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Poetry

Habitat

Miles and a moment’s ease flake away – the toddler shook us awake to ask When did Jesus paint our skin? Like memories of San Francisco we stayed a bit undusted, overlooking ourselves like silk-stranded ceiling corners. Bits of every epidermal surface flake away to pile in and around us. Cracked caulk and shower tile heap like moraine scree – not much room for the likes of a caricature plant, a euphorbia, or a firebush. Peter Bast lives and works…
June 30, 2017
Essays

Dostoevsky and the Panacea for Personal Judgment

Proverbs echo in the wind tunnel of history. We cannot help but hear reverberations of past wisdom in present-day prose. In the Manipulus Florum (“handful of flowers”), for instance, we find the following words attributed to Saint Augustine: “The pride of angels made them demons; the humility of men makes them as angels.” Quite the maxim, isn’t it? In seven hundred years, we haven’t changed all that much. Pride still brings out the worst in us, and humility, the best.…
June 30, 2017
As We See It

The Psalm Sparrow

“Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts.” –Psalm 84, Book of Common Prayer I don’t know how you can be a parish pastor and not say daily prayer. I don’t mean that critically. I mean like I don’t know how to throw a curve ball, or keep my mouth shut at a meeting. I did without daily prayer for the first…
Daniel Meeter
June 30, 2017
Essays

The Golden Rule and the Spirit of Capitalism

We Americans seem lately to be turning nearly every aspect of life into a competition in which somebody must win and somebody must lose. Many popular TV programs have people competing not just in answering quizzes or solving puzzles but also in activities like singing and dancing. Shows with singing and dancing for their own sake, without the voting or the criticism, are very rare. Romance becomes a competition on programs such as The Bachelor. Comedy Central has a show…
June 30, 2017
Reviews

Turning from Shame to Wholeness

Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self WHOLEHEARTEDNESS: BUSYNESS, EXHAUSTION, AND HEALING THE DIVIDED SELF CHUCK DEGROAT WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING, 2016 208 PAGES $15 We are guilty as charged. In Wholeheartedness: busyness, exhaustion, and healing the divided self, Chuck DeGroat aptly describes our destructive internal hunger for self-perfection and personal achievement: “Ashamed of our humanness, we’re constantly aspiring to become gods. The relentless drive to perfect ourselves leads to feats of extraordinary achievement. And utter exhaustion.” He writes …
Karsten Voskuil and Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil
June 30, 2017
Poetry

Whaling

The whale I lost in a book of water I look for with a pair of binoculars. I trawl for whale; I leave it verses. There is a great weight at the end of my line. It is a school. The mouths are difficult to make out, but they are open. I think about this for a good while. I end up on another page in another volume. Search engines comb the net with virtual tridents. It occurs to me…
April 29, 2017
Poetry

Letter to Audubon from St. Francis

As you read these words, I lie lynx-like. I lie lynx-like in prairie sage, in a phase of abstinence. The yelp I trust is periodic; I have it from the mouth of an honest woodcock. A wild idea, or so it seems, to let go of venery. For all my lithe, I am not averse to buds, the spice bush; the tongue, per se, by which I forage is a nuisance. It melts. Becomes earmarked. In its stead, I self-devour.…
April 29, 2017
Essays

The Truth-Seeking Impulse in Higher Education

When I wrote my most recent statement on how faith informs my work in language and literature, I chose this prompt from Calvin College’s faculty handbook: “Write an essay for the broader Christian community explaining what is at stake in the Christian engagement with your discipline ... Incorporate examples from your own teaching and research.” In my Written Rhetoric class, I’ve recently begun teaching an essay titled “The Braindead Megaphone” from a book of the same name by commentator and…
April 29, 2017
Essays

Give Us a King

When Israel asked for a king, the prophet Samuel warned them that the pomp and power of kingship would come at a high cost. A king would conscript their sons and daughters into his service, would take the best of their harvest and would make them his slaves. “And in that day,” Samuel predicted, “you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (1 Sam.…
April 29, 2017