Our Autumn Issue *Friendship* is live! 🧵See the thread of highlights below or read the issue here: plough.com/magazine/friendsh…

"Each person is God’s creature, and she will not find peace until she recognizes her lowliness. Until she admits, as the sisters of Lynton and Light Row have done, that she is, as the deepest level, nothing she has done, but only who she is." plough.com/articles/the-sist…

“In my experience of going to see Vermeer exhibitions over many, many years, you often see people, which is unusual for a painter who’s been dead for so many hundreds of years, you often see people in front of his pictures, perhaps crying, or at least with a tear in their eye, and they might be still in front of a painting for five minutes or ten minutes.” —Andrew Graham-Dixon plough.com/articles/hidden-m…

“The arabesque testifies to two key features to Islam’s vision of harmonious synthesis of dualities: that it is accomplished organically, rather than by force in a top-down, imposed manner – seamlessly weaving them together with ‘respect, constant reference (and reverence)’ to the design of God, who is their origin and destiny; and that it be dynamic and generative, breathing life and dignity into each part, rather than crushing their vibrancy and agency, causing them to enter into a lively ‘dance’ with each other.” @stephengadubato plough.com/articles/the-esse…

“A good life is not merely one indefinitely extended through meticulous attention to bodily wellness, but one spent in community and with joy.” @malcolmguite plough.com/articles/in-defen…

The mayor, I think, had it trucked in—this stump Of an ancient olive tree. The muscled torso In torsion like some wrestling Greek hero’s Statue found without its limbs—a lump Of twisted xylem. For years I thought it dead— @ae_stallings plough.com/articles/the-stum…

“Looking Bhopal’s survivors in the eye reveals the weight of their history and their unwavering determination for justice, but also their humanity – genuine smiles, a desire to share, to rise above, sometimes timidly, other times with unyielding persistence.” —Cristiano Denanni plough.com/articles/the-face…

“It takes a special kind of love to get a child to drift off to accordion music. But my father, widowed at thirty-nine, achieved this by lighting a candle each evening in the bedroom I shared with my sisters, and coaxing folk songs from his old Hohner until we fell asleep.” @NorannV plough.com/articles/how-to-l…

“We were gifts that stretched our families’ humanity, but no one much recognized that at the start. We made lives for ourselves from our circumstances and our temperaments, as do all our fellow humans, living as freely as we could within the constraints of our place and time, our embeddedness in the world.” —Rosemarie Garland-Thomson plough.com/articles/the-body…

Plough Subscribers can access this week’s free ebook, *The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers* in the Downloads section of their account. plough.com/books/gospel-in-d…

Don’t look for your initials in the geese honking overhead or to see thru the glass even darkly. It says the most obvious crap— put down that gun, you need a sandwich. @marykarrlit plough.com/articles/mary-kar…

Watch the 2025 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award Ceremony to hear Rhina’s comments on the winner’s and finalists’ poems: youtube.com/watch?v=1sgYZ1Yv…

“For any work of art to be acceptable to God it must first be right with itself. … For example, a good religious play must first and foremost be a good play before it can begin to be good religion. —Dorothy L. Sayers plough.com/articles/the-busi…