Essays

Rising Above

Rising Above

Mary A. OsborneJan 31, 202415 min read

Suspended in the gossamer realm of dreams, beyond the bounds of physicality, you might fly birdlike through the nighttime sky, rising weightless as a spirit, alighting on a star. The memory flutters like a moth before fading in the rosy…

Two angels singing. Benjamin West, nineteenth century? Pen, ink, watercolor. Denver Art Museum. Wikimedia Commons

Voice and Freedom 

Danielle WoernerJan 31, 202410 min read

Our voices, singing or speaking, are potentially a direct route from essence to expression, inspiration to music. There’s no keyboard, fiddle or drum to help us, or to hide behind. As with dancers, the physical vehicle is my own body,…

Meeting the Teacher

Meeting the Teacher

Llewellyn Vaughan-LeeJan 31, 202415 min read

Coming home…my heart was singing….I felt light, free and happy, as one would feel when coming home after a long absence. Irina Tweedie, arriving at her teacher’s house for the first time. Less than the dust at the feet of…

I Knew Two Men

I Knew Two Men

Roger LipseyJan 31, 202417 min read

I knew two men—professors in later life—who were one another’s good friends while graduate students at Yale in the mid-1950s. Their friendship at that time and the subsequent courses of their lives have lingered with me as a multiple sign,…

The Word for Soul

The Word for Soul

Surnaí MolloyJan 31, 20247 min read

The year was turning to the dark and I set up my new tent in the sitting room to see what it was like, and filled it with cushions and hung bunting inside to make a home of it. Lying…