A person is like a boat, as the song goes:

Row, row, row your boat…

I think that’s about my favorite song in the world, and what it says is the whole goal here. That and facing where you’ve been with your back to what’s ahead; row hard or row gently, and try to steer.

I’m Nathan Schneider, a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. I’ve written a book each on God and the Occupy movement. Writing articles for a variety of publications—from The New York Times and Harper’s and The Nation to this Row Boat—keeps my notebooks filled. Editing the online religion magazine Killing the Buddha keeps me weird. Waging Nonviolence, a publication I co-founded, keeps me up on struggles for justice around the world. And being a contributing editor at the Social Science Research Council’s online forum The Immanent Frame keeps me in touch with the academy.

I suppose what I’m after is the chronicling of ideas, of perfect worlds, of ordinary imaginations in practice. My method is speculative: every word is hypothesis—while recognizing fearfully that with even the most casual remark we are building ourselves and our world irrevocably.

Write to me at nathan@therowboat.com.