Archive
More than thirty years of First Things articles at your fingertips.
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Articles
Believer
My friend insists he wants me to be saved. He argues that my soul will come to grief unless it’s rescued from my unbelief by Jesus”though I’m fairly well...
Women’s Work
Madwomen:The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral translated by Randall Couch University of Chicago Press, 160 pages, $25 We all know the risks involved in returning to old loves:...
Glosa: Apart and Not Yet a Part
Apart and not yet a part, I live lightless and unseeing to be consumed out of being. My soul hungers for release from all earthly things created, and above...
Glosa: To the Divine
The beauty that can be eyed will never be my undoing, but rather what, beyond viewing, only fortune can provide. The taste of what can’t endure does no more,...
Letrillos
Nativity With God’s Word-the burgeon that swells in her womb” now she comes, the Virgin: if you give her room! The Sum of Perfection Forget created things, but their...
The Youthful Shepherd
A youthful shepherd, wandering and feeling far from his heart’s content, goes sad and lonely, his thoughts on one he loves, and for her only his breast pierced by...
I Went In, I Knew Not Where
I went in, I knew not where and stayed, not knowing, but going past the boundaries of knowing.I knew not the place around me, how I came there or...
Coplas: In Pursuit
In pursuit of amatory adventure, hope bid me fly and I rose so high, so hig that I closed upon the quarry. To achieve so great a height, divine...
Songs of the Soul in Intimate Amorous Communion with God
O love, you living flame who wound with tender fire my very soul, down to its depths descending! No longer hushed by shame, come now, to your desire; sunder...
Song of the Soul that Takes Pleasure in Knowing God by Faith
How well I know the spring that feeds the torrent, though night has fallen! The spring runs from forever, and past finding; how well I know it as it...
Lift Me, Lord
Lift me, Lord, for I fall and nothing stays me, loveless and heedless, without faith or fear. I long to rise but lie unmoving here: the very self that...
Solitude—The Wilds
What solitary distances, what sere, remote escarpments, what unbounded, wide eternities they are where you reside, in which no creatures of your hand appear! What desolated vistas, and how...
Verses of the Soul That Pines to See God
Not in myself do I live but in such great hope, that I die of longing to die. I no longer live in me; lacking God, from life I’m...
One Darkest Night
One darkest night I went, aflame with love’s devouring eager burning— O fortunate event!— no witnesses discerning, the house now still from which my steps were turning. Hidden by...
