Prayer https://www.thesunmagazine.org/rss en-us The Good End of Pleasant Street When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28987 Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/606-the-good-end-of-pleasant-street 606-14-easley-preview.jpg 606 - Easley - Lanier Struck tfd3@psu.edu I often wonder if there was something I missed, if the thunder and lightning said something I couldn’t understand.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28970 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-struck 605-44-perry-preview.jpg 605 - Perry - Davis Practice Losing Everything I challenged my students to interrogate their own religious inheritance, and I spoke frequently of the “ethics of faith.” I asked whether they’d arrived at faith through honest inquiry or by suppressing their doubts.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28957 Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/604-practice-losing-everything 604-14-duval-preview.jpg 604 - Duval - Percesepe The Danish Then I felt a small admiration for the Man With The Danish, who hoped to give away excess food rather than throw it in the trash. Maybe I should have accepted the Danish, although I didn’t want it. By turning it down resentfully, I might have discouraged him from ever offering food to a stranger again. But there’s no time to think when someone thrusts a sudden dessert in your face.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28898 Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/601-the-danish 601-40-began-preview.jpg 601 - Beban - Sparrow Silent Disco “We’re here to have fun,” she says. “Be the full expression of yourselves! You can go anywhere or stay right here—wherever the music moves you.”

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28848 Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/598-silent-disco 598-45-Wolf-preview.jpg 598-Wolf-Miller The Cat Who Woke Me Up The hierarchy that places humans above cats has broken down. I know, in a way I once didn’t, that cats and dogs and birds and bees and every living creature are conscious in a way that’s too hard for most of us to acknowledge. We’re all a bunch of narcissists who imagine that no life-form is quite as appealing as this one we call human. We’re unable to share the stage unless the animals are the supporting players.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28846 Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28846 598-14-Safransky-preview.jpg 598-Safransky-Safransky Avium You don’t know what’s with Marjorie, // but you almost love her as you gird your loins for a cure / worse than the disease. Imagining two years of drugs / in your still-able body that climbs hills and sings, // you can’t stop wondering how you got this thing. Yet / it must be said avium blesses you with a meaning hardly / to be believed. . .

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28832 Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/avium-kathryn-jordan-poem-597 Sunbeams

In the beginning was the beat, and the beat was the rhythm of God, and the rhythm of God became the harmony of humanity.

Clarence Glover

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28966 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/605-sunbeams 605-49-litchkofski-preview.jpg 605 - Litchkofski - Sunbeams Reason To Believe Cohen: Do you think part of that evil spirit is found in every human?

Sullivan: I don’t think we’re born with it, but we have receptors that can connect to it, and we decide how much attention we give it, how much we turn toward its allure.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28734 Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:14 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/592-reason-to-believe 592-04-bonnet-preview.jpg 592-Bonnet-Cohen Hymn reese.menefee@gmail.com We exist on the cusp of light and ruin. / Some nights I pray for time // to fold into itself, then spit us out / small and smooth like tumbled rocks, // alloys of past and present.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28683 Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/589-hymn 589-46-meza-preview.jpg 589 - Meza - Menefee A Thousand Words A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/28576 Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/586-a-thousand-words 586-21-mcgovern-preview.jpg 586 - McGovern - A Thousand Words The Bleeding Woman So, Maryam the elder goes on, they arrest Yeshua and some of his followers and bundle them off to our dear high priest, Caiaphas, who decides it’s better for Yeshua to die than to cause problems with the Romans. The high priest is always sucking Roman cock—can’t help himself—so he turns Yeshua over to the governor, lots of bureaucracy, you know how these things go.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21634 Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:05:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/21634-the-bleeding-woman 579 - Hansen - Osterloh Without Ceasing You never grew tired of watching her work. You loved the hum of the machine, the sawdust that stuck to her sleeve, and how she bent her head over the wood like something swan. You knew she was sharing something intimate with you. You were witnessing prayer.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26253 Tue, 31 May 2022 04:05:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26253-without-ceasing Riding Out At Evening At dusk, everything blurs and softens. / From here out over the long valley, / the fields and hills pull up / the first slight sheets of evening, / as, over the next hour,  / heavier, darker ones will follow.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25832 Mon, 28 Feb 2022 05:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25832-riding-out-at-evening January 2021 Featuring Bill McKibben, Rebecca McClanahan, Derrick Jensen, and more.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24723 Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24723-january-2021 World Prayer Day While people all over the world / chanted and prayed for a miracle, / we stood in the woods with binoculars / trained on a pair of bluebirds / flitting from branch to branch, / tiny chests puffed out / in the chill morning air.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27947 Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27947-world-prayer-day Just This Breath heatherellesellers@gmail.com I can’t see the virus, but I feel its seeds in me. I can’t see my faith, but I feel its seeds in me, too.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23431 Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23431-just-this-breath Selected Poems — from “In The Beautiful Rain” | Hearing that old phrase “a good death,” / which I still don’t exactly understand, / I’ve decided I’ve already / had so many, I don’t need another.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27514 Sat, 01 Dec 2018 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27514-selected-poems Reverence I bow to the pencil, the pencil maker, the tree that gave its wood, the graphite that fills its core, and the mind that conceived pencil. I bow to all the teeth and jaws that have chewed pencils out of boredom or nervousness.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25487 Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25487-reverence The Lonely Girl’s Guide To The Cosmos There isn’t really a reset button for life — a switch you can hit, after you’ve gone through something terrible, that lets you go back to the beginning and start over. But there should be.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23275 Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23275-the-lonely-girl-s-guide-to-the-cosmos Selected Poems — from “To My Husband At The Beginning Of The Holy Month Of Ramadan” | Even though you no longer believe, you wake with me / before dawn. You prepare my breakfast: porridge, sliced banana, / a cup of tea, a glass of water.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22504 Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22504-selected-poems The Wrong Imam If we could have been inside his heart, if we could have been offered transportation from our Jerusalem to his heaven, this is what we might have absorbed: Abkar was not leading us in prayer. He was talking to God while we happened to be behind him, squeezed in so tightly we could hardly find places for our foreheads on flawless plush carpet.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25295 Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25295-the-wrong-imam 504 - Meyer - Moghul - Preview 504 - Meyer - Moghul Dirt Monkey My earliest Zen teachers were failure and my father, in that order. The first thing I failed at was being physically big. This wasn’t my fault, of course, but kids always feel directly responsible for how they look. And how I looked was small.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22681 Fri, 01 Jul 2016 23:04:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22681-dirt-monkey Sunbeams

The path of progress has never taken a straight line, but has always been a zigzag course amid the conflicting forces of right and wrong, truth and error, justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy.

Kelly Miller

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27248 Tue, 17 Nov 2015 16:48:35 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/27248-sunbeams Better Angels Adrift, unpinned, their lost / Feathers settle at my feet.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24745 Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24745-better-angels Imogene’s Prayer sybil.smith7@gmail.com The pills are about the size of a bing-cherry pit in diameter and are a faint green color, like the eggs of some songbirds. On one side they have a deeply inscribed SZ, on the other, the number 789. They are Ritalin, the ten-milligram kind. Imogene knows them by sight because occasionally patients admitted to the psychiatric ward where she works as a nurse have containers of assorted pills, and she has learned to spot the ones that will get her high.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22096 Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22096-imogene-s-prayer 458 - Pfingston - Smith The War Prayer “God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25909 Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/25909-the-war-prayer <em>excerpted from</em><br />All Men Are Brothers I have been practicing with scientific precision nonviolence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life — domestic, institutional, economic, and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26634 Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/26634-em-excerpted-from-em-br-all-men-are-brothers <em>excerpted from</em><br/>Courage To Pray Our deep reality may take over in moments when we are so carried away by joy that we forget who might be looking at us, . . . or when we are unselfconscious in moments of extreme pain, moments when we have a deep sense of sadness or of wonder. At these moments we see something of the true person that we are.

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24703 Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/24703-em-excerpted-from-em-br-courage-to-pray July 2010 I admit it: My memory isn’t what it used to be. I forgot what number we’re supposed to dial when we see the Supreme Court leaving the scene of a crime — for what else to call yesterday’s 5–4 decision to kill campaign-finance reform?

]]> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23616 Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400 https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/23616-july-2010