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    Plough Quarterly No. 38: Repair

    Winter 2024

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    Featured Articles

    All Articles

    From the Editor

    In Praise of Repair Culture Modern life depends on the habit of discarding things. What if we fixed them instead?

    Essays

    To Mend a Farm A restored landscape will be more than it was before, bearing the marks of damage and repair. Three Pillars of Education In the Bruderhof, as in any society, we see how children flourish when family, school, and community align. Zero Episcopalians A young minister in a declining church looks for reasons to hope. Forgiving the Unforgivable? Are there any limits to forgiveness? Gerl-Falkovitz helps us plumb the depth of that question, showing why forgiveness is not something to be taken lightly. A Life That Answers War A Bruderhof member, my grandfather is an ardent conscientious objector to military service. But resistance to war has shaped his entire life.

    Personal History

    Not Everything Can Be Fixed Perhaps some things can’t be repaired, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Forgiving Dr. Mengele “For most people there is a big obstacle to forgiveness because society expects revenge. We need to honor and remember our victims, but I always wonder if my dead loved ones would want me to live with pain and anger until the end of my life...”

    Reading

    Repairing Relationships Four writers reflect on the restorative power of personal forgiveness.

    Reviews

    Editors’ Picks: Klara and the Sun Joy Clarkson reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.

    Editors’ Picks

    Editors’ Picks: Faith, Hope and Carnage Nick Cave’s and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage is a record of an unabashed longing for God.

    Family and Friends

    My Liberal Arts Education in Prison Studying the humanities while incarcerated restored my trust in humanity. One Parish One Prisoner Underground Ministries is pioneering a program to match former inmates with local churches for ongoing support and friendship. What’s a Repair Café? A repair café is a neighborhood meeting place where you can repair your things with the help of volunteers.

    Featured Authors

    front cover of Plough Quarterly Issue 38

    About This Issue

    Consumers campaign for a “right to repair” in protest of products’ wasteful “planned obsolescence.” Repair cafés spring up, in which old-timers teach greenhorns to mend clothes and appliances. But much more than our possessions stand in need of repair. For some, the Jewish phrase tikkun olam – to repair the world – may have become little more than a secular social justice mandate, not unlike the Christian cliché “God has no hands but ours.” Yet while we wait on God to repair the cosmos, there are indeed countless ways one can participate in this work, whether one is a mother, a handyman, a farmer, an artist, a teacher, or a pastor. The work may not be glamorous, but it calls forth our creativity and holds its own rewards.