Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up to find himself in a world he does not remember. In fact, he only remembers his name. Everything else is blank. But he is not alone. There are hundreds of other boys there who welcome him to the Glade – which he discovers is an open space enclosed by high stone walls. Like him, the other boys remember nothing before they woke up in the Glade, and no one can tell him why or how they arrived there. All they know is that every 30 days a new boy appears. In the absence of adult society, these boys have created a society for themselves, including hunting, farming, etc. But, when Teresa, the first girl, appears, she has a message for them that will change everything. She warns them that the world outside is facing disaster and they have been placed here as part of a strange experiment. Thomas just might be the leader they need to get out of this horrible place.
Mark Sappenfield
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.
