Deliver Us from Evil

May 14, 2013 By 12 Comments

Guest Post

By Nancy Nordenson

The day after the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, I sat myself down and considered my role in the tragedy. Now bombs have exploded in Boston and I’m asking myself the same question.

Of course no bomb was built in my kitchen and no gun was loaded under my roof, but could I have done something to help stop either of those events?

I’m thinking back years ago to a crisis in the church where my husband and I were members. A leader had fallen. The congregation gathered one evening to figure out why things had gone so wrong and what we could do about it. Fingers pointed, heads shook. Then Crystal spoke up. A woman in her late eighties, hunched over from osteoporosis, she had lived a life full of good work, particularly among international students.

“I blame myself,” she said. “I didn’t pray for him enough.” [Read more...]

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A Theology of Singleness, Part 2

May 10, 2013 By 2 Comments

Guest Post

By J. M. Samuelson

Continued from yesterday. 

Alan Jacobs recently made a wise observation: “there are certain kinds of ‘growing up’ that don’t happen until you get married—that simply getting older doesn’t do for you.”

I’d like to point to some parallel category of knowledge specific to singleness, but I don’t know if I can. Marriage seems to reconstitute one’s experience of time in a way that singleness simply cannot.

Man is the doubtful creature: every avenue of life prompts its own order of doubts and questions. Have I merely aged with time, or do I exhibit a pattern of real growth made possible precisely by the strange road my life has taken? [Read more...]

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A Theology of Singleness, Part 1

May 9, 2013 By 4 Comments

Guest Post

By J. M. Samuelson

Publishers today are churning out self-help literature at ever-increasing rates. Many of these tomes aim at helping selves better enjoy or endure singleness.

Based on my acquaintance with this literature I can say that few areas of descriptive English fail so utterly to satisfy as the nomenclature of singleness. Virtually every term of choice sells somebody short, whether single persons themselves or the “attached” persons from whom these terms are supposed to offer useful distinction.

Singleness implies a state of doubleness in others, thus implying that the single person lacks some essential element. With this particular family of words, classification bleeds into character indictment. “Singleness” says too little and too much. [Read more...]

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Beautiful Loser: Poetry at the Mall

May 3, 2013 By 13 Comments

Guest Post

By Daniel Bowman Jr.

Pray for one good humiliation every day.

–Richard Rohr

I sit by the podium as an earnest arts administrator I just met gives me a long introduction. She must’ve pulled it from my website; it’s a full bio. She works through the names of magazines where my poems have “appeared,” and I wonder what that word conveys to the uninitiated. Some of the journals are obscure, what poets call “little magazines,” while others are better known. But in this space, all the titles are preposterous.

I was invited to read at the Artsgarden. What I don’t know until I get there is that, on weekdays, the Artsgarden is glorified overflow seating for the mall food court. This is fine, but requires a quick adjustment of my expectations. [Read more...]

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Peripheral Vision

April 23, 2013 By 4 Comments

Guest Post
By Jan Vallone

Not long ago, I had surgery. I suppose that in the vastness of creation, the precipitating problem wasn’t much; with age I’d lost peripheral vision due to drooping eyelids. For several years I’d lived in shadow, sight obscured by canopies of flesh.

My ophthalmologist prescribed blepharoplasty coupled with an endoscopic brow lift. If I chose to have the surgery, he’d put me under general anesthesia, incise along my eyelids’ natural creases and in several places in my scalp. He’d remove excess skin, muscle, and fat and close the gashes with myriad stitches. The procedure would take about two hours, healing, four to five weeks, after which—he hoped—my field of vision would appreciably improve.

When I woke up in recovery, my body tensed with terror, my eyes and head pulsed with pain. I could scarcely press open my eyelids—was anybody there? I felt my husband’s hand in mine, heard a nurse calling my name, but saw only an under-ocean swirl—searing light, floating glow-spots, miasmatic silhouettes. Had my surgeon blinded me? [Read more...]

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Amour and Fear

April 11, 2013 By 1 Comment

Guest Post
By David P. Clark, M.D.

On the day I graduated from medical school I took the oath of Hippocrates. I didn’t think much about the words: the oath was one more hoop on a long hot morning. My promise to keep patient confidences, always treat patients with justice, and never harm them seemed doable, straightforward, and common sense.

But, I hadn’t actually been a doctor, hadn’t made decisions when faced with suffering and inadequate data and unknown futures. [Read more...]

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Love Thy Neighbor…and Her Lice

April 2, 2013 By 7 Comments

Guest Post
By Cathy Warner

I’d only known her a month when Blythe called with a problem: The family puppy had parvo. She needed money. Would I pay her twenty-five dollars in exchange for a massage?

Blythe lived in a run-down cabin up the road from our remodeled cabin. She had three grubby kids whose noses always ran, a grimy husband who drove a rusty van, and was missing two teeth (my eyes always focused on the gaps).

I didn’t know what parvo was (expensive and deadly) and I’d never had a massage. My husband drove a company car and worked in Silicon Valley, we had two clean and intelligent daughters, and I had all my teeth—straightened and shiny.

I was used to rescuing struggling family members, doling out advice and funds. But I didn’t do so with the cheerful heart God apparently admired. I gave fearfully. My checks were readily cashed, but my advice was never taken, trouble always returned, and somehow I felt responsible. If only I’d done more…. [Read more...]

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How to Visit a Grave

March 27, 2013 By 2 Comments

Guest Post
By Shannon Huffman Polson

1. Drive down unmarked road in rental car to a quiet circular drive. Try to ignore the weight of undefined expectations.

2. Wish that expectations were defined. By you or someone else.

3. Push away the thought that the name on the back of the stone is the same as your name.

4. Take a deep breath. Before opening the car door, flex your stomach muscles in case memories come at you kicking.

5. Walk to the stone. Try not to remember the burial. The gaping hole. The depth of it. The cold of the day. The sound of dirt. The color of clay. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: , , 2 Comments
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