Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.... Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and
philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake.

— HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)

features  JULY/AUGUST 2004 · VOL XVIII NO 4

Addictions Ministry
The Rev. Dr. Denis Meacham's innovative program is a model for other churches. /BY MICHELLE BATES DEAKIN

Homecoming
Extracts from a poem cycle reflecting on the Middle Passage from Africa to America. /BY EVERETT HOAGLAND