Browse Topics
Religion and Philosophy
Losing Our Religion
Molly Worthen On The Modern Search For Meaning
It seems every year a new survey comes out in which the category of “no religious affiliation” grows larger and larger. A small portion of those people embrace the label atheist or agnostic, but the vast majority don’t, and some would say the phrase “spiritual but not religious” applies to them.
March 2023
How To Be A Woman
I learned a woman could wield the power to turn heads. She could capture a room’s attention and make everyone laugh. Everything else I knew of women’s lives told me not to trust this kind of power, but I wanted it nonetheless.
March 2023
The Skull
When he held it out, I ran / my fingers over the shredded / cartilage of the nasal cavity / and the sutures that fused together / the cranium, the tip of my finger / gone for a second when I poked it / inside a shadowy orbit
March 2023Sunbeams
March 2023Not everybody feels religion in the same way. Some it’s in their mouth, but some it’s like a hope in their blood, their bones.
The Patron Saint Of Traffic Lights
My child is in the backseat with her mother / and can’t understand what’s happening, / keeps forgetting we’ve already told her / that she fainted and hit her head hard / on our living room’s stone floor
February 2023This Month In Sun History
Our 50th Year Of Publication
Sitting with his first wife, Judy, and a friend on a sunny beach in Algeciras, Spain, Sy Safransky embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately led him to create the magazine you now hold in your hand. In March 1970, for the first time, he placed a tab of LSD on his tongue. He was twenty-five years old.
February 2023
The Den Mother Has Her Say
Before we eat our snow cones, pet this dog. Don’t expect to earn a Wolf badge for your troubles. . . . Move slowly down the back, like you’re taking your fingers on a trip, until you get to the bulge on the haunch. Yes, it’s a tumor. Yes, it’s cancerous. Pet it like it’s nothing special, just part of the dog.
February 2023
Captain’s Log
7:17 — Wife yells, Oh, God, look! Dusk now, harder to see. What? I say. Bear! she says. To right, where riverbank gives way to pasture, large beast lurks in shadow of tree. Dark, terrible beast, now moving slightly toward us. Large, dark beast says, Moooo.
February 2023
Sins Of The Mother
Although I still identify as a Christian, I am endlessly unpacking and discarding the church teachings of my childhood. My belief in God is no longer built on the fear of what will happen to me after I die.
January 2023
Unsheltered
Eric Tars On The Human Right To Housing
The Martin v. Boise decision stands for the very simple principle that punishing a homeless person for undertaking basic, life-sustaining activities like sleeping or sheltering themselves — when there’s no adequate alternative accessible to them — is cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
January 2023
