How to Resist One of This Moment’s Greatest Temptations

Trappist monk Thomas Merton wraps up his book The Seven Storey Mountain with a useful phrase: “Here ends the book, but not the searching.” It rhymes a bit with Rainer Maria Rilke’s guidance to not just live the questions, but to love the questions. And it clashes with that

Nearly Everything I Know About How to Improve Democracy

Let’s say I give you a toolbox with a hammer, wrench, screwdriver, and I tell you to build a house. That’d be awfully tricky to do. And that’s a bit like what we’re given when it comes to shaping our democracy: an incomplete toolbox. Vote, protest,

Three Comforts to Take Us Into a Chillier, Darker Season

Every so often, the weekend linguist in me goes poking around in word etymologies. Which is how I learned that the verb to comfort arrives to us from the Old French meaning, among other things, “to strengthen.” It makes a good kind of sense, doesn’t it? It’s hard

For When You Think Policy Change Can’t Happen

There were ashtrays in our desks! a woman once told me of her 1960s college days. The professors usually taught in a cloud of smoke. Totally inconceivable now, I shook my head. Well, the woman said, now - she gestured to the smoke-free office we were in, which was next

Give the Gift of a Stronger Democracy

🎁 Gift Policy is for Lovers Do you have someone in your life who's looking to make good change? This friendly Friday newsletter could be just the ticket! Gift a Subscription How It Works 1. Click the button above to purchase a subscription 2. Complete the checkout process 3.

One Note We Can Send for a Healthier Democracy

The whole experience was so smooth, it’d be easy to forget. The mind has a way of remembering the bumpy and rough stuff. I went to the town clerk’s office to vote early. The woman behind the desk explained how it worked to me like I was the

Strengthening Democracy Over Coffee: A Powerful Way to Build a Better Future

One cold autumn evening, I was in bed reading a book by Bishop Michael Curry when I came across a saying so useful, I got up in my PJs to jot it down in a journal. “What are you going to do with your dash?” the old saying goes. The

A Few Quick Actions for a Better Country

One morning, a friend and I were walking our dogs in the park. On the path up ahead, there was a woman holding a tangle of something in her hands. As she got closer, I saw it was a bunch of bittersweet, a super invasive that strangles trees to death

Democracy Is Hiring! You’d Be Perfect

I knew a woman who didn’t like lemonade much. But she wouldn’t - she couldn’t - drive by a lemonade stand without stopping. She’d buy a few wax cups, usually Country Time Lemonade or Minute Made Lemonade from concentrate, and glug it down enthusiastically. BEST I’

Useful Things to Know About Our Politicians

When Lyndon Johnson first became a Senator, he spent hours sitting in the Senate chamber watching the floor action. The Texan – who would go on to become one of history’s most powerful Senate Majority Leaders, who would muscle through the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, the creation