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Benjamin Wildflower is a member of an AFL-CIO trade union who pursues his love of printmaking on the side. He calls the printmaking process a meditative one, but his images pack a punch. Most of them exhibit a grassroots Catholic Worker sensibility, offering political-religious commentary and a call to action. Many of his images focus on Mary and her song, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), which speaks of the poor being raised up. “There are enough images out there focusing on the lowliness and meekness of Mary,” he writes.

(Persian priest)

We found it strange the King
was more keen about a baby
than a star.

Before our journey to the birth, gifts once came
with their own requirements and obligations.
To give, really, was to ask.

Soon it was revealed our largesse
was dwarfed by a geography more expansive
than our charts. A gift no longer meant a ledger.

Afterwards I dreamt I saw a despot
licking dust, so we steered our lathered beasts
clear of the City. Sand blew

Matt and Adam discuss story, Christmas and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Chicago. January. Present time.
“The core of winter,” says our weatherman,
Whose forecast draws more eyes than local crime
Or something happening in Somewheristan.
A storefront theatre. A wind-chilled night.
We’re in a tiny lobby, parka-packed.
A call: “The house is open!” Polite,
We set out folding chairs from where they’re stacked.
Lights down. Lights up. Two actors: He and She.
Her voice. Then his. They whisper; we’re that near.
Who now recalls the winter? Nobody.
We’re anywhere. It’s anytime. For here,

Melinda Matsoukas’s film rolls terror and hope into one story.

Searching for the Mary statue from her childhood, Sonja Livingston found much more.

                        Before sunrise

It is as if the light that is to come
had taken on a flake-like form and substance
laid itself, in silhouette, along, against,
the windward part
of every naked trunk and branch.
The ground below lies cloaked,
each blade of grass or bracken
with its glistening garment,
so that, even at the darkest hour last night,
a luminescence shone as if reflected
from whatever burns within.

Icons in the Byzantine style traditionally depict their subjects as fixed for all time in recognizable poses against symbolic backdrops. Charalambos Epaminonda, a Greek Orthodox painter from Cyprus, challenges these conventions in his image of the Sermon on the Mount. We know we have stepped into sacred space from the stylized figures, the flattened perspective, and the disproportionate size of the seated Christ, but the cubistic color fragments and spidery white lines vibrate with an energy very much of this world.

Matt and Adam talk sacrifice, small-town life, Christmas movies, and the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life.

And he took him by the right hand and raised him up.
                                                                    —Acts 3:7

How many times have you seen this
on the football field? The hulking tackle,
after the play, reaching down

to the halfback and pulling him up
with a sure, strong grip. Every once
in a while, a player from the other team