Caroline Langston

Caroline Langston is a contributor to Slant Books' “Close Reading” blog and was a regular contributor to Image’s “Good Letters.” She is writing a memoir about the U.S. cultural divide. She has contributed to Sojourners’ “God’s Politics” blog and aired several commentaries on NPR’s All Things Considered, in addition to writing book reviews for Image, Books and Culture, and other outlets. She is a native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, and a convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church. She lives outside Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.

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Transcendence in the Here and Now

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

Last night, I came out of Holy Thursday services at my Eastern Orthodox church with a burn on my hand from where molten beeswax had splashed from the candle I was holding while Jesus was being crucified. It was an uncannily warm spring evening, but there was low humidity and a stiff breeze that was exhilarating.

Generations, and What We Make of Them

A Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

How much rupture can a people stand? The pandemic separated us, but in so many ways, we remained separated when the immediate dangers of those two years ebbed–in our divided camps of faith, geography, and wealth.

Grappling with Pain, Together

At a Loss

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

It’s right at midsummer in the DC Metro region. It’s a place notorious for its heat and humidity, the original source of its moniker “the swamp.” During the past couple of weeks, though, there have been a curious number of cool, breezy, low-humidity days—

In Medias Res

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

If you’ve been following Vita Poetica Journal through our first editions, you will have noticed that we’ve tried to cultivate an awareness of all of us as a spiritual community—reflecting together on the momentous events of the past two years.

A Season for the Taking

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

Welcome to the Winter 2022 edition of Vita Poetica. We’re glad you’re here—and we’re hungry for your thoughts, forwards, shares, and submissions for our expanding community.

Our last editorial statement talked about the clamor of many of us to get up and go, to embark—after almost two years of pandemic retrenchment.

Time to Embark

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

This edition of Vita Poetica is our fourth, the final quarter marking the end of our first full year. We’re kind of amazed ourselves that we’ve gotten this far. This journal was born of longtime friendships and fleeting connections alike—all united in our desire to see the Spirit captured in our creative work, whether we have creedal affiliations, or none.

Slowly We Inch Outward—And into the Light

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

“ . . . For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them,” Jesus Christ promises his followers in Matthew 18:20 (KJV).

It’s a verse I’ve known all my life, even before I was willing to admit that a verse from the Bible could have all that much to say to me.

Anno Domini

Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston

I thought back to that old notion from Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, about our innate human tendency to experience an “oceanic feeling” of oneness with the universe. Freud sets that feeling as a developmental one, and a possible origin (he says) of religion. But for most of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, I think we feel that oceanic feeling because everything really is connected. All of us really do derive from one origin.

Caroline Langston

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