By Jes Martinez-HuntMarch 26, 2025“You are who you are. No one can tell you who you are but you. Whoever you know yourself to be, you are right.” —Maybe BurkeI didn’t grow up with trans joy. I grew up with longing, quiet adjustments, and learning how to make myself acceptable. I spent years thinking
By Quinn GormleyMarch 19, 2025“Many of us reject all of the inferior meanings and connotations that others project onto femininity—that it is weak, artificial, frivolous, demure, and passive—because for us, there has been no act more bold and daring than embracing our own femininity. In a world that
By Tomo HillboMarch 12, 2025“Cover my earth, Mother, four times with many flowers.Let the heavens be covered with the banked-up clouds.Let the earth be covered with fog; cover the earth with rains.Great waters, rains, cover the earth. Lightning, cover the earth.Let thunder be heard over the earth; l
By Michelle L. MillsMarch 5, 2025“The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, int
By Lindasusan UlrichFebruary 12, 2025“Your tattoos like the stamps upon your passport….”—“Wheat Like Waves,” by Death Cab for CutieFor the longest time, I’d admired friends’ tattoos but couldn’t think of what image I’d want permanently stamped on my own body. One day the lightbulb went off: I wanted
By Erika HewittFebruary 5, 2025“The hardest part of training a dog is developing the skills necessary to train a dog.”—Chad Mackin, dog trainerI don’t have a dog, but my social media feed knows how badly I want one. A rapt audience, I scroll through endless videos, preparing for the day I become a d
By Oscar SinclairJanuary 29, 2025“[Hope] transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope...is not the same as joy that things are going well…but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance
By Susan MaginnJanuary 22, 2025“God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder." —Kalistos WareThe other day I was walking near a cove a mile or so from my house, and a pair of shoes caught my attention—because they were my shoes; my favorite shoes. I do not covet many thi
By Julie Yeeun KimJanuary 15, 2025“Whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’The word of the Lord has brought me insult and injury all day long.”—The Prophet Jeremiah (20:8)When I was sent to the principal’s office in the second grade for pointing out my teacher’s co
By DanaLee SimonJanuary 8, 2025“Resistance is the secret of joy.”—Alice WalkerThe theme of Joy has been reverberating as a holy echo in my life over these past months. Joy feels like one of the most compassionate offerings I can hand over to the depth of my soul which, in many moments on many days,
