As Onandaga Chief Oren Lyons testified at the United Nations in 1993, “We don’t call a tree a resource. We don’t call a fish a resource. We don’t call a bison a resource. We call them our relatives.” [Read More]
About Margaret Hammitt-McDonald
Hell-Mouth High
Why did North American mass-consumer culture elect to abandon its youth to bash their way through the pubertal wilderness without meaningful mentorship and a supportive community to embrace them when they emerge as new adults? [Read More]
Not Angels But Angles: Anglo-Saxon Studies and the Specter of White Supremacy
Anglo-Saxon “angels” became ideals of Germanic warrior manhood: loyal to their brotherly bands, stoic in fighting and loving, and noble in death. They were recruited posthumously into the army of white supremacy, incorporated into a mythology that canonized “Nordic” peoples as the angels and supermen ordained to dominate the earth. [Read More]
Heart Money, Not Blood Money
“We need to start to talk about money in ways that dethrone it and make it subject to human ethics and standards of love and decency.” [Read More]
Dangerous Angels
When I was a child, I imagined angels like the ones in sentimental postcards, those romanticized winged guardians walking alongside a blond, middle-class boy and girl whose aggressive normality rendered them as iconic as their protector. [Read More]
Encounters with the Jewish Jesus
Back in 1986, I was browsing my university bookstore when someone yelled, “How dare you wear that?!” Before I turned around, I glanced down to make sure my pants matched my shirt. What could I be wearing that was so offensive? Was this hostility even directed at me? The scowling woman was dressed in a […]
In Search of Sacred Love: A Review of “Jesus Loves Women” by Tricia Gates Brown
With an honesty that’s redemptive rather than brutal, Ms. Brown recounts how she “awakened to the goodness of being a sensual, sexual creature…”, a painful journey for which most of us growing up in the United States—inheritors of the Puritan worldview as we are—receive little support. [Read More]
Unmoored Souls: A Review of Moorings by Nancy Slavin
The epic travels of birds on their annual migrations once prompted a group of ornithologists to observe what happened as migration season approached, not to birds in the wild, but to captives. While their free brothers and sisters flew off to their winter homes, the caged birds became agitated, even when kept in a climate-controlled […]
A Review of “I’m Samson,” Said Sydney by Gregory Zschomler, illustrated by April Bullard
My two-year-old daughter, Luthien, and I enjoyed sharing the adventures of Sydney, a little boy with a big imagination. With his admiring father as his audience, he transforms his six-year-old self into Samson, the biblical strongman, and his toys become the fierce beasts and armies Samson defeats. All the while beaming approval of Sydney’s exploits, […]
Forest Quartet
One of two old Sitka spruces,
The stately old lady we call Iluvatar
Shades the east side of the house.
Where roots meet earth, she is an altar—
To approach her, you must ascend.