Our writers celebrate the work of repair – of objects, relationships, communities, and landscapes – and reckon with its limits.
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 possession 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.
On this theme:
- A handyman settles for humble work and doesn’t wish more for his children.
- A mother mends her daughters’ clothes into extravagant works of arts.
- A pastor in a declining denomination asks where to start repairing the church.
- A farmer says a restored landscape will be more than it was before.
- Yazidi, Rohingya, and Uyghur survivors of sexual violence find ways to reclaim their dignity.
- Painter Makoto Fujimura says artists don’t fight culture wars, they make culture.
- Prisoners and staff say prisons don’t rehabilitate, but education in prison just might.
- A schoolteacher says education requires family, school, and community.
- A church that prays in the language of Jesus, scattered by war, lives on in new places.
Plough Quarterly
features stories,
ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.