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Readers write: Mosaic nation, intriguing tour, possibilities for every area

Letters to the editor for the Jan. 1, 2018-Jan. 8, 2018 weekly magazine.

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Ann Hermes
George Kaiser sits with Elijah, a student at Educare, during reading time on October 13, 2017 in Tulsa, Okla.
  • By Robert Runo Monitor reader
  • Laura Lawrence Monitor reader
  • Susie Getzschman Monitor reader

Mosaic nation

Regarding the Nov. 27 cover story, “Heartland strong”: I loved this article because it shows the mosaic substance of our nation. So much of what I have read fails to deliver what goes on in the minds of middle-of-the-road thinkers with big ideas. Thank you.

Robert Runo

Chardon, Ohio

Intriguing tour

Regarding the Dec. 18 OneWeek article “Focusing on the ‘herstory’ of Paris”: Now that’s a tour I’d like to take! I am not one to “do” tours, but this article has whetted my appetite, and I’d like to do this one.

Laura Lawrencex

Ashland, Ore.

Possibilities for every area

Regarding the Nov. 20 cover story, “A billionaire’s war on poverty”: This article was so full of wonderful details of George Kaiser’s support for his community of Tulsa, Okla., that I found myself applying these ideas here in St. Louis, Ferguson, and other nearby suburbs of Missouri. I spend time each week in the jail volunteering with a book club, and we use our books to learn how to live better lives and evaluate how good a job our leaders are doing in envisioning a more forward-looking community. Some of Mr. Kaiser’s ideas are ones we sometimes reach for but have not articulated as clearly.

I intend to make copies of this article and take it to our next discussion to see what the prisoners think of it so that we can use it to help solve issues in our community. I have told them that they are the hope of the future of our city, and I think they are beginning to believe me; however, they are grappling with how they can have any individual impact. 

I also love your “People Making a Difference” series – it is so fresh and inspiring! Thank you for offering these little gifts of possibilities to those of us living in areas that sometimes feel left behind!

Susie Getzschman

Rock Hill, Mo.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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