Autumn 2023
Contents
Also available as an audio issue and by podcast
Editorial
Finding the Seed within Decay | Caroline Langston
Poetry
How to Walk in Space: Untethering & How to Walk in Space: 3:35AM Dec 9, 2022 | Joel Peckham
Yom Kippur in Boston & Grapes of Sukkot | Maxim D. Shrayer
from whence salvation | Jean Anne Feldeisen
When and If | David James
Between Slaughter and Exile | Edward A. Dougherty
Rembrandt's Good Samaritan, Then and Now | Adele Ne Jame
Autumn in Paris, Texas; Tennessee Camp Meeting, 1982; A Vagrant | Stephen M. Sanders
Madness | Brandon James O'Neil
In a Cloud & Wall Hanging | Chila Woychik
Prodigy of the Big Ones | Peter Carrington Venable
For the usher who served the Lord's Supper to my wife and daughter wearing a sidearm
Jonathan Frey
Gardens of Earth | Erica Waters
Nonfiction
Less and More | Angela Townsend
Visual Art
Annunciation / Relics of Annunciation | Michelle J. Chun
Reverent Marvels | Maura H. Harrison
Interview
Visual Prayer: Visual Artist Lillian Richards
In Conversation with Emily Chambers Sharpe
Reviews
Writing the Whale: A Review of Touching This Leviathan | Cheryl Sadowski
Growing Up, Barbie, and the Reclamation of Girlhood | Emma Russell
Contemplative Practices
A Blessing for Your Belly | Rebekah Vickery
Breathe: A Wild Church Reflection | Sarah Renee Werner
Reader Response Series: Introduction | Samir Knego
Cover Art: Under a Shady Tree by Maura H. Harrison
Reverent Marvels
by Maura Harrison
Borrowing a phrase from Julian of Norwich, I think it is important that “one should reverently marvel and humbly endure, ever delighting in God.” As a photographer, this idea directs my eye. Everywhere I look, I challenge myself to notice the beauty and marvels of God's natural world. In finding them, I hope to capture that beauty in a photograph so that I can share God’s marvels with others.
Visual Prayer: Visual Artist Lillian Richards
In Conversation with Emily Chambers Sharpe
It’s not so much about the finished product as the process and being still… and letting it go where it’s supposed to go.
—Lillian Richards
Writing the Whale
A Review of Touching This Leviathan by Peter Wayne Moe
by Cheryl Sadowski
“But what shall I know of whales?” asks Peter Wayne Moe in Touching This Leviathan, a work of lyric nonfiction that circles and stalks its elusive subject, the whale, trying “know the unknowable.”
Growing Up, Barbie, and the Reclamation of Girlhood
by Emma Russell
Every woman was once a little girl, and any little girl who ever picked up a Barbie doll didn’t play at being God; she was God. From a very young age, girls named their dolls, giving them rich backstories, developing their relationships, and cultivating their lives. We have been planning the trajectory of our doll’s life for as long as we can remember.
A Blessing for Your Belly
by Rebekah Vickery
In this contemplative exercise, we will honor our bellies.
As we start, I’d invite you to place your feet on the floor and take a moment to look around the room. See where the windows are, where the door is.
Breathe: A Wild Church Reflection
by Sarah Renee Werner
Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Feel your feet grounding you to the floor or to the earth beneath you. Feel your heart beating in your chest, your lungs taking in the air around you, and letting it out.