Soul
Meaning, suffering, joy, mortality. Some news is about what happens inside a life. These reflections sit with stories of grief and gladness and bring them to the texts that have carried both for millennia.
When a crucifix kills a priest, everyone wants a verdict
A crucifix killed Fr. Patricio Sánchez during a livestreamed Mass in Ecuador. Jesus was once asked about eighteen people a tower killed, and what they had done to deserve it.
A mother read every page, and the room wanted to move on
Sophie Rottenberg, 29, confided in ChatGPT before she died. Asked about her, a publicist wanted the future. Jesus told a story that does the math the other way.
The prosperity preacher who met the camel and the needle in prison
Jim Bakker preached that God wants you rich. In prison, Jesus' hard words about wealth made him sick. He died Monday at 86, his story still unfinished.
Which daughter do you hold first when the plane falls?
As Flydubai 1073 dropped, Lital Hirschl-Shahar had four girls, two hands, and a face gone grey. What she told them, still afraid, was where her trust was.
Who do you tell when you can't tell anyone?
About one in five AI users say they're more honest with a machine than with people they know. James puts confession somewhere a machine can't follow.
The check that made no sense in a refugee family's kitchen
His memoir opens on his refugee parents at the kitchen table, holding an envelope with his name on it, smiling in disbelief at money he had done nothing to earn.
France is baptizing adults again, and grief opened the door
Record numbers of French adults were baptized this Easter. Ask them why, and most point back to the same place: an illness, a death, a season when life came apart.
Michael J. Fox names his decline and his hope together
Thirty-five years into Parkinson's, he stood to accept the award and said two things at once: the disease keeps getting harder, and a cure keeps getting closer.
The KGB's worst prison held the Soviet Union's best library
Stalin's purges killed the readers and shelved their books inside Lefortovo. Decades later a new prisoner opened them and found the one thing the KGB could never confiscate.
Wendell Berry made an ambition of staying put
He wrote 50 books with a pencil on land his family had worked since 1803. When he died Monday at 92, people who agree on nothing grieved together.
The unraveling no one in the stadium sees
At least one in four dead NFL players had the brain disease CTE. Its worst comes years later, long after the crowd has gone home.
A mother, three small children, and a country that needs a verdict
Her trial has become a national argument over whether she is a monster or a casualty. Scripture's hardest book about suffering suggests both sides are talking too soon.
A gift, itemized and sold
Harvard will pay $53 million after its morgue manager stole and sold donated bodies. The settlement can compensate; it cannot undo what the theft actually violated.
The Solitude Trend That Films Everything but the Way Back
A trend turns living alone into an aspiration, and the peace looks real. Whether solitude is the kind you return from is the question the videos leave open.
The Machine Gets Sharper as the Muscle Wastes
An essay warns AI can perfect your work while thinning the person who does it. The tools that flatter and finish for us strip the friction that forms us.
She Lived in an Iron Lung and Married at Seventy-Eight
A love poem about floods and money is read at weddings by people never tested on it. Martha Lillard, the last American in an iron lung, married at seventy-eight.
The Restlessness the Fourth of July Cannot Quiet
The country promised the pursuit of happiness, and pursuit was the honest word. A restless heart, named 1,600 years ago, is not something a nation can fill.
They Sweat, Then Say the Name of the Person Who Died
Grieving strangers gather in a New York studio to sweat, then share who they lost. It is easy, one says, to feel alone in a crowded room.
The Surgeon Believed in Heaven and Was Still Afraid to Die
A missionary surgeon caught Ebola and found that his faith in heaven did not keep him from being terrified to die. Scripture never promised it would.
The one who could undo the death stopped to cry first
An actress who buried both parents while fighting cancer said grief has no formula. At his friend's tomb, knowing he was about to raise him, Jesus wept first
Four in ten people now avoid the news, and it isn't apathy.
More than four in ten people now avoid the news. The cause looks less like apathy than overload, and a line from Jesus offers a far smaller assignment.
His family had started the funeral. Then he crawled back.
Dawa Sherpa, 52, vanished descending Everest. After nearly a week, with his family two days into funeral rites, a cleanup crew found him crawling toward base camp.
A Paris hospital let rescued donkeys do what medicine couldn't
At a psychiatric hospital near Paris, five donkeys saved from neglect now help patients with depression and schizophrenia find their way back.
Pope Leo told half a million young people to just be human
On June 6, at a vigil in Madrid, Pope Leo XIV gave 500,000 young people a single assignment: be human, as Christ is.
The phones came out. The scores stayed flat. Something else came back.
The first nationwide study of school cellphone bans found no test-score gain. Student wellbeing rebounded and climbed above where it started.
A 72-year-old grandmother crossed the stage to a standing ovation
Her grandchildren cheered loudest. The degree took years. The walk took seconds. Something held her up the whole way.
A Mother Meets the Woman Who Carries Her Daughter's Hand
A grieving mother flew across the world to hold the hand her daughter left behind, now living on a stranger's arm.
The Years Moses Could Already Count
Billions are being spent to make the human boundary negotiable. An ancient prayer treats that same boundary as the one thing worth knowing precisely.
A Reputation for Being Alive
Attendance is up and the cameras are rolling. Visibility and life are not the same measurement, and Scripture knows the difference.
She Buried Her Daughter Twice
A mother chose to bury her daughter a second time, in a wooded place where wildflowers could grow. Mother's Day, for many, is the day that wounds.