If Tagore’s song is capable of great reverence for his beloved country, whose skies and people are the music of his soul, and of the surrender shown in the Gitanjali, his critical lens is much more grounded in the protest politics of his time. As a social reformer, Tagore held a clear vision for his rapidly changing colonial India, and it was modern, open towards the world—yet rooted in the humanistic values of his spiritual background. It is his focused lens—when turned on our Western culture—that illuminates its ability to organize and order the world while revealing the ways in which its materialism has made so desolate the life upon it.

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Baldwin’s lessons are so relevant that his message seems to collapse time. From Go Tell It on the Mountain, to Sonny's Blues, to Another Country, or The Price of the Ticket—from his essays to his plays—there is so much to say, so much to revere, that it feels like it would take a lifetime to articulate the complexities of that utterance. But I’ll take a smaller bit and share with you what he most wanted for us—those who would come after him—that we could at last be governed by the benevolence of love. And he shows us what is required to live from that space. I’ll give you a taste of his lulling blues, his idealism, his act of faith…

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Poet of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, Mary Oliver was willing to listen, to hear. From that willingness emerges a body of work that is as humble as it is wise. She sang with open throat the prayers of the grass, the waggle of honey bees, the flowing river, the waiting sun, and asked on behalf of the earth crumbling under our carbon footprint that we get to know this haven we have called mother.

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