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Welcome back to Hope is Kindled, where stories help us rediscover our moral compass and our shared humanity. In this episode, we explore John Irving’s The Cider House Rules — a powerful reflection on compassion, choice, and the search for belonging. Through the lives of Homer Wells, Dr. Larch, and the residents of St. Cloud’s, we examine what it means to do good in an imperfect world.
With historical, psychological, and literary insight, we unpack the novel’s difficult moral questions and its tender faith in human decency. As always, we look for the flicker of hope that endures even in life’s grayest places — the rules we write for ourselves when none seem to fit.

“Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”

In a world where survival depends on blending in, Aliens Anonymous, a new musical with seventeen songs on the album, follows a hidden community of extraterrestrials living quietly among humans, each carrying the weight of isolation, identity, and the fear of being truly seen.

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