“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
— Desmond Tutu
“Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.’”
— Elisabeth Elliot
“Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”
— Frederick Buechner
Hope, when it matures, learns to walk more slowly. It sheds easy assurances and takes on weight—becoming less about outcomes and more about meaning, faithfulness, and love. This Winter issue of Radix is shaped by that kind of hope.
This issue is also shaped by gratitude and grief.
Even as we notice the Light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome, we notice a light which has left us in these early days of Advent. Luci Shaw, longtime friend, mentor, and wise counselor to Radix magazine and New College Berkeley, passed into the fullness of God’s love on December 1st, just a few weeks shy of her 97th birthday. We grieve her absence even as we celebrate her indelible imprint on our lives.
For years Luci served as Radix’s Poetry Editor and for many of those years she also chaired our Board. In the 1970s she and her husband Harold Shaw spoke at the fledgling New College Berkeley, and she was our friend from then on. Through the decades Luci taught and led retreats for the college, and, following Harold’s death, Luci was often joined at Radix and New College gatherings by John Hoyte, her husband for the last thirty-three years of her life.
Luci helped us all notice the Light in the darkness. She spread the light of Jesus Christ in the world through her art, deep friendships, the steadfast pursuit of truth and justice, and her honest faith. Each of us who knew her felt like warm rocks in the sun, bathed in her welcoming delight. What an experience of grace!
In the spring, we will be dedicating an entire issue to poetry in remembrance of Luci Shaw that will feature some of Luci’s poetry and insightful prose as we honor her life, work, and generous presence in our community.
— the Radix Editorial Board
Luci’s life and witness echo through much of what follows in these pages.
Here, mental health is engaged not as an abstract concern or a problem to be solved, but as a lived, embodied reality—intertwined with disability, trauma, technology, prayer, imagination, and community. Across six conversations, we encounter voices who speak honestly about suffering while refusing despair; who challenge reductionism without denying complexity; and who insist that healing often arrives through presence, story, and shared space.
In these interviews, we hear from:
- Susan Phillips, on spiritual direction, silence, and the slow work of God—what it means to be listened into life.
- Poet Traci Neal, reflecting on faith, neurodivergence, obedience, and the sacred power of kindness.
- Corey Hatfield, on autism, suffering, and beauty, and the hard-won grace that emerges through love and endurance.
- Michell Temple, on resilience, relational legacy, and the fragile work of connection in a polarized world.
- Corey Parish, exploring disability, difference, and the art of encounter—what it means not to fix the other, but to receive them.
- Duncan Reyburn, offering a Chestertonian prescription for the modern soul—where wonder, humility, and joy remain central to human flourishing.
The fiction, essays, columns, poetry, and reviews that follow continue this slow work. They explore what it means to pray when time is scarce, to steward creation amid crisis, to tell the truth without losing tenderness, to wrestle honestly with anger, and to imagine peace with clarity rather than naïveté.
Fiction
- The Sound of the Sea
- The Art of War
Features
- From “Problem-Solving” to Presence: How the Church Can Follow Jesus While Engaging Mental Health
- Breathing Against the Clock: Prayer and the Slow Restoration of Being
- AI and the Modern Contemplative
- The Earth Is the Lord’s: Stewardship in an Age of Crisis
- Healing Through Storytelling
- Light-Bearing: An excerpt from The Light from a Thousand Wounds
- Confessions of an Angry Christian
Columns
- Imagination as Spiritual Practice: When Peace Has a Face
- The Magnificat, Andor, and Gospel Hope
Reviews
- Fold Into Other Creatures: On Named and Nameless by Susan McCaslin
- Death and Devices: A Dark Academia Mystery by Anna Vander Wall
- The Locust Years by Paul J. Pastor: A Meeting of Opposites
- Humbler Forms of Beauty in Witness to Life
- Musical Order and New Babel: On Apocalypse Dance by Ethan McGuire
Poetry
- Hope
- First Tires on Fresh Snow
- It Is as if Infancy Were the Whole of Incarnation
In winter, growth is hidden but not absent. Beneath frozen ground, something is quietly forming. May this issue encourage patient faith, attentive presence, and the courage to remain human together. — M