Books I've Read in 2026
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How fundamentalism nearly destroyed my relationship with God
I was a sophomore in college when I turned my back on the religion of my childhood and declared myself no longer a Christian.
This is the fourth year since your son died
This is the fourth year since your son died.
You wonder where the time has gone, and wonder if it’d be cliche to say it sometimes still feels like yesterday.
I didn’t even want to be friends with her
People don’t fit into boxes. They’re too beautifully complex, filled with every colour we can and can’t see.
The Value of Life: Abortion, Adoption, and Agency
Our struggle seems to manifest in different ways: in our attempts to systematize complex moral decisions, our shifting language, our efforts to protect both individual agency and collective responsibility.
Letters to the Forgotten Ones I Still Love
I suppose normally now would be the moment to place some epilogue of good feeling, of how I see the way God is working, how I’m sure it will all make sense one day, of the good that has come from it. But I do not, and I don’t know why, and in truth, no “why” could ever excuse or justify the pain.
"I have searched for my mother’s love in all corners of the world." -Annie Ernaux
Sometimes, healing never comes. Some mothers never apologise.
But sometimes healing begins after thirty years.
Sometimes, a mother says, “I’m sorry.”
Why Some Writers Carry Tasers and Pay to be Unfindable
I’ve intended to write on this topic for some time now—the risk of having a public online presence, that is. It’s one many of us are sadly all too familiar with: strangers acting in bad faith, taking your words out of context,
Corruption and Redemption
Guest post by Jenn Zuko
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Back in 2004, I taught a graduate-level literature course called ‘Hobbits and
Éowyn's Redemption from Despair to Hope
I’m also struck by the fact that once again, heroism in Tolkien’s story does not present the way it conventionally would in such stories, or in the way Éowyn understood heroism at the start of her journey.
She learns that it does not have to take her skill with a sword to make her a strong woman.
Ways I Am Simplifying My Life in 2025
Dear Inklings,
I cannot believe we are now at the end of 2024. Last year, I shared the ways I
I Followed Jesus But My Life Didn't Get Better
My questions of why injustice and suffering exist have never been answered. Yet I found what I was looking for all along: God Himself.
It Wasn’t Love At First Sight
The common narrative is that when you give birth, you fall in love with your baby at once.
In reality, this is a stranger you have to get to know, just like any other person. Sometimes, it’s love at first sight. Other times, it’s not.
Samwise Gamgee: The Heart of the Fellowship
Sam’s decisions in these five chapters cement both his character and his strength, both of which draw on his strongest attribute (and why I—and I suspect so many of us—adore him so much). His heart.
Only That Which They Defend
And yet, in The Lord of the Rings, Sam and Faramir end up having tremendous influence over the outcome of the story. Not because they are powerful, but because of those very attributes the world deemed unworthy.
Seeing Stones and Silver Tongues
Whether through magical devices or human speech, the challenge of conveying and receiving truth remains central to these chapters. This illustrates the difficulties of communication, not between different languages, but between what comes out and what is received.
Valuing the Least of These
Through these chapters, Tolkien illustrates that one of the highest goods—a light by which to choose in dark times—is caring for those who seem weakest among us, carrying them along in their journey.
To love at all is to be Vulnerable
So much fear and anger exists between people, and how easily we can see each other as enemies or “others.” I’m not so naive as to think that just listening and talking will solve all problems, but it is a starting point—one more powerful than we might think.
Hope in the Face of Shadow
From the (seemingly) lowly to the wise and powerful, for years—generations, even—people have been fighting with all the means they have—unseen, unthanked.
Everyone believes themselves to have been alone in their struggles. Only in this moment do they realise they never have been.