Essays

“THE FIVE HEARTS OF DIVINE LOVE WITH CHRIST CRUCIFIED” FIFTEENTH CENTURY, GERMANY, WOOD-CUT

Love and Money, by Richard Smoley

January 10, 2018By Richard Smoley

The secret prices of love

Refugee Camp Alchemy, by Kenneth Krushel

November 1, 2017By Kenneth Krushel

A Palestinian rapper and the music of hope

Remarkable Beings, by Eleanor O’Hanlon

November 1, 2017By Eleanor O'Hanlon

Among elephants, it’s a family affair

You Would Run for Your Life, by Tracy Cochran

November 1, 2017By Tracy Cochran

A mother and daughter trace their roots to the Vikings—and to those they conquered

The Anonymous Ones, by Margaret Dulaney

November 1, 2017By Margaret Dulaney

Come join the circle of we who pray

Family, Faith, and Faygo: A Journey Through the Dark Carnival of the Juggalos, by Kitty Stryker

November 1, 2017By Kitty Stryker

Bonding among the Juggalos

Elizabeth, by Tracy Cochran

October 29, 2017By Tracy Cochran

The summer after I graduated from college, days before I moved to New York City to launch a real adult life, I saw a ghost—an apparition, a spirit, an angel.

To Honor the Sacred, by David Ulrich

July 30, 2017By David Ulrich

A photographer envisions the sacred and the profane on a Hawaiian island

The Yoga of Sacred Knowledge and Discernment, by Ravi Ravindra

July 30, 2017By Ravi Ravindra

Life lessons from the Bhagavad Gita

The Fairies’ Right of Way, by Betsy Cornwell

July 30, 2017By Betsy Cornwell

Protecting the places where the magic folk roam

What is the miraculous? Our first thought may be that it concerns a supernatural and sensational event. And yet this Summer 2018 issue of Parabola reveals that the most ordinary action—digging a garden or cooking a meal or making art—becomes sensational when it is performed with mindful awareness of what we are doing. Any action may be automatic or creative, repetitious or truly alive, participating in the life that is happening in the instant: “The situation is completely different when my action is not a repetition but something new, an action that can only take place in the present moment to respond to a need that I recognize right now,” writes Jeanne de Salzmann in this issue. Read more>

Stephen Weiss, MD, portrait of Brother David Steindl-Rast, Mt. Saviour Monastery, Elmira, NY

Learning to Die, by Brother David Steindl-Rast

The only point where one can start to talk about anything, including death, is where one finds oneself. And for me this is as a Benedictine monk. In the rule of St. Benedict, the momenta […]

The Art of Cleaning, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart

Housework as spiritual practice, from a Sufi master

Marion Woodman and the Search for the Conscious Feminine, by Patty de Llosa

“The true feminine is the receptacle of love. The true masculine is the spirit that goes into the eternal unknown in search of meaning. The great container, the Self, is paradoxically both male and female […]

Hearing the Cries of the World, by Mark Nepo

This story is so old we don’t know who told it or who it’s about, except that it speaks to all of us. We no longer know if it was a “he” or “she” at the center of the story. […]

To Go Beyond Thought, an Interview with Karen Armstrong

One bright spring day, Parabola met with Karen Armstrong in her suite at the Parker Meridian hotel in Manhattan. The petite, friendly 62-year-old British ex-nun, arguably the most influential commentator on religion in the English-speaking […]

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