Poetry Friday: “Onesimus”

Last updated on: July 26, 2016 at 10:53 am By Tania Runyan

In this month of painful national and international news, Tania Runyan’s poem “Onesimus” offers a gut-deep breath of brotherhood. The poem recounts the story of Philemon, a new Christian Paul addresses on behalf of Onesimus, both Philemon’s fugitive slave and also a new convert. In “Onesimus,” Runyan singles out, perhaps, the most marginalized and voiceless in the ancient Greco-Roman world: the slave. Allowing him to directly address Philemon in a voice as ridged with humanity as a fingerprint, Onesimus focuses... Read more

Blood Lines

Last updated on: July 25, 2016 at 5:21 pm By Natalie Vestin

Last September, I was in Philadelphia for the first time since my freshman year of college. In the train station, I paid attention to what was new, though I suspect memory shouldn’t take a conscious effort. I thought it would be easy, that I could walk into the mall, down the escalator (I remembered this much: the train runs below ground until it reaches the outskirts of Center City), and it would be like it always had been. Twelve years... Read more

Maybe the Kids Will Sleep in Tomorrow

Last updated on: August 11, 2016 at 3:58 pm By Elizabeth Duffy

The kids are home for the summer, but my husband has remained on the same schedule under which we operate during the school year, up at 6:30 a.m., fumbling around the room in the dark, until it seems the thought of me still sleeping is just too much to bear, so he turns on the light and starts asking me questions, like “Where’s my wallet?” I never know the answer to questions when I’m sleeping, so I have to tell... Read more

Attending to the Body, Part II

Last updated on: July 25, 2016 at 4:30 pm By Guest Contributor

Continued from yesterday. The following is excerpted from Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words, a new memoir by Brian Volck. In the mountain clinics of rural Honduras, where every medicine and piece of equipment arrives by pickup or is carried on our backs, there’s no way to bring all we want or need. Before heading out, we listen to the locals, ask doctors who’ve been before, and assemble our materials accordingly. Tylenol and Motrin, vitamins and antibiotics,... Read more

Attending to the Body, Part I

Last updated on: July 25, 2016 at 2:18 pm By Guest Contributor

By Brian Volck The following is excerpted from Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words, a new memoir by Brian Volck. I don’t recall when I first learned of lectio divina, a reading practice rooted in Christian monasticism still followed by contemporary Benedictine monks, nuns, and laypersons. Lectio divina is traditionally divided into four parts: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation). Simply put, it asks the reader to attend, to notice the details of... Read more

Poetry Friday: Four Sonnets

Last updated on: July 26, 2016 at 6:45 pm By Guest Contributor

Sonnets meditating on illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages may sound a bit sanctimonious, even borderline pompous, but like all the best sonnets, Melissa Range’s subvert expectations. The sonnets, each named for a pigment monks used to color the manuscripts, explore the seedy underbelly of each pigment. For starters, they are all highly toxic. Also, kermes-red is made from “the insect’s brood /crushed stillborn from her dried body,” making even its origins destructive. Verdigris, once applied, is corrosive. It “eats /... Read more

Against “Amazing Grace”

Last updated on: July 19, 2016 at 4:07 pm By Caroline Langston

In a world in which it seems that just about everything seems to be complained about online—bitch, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, moan—ad infinitum, here’s a little beef I’d like to proffer, that I don’t recall having seen anywhere yet: I despise “Amazing Grace.” Mind you, I’m not complaining about the notion of grace itself, God’s unmerited favor given in the gift of his son to save us from our sins—the distinctive Christian soteriology. It is not, therefore, the theological concept... Read more

Dispatch from Detroit

Last updated on: July 19, 2016 at 1:39 pm By Morgan Meis

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time… —Thomas Merton There were young men out in the streets of Hamtramck blowing things up last night. God knows what they’d gotten their hands on. Could have been small sticks of dynamite for the blast it sounded, bouncing down Mitchell Street and then ricocheting along the concrete and the bricks of Joseph Campau Street. The blast silenced the sound of the... Read more

From the Engine Room, Part II: Mountains of Time

Last updated on: July 19, 2016 at 12:28 pm By Image

By Mary Kenagy Mitchell Continued from yesterday. Up until this point, in describing what it’s like to read Image’s unsolicited manuscripts, I have not said much that an editor at any journal might not say, but of course, Image is not any journal. “Art, faith, mystery” is on our masthead—and we have a long history and a community that expects work engaging certain themes. In the sorting process, the question of whether a piece is “Image-y,” as I gracelessly put... Read more

From the Engine Room, Part I: The Problem with Efficiency

Last updated on: July 19, 2016 at 11:37 am By Image

By Mary Kenagy Mitchell About a year ago we at Image dragged ourselves into the twentieth century and started accepting unsolicited submissions online. We had held off partly because we were worried that the numbers would balloon—and the amount of work we receive did immediately triple. (We’ve added another reader to help us keep up, but if you feel like you’ve been waiting a while to hear from us, now you know why.) Though we’ve had to budget more reading... Read more