Starting today and the following two Sundays, the Gospel will focus on Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, found in Matthew 13. This week, we’ll hear the Parable of the Sower and Seeds. Next ...

In Matthew 13, a chapter full of parables, Jesus tells the parable of the Sower of the seed. It is a story of a farmer, scattering seed which fell upon four different types of soil; but only one soil ...

"And some fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold. As he said this, he called out, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear’" (Luke 8:8). This Bible verse is from the Gospel of Luke, one ...

Octavia Butler has often been called the "grand dame of science fiction," and for good reason. Her extensive catalog of books, including the much-beloved Kindred, has changed the shape of speculative ...

I have been preparing to walk across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago, a journey that pilgrims have made for a thousand years. In order to break in my hiking boots, I’ve been walking through ...

When composer and multi-instrumentalist Toshi Reagon first received a copy of Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” she was already familiar with the late author’s work. But something about it ...

Toshi Reagon, the genre-busting folk-gospel-rock musician, first encountered Octavia Butler's Afro-futuristic "Parable of the Sower" in the late 1990s. She was shocked by the novel's prescience. "When ...