turn Paris into a venue for the Olympic Games that begin in less than 100 days, one small corner of the French capital is preparing for another modern form of competition based in antiquity: Christie’s auction of early Christian texts from North Africa ..read more

Conservative religious leaders who had been imploring Speaker Mike Johnson to back assistance for Ukraine and Israel in fighting their wars celebrated the House’s passage of foreign aid packages Saturday, clearing the way for the measures to go to the Senate, which passed the bill late last night ..read more

Ludmila Ulitskaya is a badass. She is a Russian short story writer, playwright, and novelist who was born in the Ural Mountains and became a genetic scientist. Fired from the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics in 1970 for distributing underground literature, she began her literary career several years later at the Hebrew Theatre of Moscow ..read more

I was a ballet dancer for about ten years, from age 5 to 15, when my feet rebelled against the strictures of pointe shoes and I had to give it up. I wasn’t ever particularly serious about it—I didn’t want to take more than two classes a week; no ballet teacher ever said I had it, whatever indefinable thing makes a ballerina a ballerina; and I certainly am not genetically predisposed toward the tall, willowy slimness of a Balanchine girl ..read more

RW-REPLACE-TOKEN The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical ChurchBy Sarah McCammonSt. Martin’s ..read more

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RW-REPLACE-TOKEN In the provinces of the Philippines, my grandpa, a tenant farmer and peasant, is walking home when he is mugged by distant family members. They stab him multiple times, steal his money, and leave him to die ..read more

To receive these posts by email each Monday, sign up. For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century ..read more