Busy with many things, I know you are,
And watch you turn away and close the door.
I see it in the way you drive your car,
In how things clutter on your kitchen floor.
Someone will advertise new ways to mend it,
To find a method and a discipline,
But you and they both know you’ll never end it,
Just fall for schemes to get rich or grow thin.
Even so, beneath the stirrings of your heart,
There lies some memory of peace and stillness,
An image uncontrived by human art
That makes this life seem one persistent illness.
Turn inward then, just as those teachers say,
Who make of silence words by which to pray.
—James Matthew Wilson
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
New Founders Wanted
It’s now 250 years since America declared her independence and embarked on the experiment of fashioning a…
Forget Odysseus. Aeneas Is the True American Hero.
Who is our Odysseus? Or more precisely, who is the most Odyssean hero of American film? Matt…
Meet the Post-Religious Right
There have been many books written about the online right and the Trump movement, most by people…
