Reiter's Block

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Sponsor Soulforce's American Family Outing
2008-05-12 16:30:00
Soulforce, the nonviolent activist group that advocates for gay and lesbian equality in religious communities, is sending out 21 GLBT families to tell their stories to religious leaders at six leading mega-churches: Rev. Joel Osteen and the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas Bishop T.D. Jakes and The Potter's House in Dallas, Texas Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland Bishop Eddie Long and New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia Rev. Bill Hybels and Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois Dr. Rick Warren and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California Each family has pledged to raise $2,000 to visit these churches between Mother's Day and Father's Day. Most still have only a few hundred dollars, so your contribution will make a difference. Soulforce families include a mother and her FTM transgender son, a straight couple who have joined the movement to support their GLBT friends, and several gay...
More About: Family , Site News , Bible , Outing , American

Open Questions About Open Communion
2008-05-05 16:42:00
A couple of years ago, my church switched from "all baptized Christians" to "all those worshipping with us" being invited to receive the sacraments, a practice that I hear is not uncommon among liberal churches. This change upset some traditionalists while making others, including my multi-religious family, feel more welcome. I'm content with the current policy, though I wouldn't be offended if they invited non-Christians to receive a blessing at the altar rail instead. My personal opinion about communion is similar to how I feel about premarital sex: It's important to reserve certain intimate acts for a fully committed relationship so that those vows represent a real life change and not a mere formality. However, it's hard to point this out to someone without shaming them in a way that is worse than the original offense. A public distinction between people (like not inviting your daughter's live-in boyfriend to Christmas dinner) is less defensible than a pr...
More About: Questions , Open , Episcopal

"Julian's Yearbook" Wins Chapter One Promotions Short Story Competition
2008-05-04 19:40:00
Marianne Moore may have wanted imaginary gardens with real toads in them, but what's even better is imaginary friends who earn you real money. "Julian's Yearbook", a chapter from one of my two novels-in-progress, has won first prize of 2,500 pounds in the Chapter One Promotions International Short Story Competition . In this episode, Julian grapples with first love and homophobia at his Southern high school, while taking steps to launch his career as a fashion photographer. Here's the beginning: Desire smells like acid in the dark. Its face is a hundred faces, rising out of the stop bath, materializing on grey paper like ghosts. Your ghosts and mine; you knew them too. The football heroes joshing in a group shot, a chorus line of manly awkwardness. There's the clown, the golden boy, the dull and violent sidekick. You've got to remember that snub-nosed blonde with too much school spirit, whose mascara you almost forgot to clean off the backseat of your daddy's car. Mem...
More About: Site News , Fiction

Northampton Pride 2008
2008-05-04 19:19:00
Yesterday Northampton held its 27th annual Gay Pride March, attended by 7,500 people. My husband and I and one of my moms marched with the good folks from MassEquality, the group that successfully lobbied to preserve equal marriage rights in Massachusetts, and their Connecticut counterpart, Love Makes a Family.MassEquality is currently advocating for the Equality Agenda, a variety of state legislative and funding initiatives including transgender civil rights, "safe schools" programs, and HIV/AIDS prevention. Behind that sign, I'm wearing my rainbow "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You" tank top, available here from Cafe Press. The leopard-print sequined lid is from Mrs. Dewson's Hats in San Francisco. (I received objective proof of my fabulosity when a young gay man asked to buy it from me. I let him try it on.) That's MassEquality organizer Ryan Brown on the left, with other supporters whose names I didn't catch, as we march down Main Street past the courthouse. An appr...
More About: Site News , 2008

What to Do When Your Glasses Break
2008-05-01 21:30:00
My beloved, unstylishly large eyeglasses went kaput this week, after 10 years of faithful service. Since without them I am as blind as Mr. Magoo, I put on my driving glasses and headed to the eye doctor for a long-overdue checkup and a new prescription. I'm not sure what she said after "As you get closer to age 40..." (the very thought induced brain freeze) but the upshot was, I bought a lovely pair of Armani frames, then spent the afternoon on the couch in a darkened room waiting for my eyes to un-dilate. Cut off from my usual sources of entertainment, I searched the Internet for someone to "tell me the story of Jesus". If you're ever in a similar predicament, start with the Coffee Cup Apologetics podcasts at the Internet Monk's blog. His conversational musings take a little while to get to the theological heart of the matter, but there's always a memorable original insight to take away. Recent topics include the New Atheists (Dawkins et al.) and what it means to be p...
More About: Bible , Break , Glasses

The Good Thief's Penance
2008-04-30 16:53:00
Bryan at Creedal Christian has posted this meditation from the late Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (Bloom) that I hope to remember whenever I feel ensnared in persistent sins: So often we ask ourselves and one another a very tormenting question: How can I deal with my sinful condition? What can I do? I cannot avoid committing sins, Christ alone is sinless. I cannot, for lack of determination, or courage, or ability truly repent when I do commit a sin, or in general, of my sinful condition. What is left to me? I am tormented, I fight like one drowning, and I see no solution. And there is a word which was spoken once by a Russian staretz, one of the last elders of Optina. He said to a visitor of his: No one can live without sin, few know how to repent in such a way that their sins are washed as white as fleece. But there is one thing which we all can do: when we can neither avoid sin, nor repent truly, we can then bear the burden of sin, bear it patiently, bear it with pain, bea...
More About: Bible , Good , The Good

Book Notes: Liberating Tradition
2008-04-30 16:30:00
Kristina LaCelle-Peterson's Liberating Tradition : Women's Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective offers a solid introduction to Christian feminism, and a wake-up call to the churches not to mistake culturally conditioned gender roles for gospel truth. Topics surveyed include the strong women of the Bible and their often-overlooked successors, from the female monastics to the 19th-century social reformers; feminine metaphors for God in Scripture; sex discrimination and body image; the diverse forms that marriage has taken in the Judeo-Christian tradition; and the egalitarian message of Jesus. While at times I feel that Liberating Tradition goes in too many directions at once, this smorgasbord may be useful to conservative Christians who have not previously been exposed to basic feminist critiques of consumerism, for example. The book's main strength is that LaCelle-Peterson backs up mainstream feminist-egalitarian arguments with detailed Biblical c...
More About: Book Reviews , Book , Notes

C.H. Connors and Other Smith College Poets
2008-04-25 21:02:00
Earlier this week, the Poetry Center at Smith College celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2008 with readings by alumnae from the past 60 years. Poems by the participants and other Smith graduates are featured on this web page. Carolyn Connors '60, who publishes her poetry online at www.chconnors.com, has kindly permitted me to reprint her poem "A Glory from the Earth", which she read at the gala. I especially love the last line.A Glory from the Earthby C.H. ConnorsOur science has achieved its opposite    and taken us down a peg or two.    Our animal nature has come ungluedfrom ghost; we?re Things with skills and wit.Once we had a soul because we thought    the world was also made in part    of spirit. Taught by story, artand church, we went about the earth in awe.Those who went before believed with ease,    an opening between two roots    gave passage to the underw...
More About: Poets

Poems by Conway: "Walls" and "Things That Hang"
2008-04-24 16:35:00
New poems below from "Conway", my pen pal serving 25-to-life for receiving stolen goods under California's three-strikes law. I'm exploring self-publication options for his chapbook, but would also appreciate being contacted by any interested publishers.  Walls As I stand in contrastquestioning authority, to which it standsIs this wall of concrete asking itselfwhy I stick around, never leave?Seeming to grieve this stoic stanceheld so long, by a pillar built society.Do the walls rejoice, in my familiar visagewhenever I caress that sharp roughnesswith this softer fleshpolishing the stone.Or, is it just hopethat makes me imagine the wall alivewith sight, even sturdy voice?Then, I wonderis it this stonethat exiles me inor the world out...****Things That Hang A sound in the airuntil caught by an earwanted peopleon the post office walloffering money to callA kite by the windwith a stringon the other endthat question of doubtyou knowwhat I'm talkin' aboutA hopeand a prayerpants, on ...
More About: Poems

Poem: "Called Out"
2008-04-23 21:51:00
The baker, said Luther, glorifies God in bread.He was a fat fellow, knew good beer from a bad sermon.Enough of these piglets in neckclothssweating through bare words never meantto be dragged up from belly to lips.Inside every man I want, I wantcries like a baby, but ashamedof bread sopped in milk,choleric to grab his father's knife.The helmsman glorifies God by seeing sharks.The constipated scholar can afford to toss his inkat demons in the frost,his own chamber glass cracking.But bluff sailors, their red hands freezing to the wheel,need gloves, not Latin.Bless the tanner and his scrawny boywho sleeps in the horse-hay,wakes to crack the trough's icy skinand offer the first biteof an ordinary apple to the steaming mare.Let him be too young to dream of whoreslike Reason, Luther's false bride.She is all painted with vocationsof monk and knight and merchant,pale halo, priapic spear,the great ships laden with lemons.The leper glorifies God by losinghis fingers. Luther counted beadsbut...
More About: Site News , Poems , Poem

Rediscovering the Trinity (Part Three)
2008-04-17 18:16:00
Highlights of the final day of last week's "Rediscovering the Trinity " conference at Wheaton College (you knew there were going to be three posts in this series, didn't you?):Philip Butin, president of San Francisco Theological Seminary, was an engaging speaker who proposed that preaching could be a continuation of the divine speech that we find in the Bible . He cited the views of Calvin and other 16th-century Reformers that preaching didn't just expound God's word, it could be God's word under certain circumstances. Since the written text of Scripture is derived from a prior oral tradition, we can't say that God only works through written language. Proper preaching is not speech about God but speech by God, declaring what Jesus has said and done, and what He will do through the Spirit. To preach Christ means to allow the Spirit to speak through you. However, this is not automatic; the preacher has to unblock the channel for divine communication by staying ...
More About: Part , The Trinity

Rediscovering the Trinity (Part Two)
2008-04-17 15:21:00
More highlights from last week's Wheaton College conference on "Rediscovering the Trinity ":Jonathan R. Wilson (Carey Theological College) and Steven M. Studebaker (McMaster Divinity College) gave presentations on the Trinity and the created world. Wilson summarized the thought of several theologians concerning the role played by each Person of the Trinity in creating and sustaining the cosmos. The late Colin Gunton, for example, elaborated on Irenaeus' metaphor that the Son and the Spirit are the two hands of God in the world. Gunton suggested that the Son is the unifying power of creation, reconciling all things and holding them together by his atonement, while the Spirit is the particularizing power of creation, guiding each part to reach that perfection appropriate to its nature. Through them, the Father both prevents creation from slipping back into chaos and restores its teleology. Meanwhile, according to Wilson, theologian Robert Jenson observed that the Trinitaria...
More About: Bible , Part , The Trinity

Literary E-Zine Highlights: Ginosko, The Rose & Thorn
2008-04-16 13:40:00
Two favorite literary e-zines, Ginosko and The Rose & Thorn, have just released new issues. Some poems and stories that held my attention: Penny-Anne Beaudoin, "The Morning Routine"(The Rose & Thorn, Spring 2008)I can feel her cool blue eyes on my face as I struggle to pull her pressure stockings over her clawed feet, her shriveled calves.?You?re not very pretty, are you?? she says.I should have seen that coming, but I hesitate before replying.?No,? I say. ?I?m not.?...Read the rest here. ****Peter McGuire, "After 'The Emperor's New Clothes'" (The Rose & Thorn, Spring 2008)I love listening to bad poetryEspecially yoursThe way you enunciateLike a bus with cut brake linesVeering for the bay... Read the rest here. **** Dane Myers, "Sleeping With God"(Ginosko, Issue #6)Cynthia lifted her head from Dubliners and stared at the pale north wall, opposite their bed. Albuquerque?s April evenings were growing long and the fading light created a shadow that made the ironwood cros...
More About: Highlights , Literary , E-Zine

Anointed by Art
2008-04-16 13:40:00
I had to share this quote from the latest Image Journal e-newsletter, summarizing an article in their print edition about artist Makoto Fujimura:Fujimura makes a powerful argument for art by citing the passage in the Gospels when Mary anoints the head of Christ with expensive perfume. He sees this as a warrant for art: something apparently luxurious and useless which somehow becomes an essential gesture of our humanity. The only earthly possession Christ wore on the Cross was the very aroma of the perfume Mary poured upon him. Visit the website for Fujimura's new book River Grace here.More good stuff from Image: Read poet Franz Wright's "Language as Sacrament in the New Testament" here. A sample:Sin first results from all our attempts to escape or briefly elude the horrors of our physical condition here (which are part of free will?s gift, that is, an inevitable side effect and accompaniment to the gift of life, of sentience, just as pain and illness are an inevitable accompanimen...

Rediscovering the Trinity at Wheaton (Part One)
2008-04-15 13:25:00
The annual theology conference at Wheaton College in Illinois is one of the spiritual high points of my year. Wheaton is the evangelicals' Harvard, a small school located on an idyllic and superhumanly neat campus in the Chicago suburbs. This year's topic was "Rediscovering the Trinity : Classic Doctrine and Contemporary Ministry". The Trinity is wonderful because, as Calvin College professor John Witvliet noted, its dynamic reconciliation of opposites (divine/human, unity/plurality, spiritual/physical) counteracts our perpetual tendency to reify particular concepts and then dismiss all aspects of life that fall outside our favorite abstract scheme. Nietzsche wrote that in every ascetic morality, man adores one aspect of himself as god and demonizes the rest. An incarnational, Trinitarian faith is anti-ascetic, frustrating our legalistic binary oppositions and the scapegoating that occurs when we inevitably project the disfavored trait onto some social group (as in, ...
More About: Bible , Part

Depersonalizing Rejection
2008-04-08 16:26:00
On the website of the literary fiction journal Glimmer Train, prolific novelist Catherine Ryan Hyde shares some helpful thoughts about not reading too much into those inevitable rejection slips. Hyde writes, "I think the most damaging misconception about rejection is that your work has been judged as 'bad.' You feel insulted. You feel you've been told you're not good enough for that publication. But in reality, you don't know how it was received. You were not present behind the scenes to know." Taste is subjective, she cautions, and in publications with limited space, the difference between acceptance and rejection may come down to an editor's quirky personal connection with the piece, or whether it diversifies the mix of already-accepted work for that issue. "It's hard to quantify why we fall in love with a piece of writing. I do know this: If we dated someone who didn't fall in love with us, most of us would not conclude we were unlovable. We'd assume others might feel di...
More About: Rejection

M. Lee Alexander: Poems from "Observatory"
2008-04-01 17:16:00
I've recently finished M. Lee Alexander 's poetry chapbook Observatory, published last year by Finishing Line Press, and found it to be an insightful and enjoyable book. Clear-sighted, modest and wise, the narrator of these poems takes us to London, China, Japan, and post-Katrina New Orleans, always with an eye for the moments of common humanity that open up intimacy between strangers. Below are two of my favorite poems from this collection, reprinted by permission.Dress RehearsalTheatre in the RoundMy father dyedhis hair red for the Claudius Play(or so I called it, wanting himto be the star--till mom told mehe was a bad guy--then I criedand called it Hamlet). He wouldcome home from rehearsalorange-headed, my father and yet notmy father, almost like a clown I watchedhim practice falling. We went to seethe make-up place before the play wheremom said, It's OK, the knives aren't real,but my father reaching for his rust-stained      ;combdropped the stagep...
More About: Poems , Book Reviews

Walter Brueggemann: "Infallibility" Versus Faithful Imagination
2008-03-30 17:28:00
Image #55 (Fall 2007) ran an interview with the notable Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann that led off with some questions on the role of the imagination in Biblical faith. His remarks, excerpted below, could serve as my own manifesto for how I read the Bible as an artist and a Christian. (The full article is not available online, so buy the issue and read their symposium on "Why Believe in God?" with Wim Wenders, B.H. Fairchild, Doris Betts and others.) ...[W]hat we always do with the biblical text, if we want it to be pertinent or compelling or contemporary, is commit mostly unrecognized acts of imagination by which we stretch and pull and extend the implications of the text far beyond its words.I have come to the rather simplistic notion that imagination is the capacity to image a world beyond what is obviously given. That's the work of poets and novelists and artists--and that's what biblical writers mostly do. I think that's why people show up at church. They wan...
More About: Imagination , Versus , Faithful

Speak Up for Gay Rights at the United Methodist General Conference
2008-03-26 15:43:00
Soulforce, an interfaith organization that advocates for GLBT rights through nonviolent resistance, will be sending volunteers to witness at the United Methodist General Conference, which will be held in Fort Worth, TX on April 23-May 2. The United Methodists are the second-largest US Protestant denomination. According to Soulforce's newsletter, under current UM policy: Local UM pastors have the power to deny membership to gay and lesbian Christians. UM pastors are barred from performing marriage or commitment ceremonies for same-gender couples. Openly gay and lesbian people are banned from the ministry. Transgender people face potential exclusion from the ministry. Gay and lesbian youth are taught that being true to themselves is "incompatible with Christian teaching." To sign up to join Soulforce's nonviolent demonstration on April 25-27, click here. To read more about the debate within the Methodist church, visit the website of Affirmation: United Methodists...
More About: Site News , Rights , Gay Rights

Kyle McDonald's "The Rose of Ilium" Now on AudioBookRadio
2008-03-26 15:21:00
Canadian actor and writer Kyle McDonald won our most recent Winning Writers War Poetry Contest last year with his masterful epic poem "The Rose of Ilium", a stirring account of a battle between Greeks and Amazons in the Trojan War. His multimedia presentation of his poem is being broadcast this week on the UK's AudioBookRadio.net (playing time: 23 minutes). You can also watch the video and read the entire poem on our website. Here's an excerpt:...Th'alarums sound with direful clarionAnd forward races the bright Danàän,Whose coursers, both bread of immortal stock,Cause all the lesser steeds therewith to baulk;Nor Amazon nor Dardan faced the youth,Fearing an execution too uncouth;Yet, this did not forestall their bloody fate,As he with spear sought foes to extirpate:One caught his javelin beneath the arm;Another from his blade took mortal harm,As head from neck was rashly severèd;His spear recovered, to the fray he sped,His ruby chariot thundering as he went.A surly Amazon from lif...
More About: Site News

Alleluia, Alleluia!
2008-03-23 17:28:00
Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts to heaven and voices raise:Sing to God a hymn of gladness, sing to God a hymn of praise.He, who on the cross a Victim, for the world's salvation bled,Jesus Christ, in holiness and glory, now is risen from the dead.Christ is risen, Christ, the first fruits of the holy harvest field,Which will all its full abundance at Christ's second coming yield:Then the golden ears of harvest will their heads before Christ wave,Ripened by Christ's glorious sunshine from the furrows of the grave.Christ is risen, we are risen! Shed upon us heavenly grace,Rain and dew and gleams of glory from the brightness of God's face;That we, with our hearts in heaven, here on earth may fruitful be,And by angel hands be gathered, and be ever, God, with you.Alleluia, alleluia! Glory be to God on high;Alleluia! to the Savior who has gained the victory;Alleluia! to the Spirit, fount of love and sanctity:Alleluia, alleluia! to the Triune Majesty.Words: Christopher Wordsworth (19thC)Music...
More About: Episcopal

Thousand Kites Launches National Criminal Justice Project
2008-03-20 10:13:00
Thousand Kites is a community-based multimedia project that advocates reforms to the US criminal justice system, using live performances, film screenings, radio broadcasts and the Internet. This month they hope to arrange a hundred screenings of the documentary "Up the Ridge", a film about one community's experience using prisons as economic development and the resulting human rights violations. "Up the Ridge" takes you inside the super-maximum-security Wallens Ridge prison in Virginia, and looks at the personal devastation and racial conflicts that resulted when hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority prisoners were transferred to this rural facility, far from their families and neighborhoods. Click here to order the film, which comes with a guide to setting up a community screening, and other bonus tracks. This outreach effort supports the American Friends Service Committee's STOPMAX Campaign to abolish torture and solitary confinement in US prisons. Read prisoner...
More About: National , Justice , Project , Thousand , Criminal

Uncertainty and Christian Writing
2008-03-18 17:21:00
The new literary journal Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression continues a trend begun by Image and Rock & Sling, providing a home for creative writing that takes Christian faith seriously without sacrificing literary and moral complexity. My novel excerpt "Bride of Christ", about a young woman torn between loyalty to her gay brother and her evangelical family, will be published in Relief later this year. In this interview on their website, guest editor Jill Noel Kandel shares some perceptive advice about what separates Christian literature from doctrinal or inspirational writing: Relief: A number of our nonfiction submissions are more like articles or even sermons and not what we at Relief think of as creative nonfiction. How can writers be sure their work is appropriate for Relief before they submit?Jill: Christian writing has many avenues. Doctrinal, devotional, and magazine article writing seem to be prominent. I would say that Relief wants to publish fiction, n...
More About: Site News , Writing

Holy Week in the Blogosphere
2008-03-17 18:51:00
Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and this weekend, unbelievable as it seems to us in the Northeast who still see snow instead of crocuses on our lawns, will be Easter. Lent is my favorite season of the Christian year, a time when I can get serious about some spiritual problem or slackness of will. Since it's only forty days (and it seemed shorter this year, somehow), I'm not daunted by the prospect of an open-ended vow, the promise to "never do that again" which undermines itself from the start by its very implausibility. It's like Anne Lamott's cure for writer's block: rather than sit down to the monumental task of "writing your novel", she suggests that you resolve every day to write as much as will fit within a one-inch picture frame. Well, I didn't do that, but I did more or less keep my Lenten resolution to stop talking to my novel characters instead of Jesus. What I discovered, when I no longer had my imaginary friend telling me "Girl, you look fabulous, and I love y...
More About: Bible , Blogosphere , Week , Episcopal , Holy

Jendi Reiter's Chapbook "Hound of Heaven" Forthcoming from Southern Hum Pre
2008-03-08 20:49:00
My poetry chapbook Hound of Heaven was a runner-up for the inaugural Women of Words Award from Southern Hum Press and will be published this fall. Thanks, Southern Hum! I'll include a purchasing link on this site when the book is out. Below, a sample:Hound of Heaven       ;      for FranIt had been raining days when the voiceasked me to pull over by the river.Not a voice to be heard but simply a must:the arm moves with the thought, no word says Move.The branches cocked like muskets, spearing the sky,were soaked black, clouds wind-whipped dogscringing like cavemen placatingthe weather of doom they thought was God.Is that all I am, that bared animal neck?I had let the pearls roll from my hands like water,thinking anything precious could save itself.I was silently wed to the clever,dazzled by small explanations.Still I turned the car, slowed, stood under the fallof cold silver needles like a sick child prayingbe good and i...
More About: Site News , Poems

Sara Miles on the Idolatry of the Family
2008-03-07 17:08:00
Poet and journalist Sara Miles , whose conversion memoir Take This Bread has just been released in paperback, preached this sermon last summer at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church (San Francisco) about an all-too-common misunderstanding of Christian "family values". Just as in Jesus' day, "family" is not merely a sentimental tableau; it is a circle of power that defines who possesses status and purity, and who does not. Jesus says, I?ve come to bring fire to the earth and destroy your family. Do you think I?ve come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. What?s burning up here isn?t just money, as it was in the Gospel last week. It isn?t just religion, as it was two weeks ago when poor Peter tried to make a shrine to the ancestors to protect him from the blazing fire of the transfiguration. What Jesus is burning up in this reading is the past, and the future of the world as we see it in human terms. He?s replacing it with the fire of the perpetual pres...
More About: Family , Bible

Jesus the Oyster-Man
2008-03-03 11:57:00
Today in the Anglican cycle of prayer we commemorate the brothers John and Charles Wesley, whose revival movement within the Anglican Church gave rise to the Methodist denomination. James Kiefer at The Daily Office tells this story of one Wesleyan preacher's creative misreading of the Bible : [A]lthough Wesley found it natural to approach the Gospel with habits of thought formed by a classical education, he was quick to recognize the value of other approaches. The early Methodist meetings were often led by lay preachers with very limited education. On one occasion, such a preacher took as his text Luke 19:21, "Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man." Not knowing the word "austere," he thought that the text spoke of "an oyster man." He spoke about the work of those who retrieve oysters from the sea-bed. The diver plunges down from the surface, cut off from his natural environment, into bone-chilling water. He gropes in the dark, cutting his hands on the sharp ...
More About: Jesus , Episcopal

Poet Steve Fellner on the Joys of Insignificance; Pat Strachan on When Not
2008-02-28 17:54:00
Poet Kate Greenstreet blogs at Every Other Day, where she's compiled an archive of over 100 interviews with contemporary poets about the road to first-book publication and how it changed their life (or not). I especially treasure these tongue-in-cheek words of wisdom from Steve Fellner, whose book Blind Date with Cavafy won the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize: I had been sending my book out for many years, and I was crazy determined to get a book of poetry published. I got an MFA and PhD in creative writing. During all this time, I was sending out various incarnations of the book. No one wanted it. It was (and still is) an uneven book, but there were a lot of worse books out there, and I liked sending things out in the mail. Even when you get a rejection in the mail (and I got a zillion of them), it's always fun to have opened the envelope. It's like watching the Oscars. Even if the actor you love loses, you at least enjoy the spectacle.I knew my book would never be accep...
More About: Book Reviews , Poet

Poem: "The Common Question"
2008-02-27 12:12:00
My poem "The Common Question " appears in Issue #11 of The Other Journal, an online review of Christianity and culture. The Other Journal features scholarly essays, creative writing, and artwork; themes change with each issue. Currently they are accepting submissions on Education.Also worth noting in Issue #11, "The Atheism Issue," are Randal Rauser's essay on the proper roles of apologetics and personal testimony in making Christianity seem plausible to a skeptical audience, and Somanjana C. Bhattacharya's article on how activists are pressuring Craigslist to stop running "erotic services" ads that sell trafficked women and children. The Common Question     "Wh at does Charlie want?" ? John Greenleaf Whittier Oh, the unfairness of being myself. There ought to be a rule. So many days as a little boy, so many days as a deer, a centipede, a Masai warrior, a wealthy old lady with too many rings, on an ocean liner. And as a blacksnake, a woma...
More About: Poems , Poem

George Herbert: "The Flower"
2008-02-27 12:00:00
Today in the Anglican calendar we commemorate George Herbert , one of the great 17th-century metaphysical poets (1593-1633). According to the thumbnail bio at The Daily Office, he spent most of his short life as an humble and well-loved parish priest in a village near Salisbury, England. His reputation rests on a single book of poems, The Temple, that was published after his death by his friend Nicholas Ferrar. Below, his poem "The Flower " testifies to the dizzying emotional highs and lows of the spiritual life and how God's constancy alone brings peace. I find it comforting that even a great Christian poet like Herbert had the same struggle for equanimity as the rest of us.The Flower    How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;     To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasures bring.       ;  Grief melts away ...
More About: Episcopal