The Bleeding Woman: an Imagining

July 11, 2012 By Lindsey Crittenden

—This story was inspired by Mark 5:21-43, the gospel reading for Sunday, July 1. Twelve years earlier, after her first baby was born cold and blue and the bleeding wouldn’t stop, the woman tried offerings and prayers. She was raised in her ancestors’ faith, believing that if you lived according to the commandments, you—if you were a man—would prosper with fruitful crops, riches, and many children. Women, some, were blessed. Sarah, Hannah. Her husband sought the midwives, the physicians, the... Read more

A Psalm for Surgery

July 10, 2012 By Richard Chess

Seamless, my passage through a day and from day to day: from dawn to dusk, from sleep to waking. Though sleep may be interrupted, the story of life, this life, my life continues uninterrupted. From sand glazed by sun to the wet edge of sand (“in nature there are few sharp lines” writes A.R. Ammons in “Corsons Inlet”) where the thinnest sheet of water spreads over the feet, to full immersion in the Atlantic Ocean and back to the beach... Read more

The Stations of the Cross on the A Train, Part Three

July 9, 2012 By Bradford Winters

—Continued from Friday My morning commute to work on the New York City subway during a heat wave made for some telling reflections on the first seven Stations of the Cross. Surely my trip home at day’s end won’t cast me in a better light. VIII. 14th Street: The Women of Jerusalem Mourn for Our Lord I’m back on the platform after the kind of day at work that evokes the first version of Joseph Brodsky’s “Lines for the Winter... Read more

Stations of the Cross on the A Train, Part Two

July 6, 2012 By Bradford Winters

In the first installment of this essay, I told of a project by a British artist that had recently come to my attention with perfect timing: a paper-cut booklet titled Stations of the King’s Cross that maps fourteen devotions to commemorate Christ’s Passion along the fourteen stops of the Circle Line on the London Underground—a circuit that fittingly ends at King’s Cross station. Why perfect timing? Because it’s summer in New York City, this dreaded time of year when one’s... Read more

Moonrise Kingdom and the Divine Symphony

July 5, 2012 By Jeffrey Overstreet

“It’s the rhythm in rock music that summons the demons,” said the church community of my childhood. So I took my musical thrills where I could find them. In front of my grandfather’s turntable, I air-conducted Ferde Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” and Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” In the latter, a narrator introduces each instrument and section, then the orchestra weaves those signature melodies into a symphonic harmony that left me... Read more

Coming Home to Fatherhood

July 3, 2012 By Tony Woodlief

I recently saw a brief clip of a ten year-old girl in her classroom who looks up to see that her soldier father has unexpectedly come home from Iraq. I confess that I am a complete sucker for this. I couldn’t describe the video to someone without getting husky voiced, which is just plain embarrassing. I watched it on Youtube a half dozen times, and then—because the Internet is of the devil—I was presented with the opportunity to watch other... Read more

My Kingdom Come

July 2, 2012 By A. G. Harmon

“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3:5 I figured something out. I’m not sure of the theology, so don’t call me on the terms I use or on the methodology I employ. Still, I’m fairly certain of the result. As such, I rise Archimedes-like from the bath, feverish with my solution and eager for its impartation (I... Read more

Baseball and the Law of God

June 29, 2012 By Caroline Langston

Last Friday night, a freak microburst descended on our neighborhood with eighty mile an hour winds scattering tree limbs like matchsticks and knocking out the power on a steamy summer evening. My husband decamped to sleep at the office (he had to work on Saturday), and I spent an exhausted night on the living room sofa huddled next to my two sweaty children. Twenty-four hours later, power still off, we checked into a Fairfield Inn two miles from our house,... Read more

Who Needs to Read Anymore?

June 28, 2012 By Vic Sizemore

At the community college where I teach—actually in the state capitol two hours away—a massive overhaul of the English curriculum is underway. As I understand it right now, a diagnostic test will determine student placement, and three levels of developmental reading and writing are being added for those with low scores. Those students will be taking nine credit hours, almost two hours a day five days a week, of developmental reading and writing. Faculty members are groaning—two retired the week... Read more

Writing on Empty

June 27, 2012 By Sara Zarr

Last week, I finished the fifth revision of my fifth novel, and got notice from my editor that it’s ready to go into production. I didn’t feel much like celebrating, and didn’t feel satisfaction at a job completed. Most of what I felt was relief, because this book has been something of an ordeal. Though the book itself did present certain creative challenges, the ordeal, the battle, was not the book itself. Writing is always hard. The real issue these... Read more