Risking the Sacred – an essay by Tim Miller

Many thanks to Sarah Law over at Amethyst Review, who just published my essay on poetry and the sacred. You can read it here.

Sarah's avatarAmethyst Review

RISKING THE SACRED

Many years ago now, while living in California, I was sitting in a mostly-empty university library, surprised to find a literary manifesto in a fairly prominent US magazine. Seeing almost immediately that it was just a lot of posturing and attitude, I gave up. Turning, I saw that behind me on a shelf was a set of books, Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, an area of history whose religion and mythology—from Egypt to Mesopotamia and early Judaism—had always held my interest. I gladly pulled the first volume off the shelf, and put the magazine aside.

Up until now, hindsight always made this the moment when I chose an interest in “the sacred in literature” over the much larger net of “literature” itself. But just as the order and meaning derived from religion is often used to oppose the random cruelty of everyday life, I’ve spent…

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#231: The mythology of the moon – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 6/1/26: Tonight, we delve into the significance of the moon in mythology, religion, and folklore. I read from the Taschen Book of Symbols, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, and Mircea Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion.Finally, and most personally, I read about the history of Rosh Chodesh, the monthly Jewish holiday recognizing the New Moon. For this, I read a passage from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s A Guide to Jewish Prayer.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #231: The mythology of the moon
  2. #230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic
  3. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture
  4. #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974
  5. #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem
  6. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities
  7. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling
  8. #224: Let's talk about William Blake
  9. #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens
  10. #222: Seamus Heaney – 10 Essential Poems

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