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EssaysMagazine

Paying Attention: Sexual Violence on Our Campuses

I recently spent a week in the beautiful little town of Bathsheba on the eastern coast of the island Barbados. Upon telling people I would be traveling to Bathsheba, I received a look – and then “ooooh, Bathsheba.” Can you hear it? By “ooooh, Bathsheba,” they seemed to imply that risqué, adulterous Bathsheba from the Bible, wink wink. Of course, because I do research in the area of sexual violence, this kick-started some mental gymnastics. (To all of the religious…
June 30, 2018
Essays

Siding with an Oppressor

If we must refer to Advent, then let us hear the Palestinian cry for deliverance from bondage. Both ideologically and municipally, Israel considers Jerusalem to encompass greater Jerusalem, which includes West Jerusalem, East Jerusalem (the Palestinian side, illegally annexed by Israel from 1967 to 1980) and many of the Israeli settlements (also illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention) to the north, south and east of Jerusalem. Since 1967, Israel has allowed and/or encouraged the illegal settlement of Israelis in…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Of Aliens and Embassies

American visitors to the Holy Land often “run where Jesus walked,” a Palestinian friend from Bethlehem likes to say. One need only watch the crush of tourists pouring out of buses at the Church of the Nativity to observe the pattern: place one tentative foot into the West Bank, check the landmark off the list after superficial engagement and zip back to the sunny places on the other side of the checkpoint with nary a glance at Bethlehem as it…
April 30, 2018
Essays

Reformers and Race: Reconciling Dialect and Deed

“Sawubona.” This Zulu word for hello is much more than a simple greeting. Translated, its intention means “I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being.” Understood this way, this word has the potential to reshape the way we see ourselves and others, particularly influencing our social constructions of race and nationalism. Seeing one another appropriately requires the affirmation that all humanity is created in the image of God and thus possesses inherent dignity, value and worth…
April 30, 2018
Poetry

Hosea, Single

Hosea 2:15 In January your keys keep the time, plink like antlers discarded in the foyer. House sealed tight as a covenant. I hold our truth with baby-fisted certainty, days stacked neatly as closed books on a calendar. Hours like the travel of the front porch rocker. In March, the month for war, you leave me. Reverse-alchemy. Gold, like youth, returned to dross. I start to date, trace the river after a hard rain mud-soak wash churning towards some lighted…
April 30, 2018
St. Catherine Crowned
Inside Out

On St. Catherine’s Wheel

I waited patiently for the Lord; who inclined to me and heard my cry. Who drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure… — Psalm 40:1-2 As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God. — Psalm 40:17 In A.D. 310, a beautiful and learned virgin,…
October 31, 2015