I came down the drive tonight just before the rainstorm and the lamp was on and the fan moving thick air through the front room and you weren't home. You'd taken the train to the sea then a steamship across and were walking Berlin in 1943 and the bikes were ringing under the bombers (and … Continue reading Girl on the Train
By Hannah Mead “I am coming,” He whispers, with cypress smoke and cinnamon. I’m waiting, straw clutched between cold fingers pushed through impatient pockets. But tonight, the promise of dawn lingers heavy below the horizon. Perhaps Venus is pinned like a diamond in the darkness behind the shed that tilts, weary, at the bottom of … Continue reading Advent
By Joel Melton … and we wait. we know the end, how the promise was kept, and is being kept. He has and is and will come. the advented Light still breaks -- is adventing -- in our night-like days. we wait like winter. the curse is being reversed. redemption’s cycle spins in the song … Continue reading …
By Rachel S. Donahue We once traveled by nightin a country far awaywhere the lights of men were few and far between.In the midst of that great darkness,a tiny spot of lightblinked hope for miles, could easily be seen. When wrapped in a cloak of darkness,small lights shine brighter still,their brilliance heightened by the lack … Continue reading Magi, Martyrs, and Messengers
By Esther Hartman and sometimes, sometimes, the shadow is married to the lightin a grand ceremony of temple curtains torn in two,and the welding of spark to suffering, of hideous to holy,and light keeps replacing bulbs in all dark’s hiding placeshoping he’ll finally see himselfand the great rivals called death and lifefind each other ravaged … Continue reading The Great Opposites
Someone gave me a composition notebook for my fourteenth birthday and told me to write blessings in it, to number them. I think the goal was 10,000, but I lost count after awhile, and the “thanksgivings” turned into little observations of the world around me: The house is quiet this morning. Elsie learned to roll … Continue reading The Things I’ve Seen
I listen to a news briefing as I walk Edgewood, warm winds tossing the trees. I hear there are bodies being flung from planes. I don’t remember seeing the little American flag on Rivara’s mailbox before. Old Highway 50 is hot and quiet, and there are black-eyed Susans and zinnias growing around that tin-roofed house … Continue reading Homefront
"'But if it’s to be a flower name, then I don’t trouble about the length: it must be a beautiful flower, because, you see, I think she is very beautiful, and is going to be beautifuller still.’ Frodo thought for a moment. ‘Well, Sam, what about Elanor, the sun-star, you remember the little golden flower … Continue reading A Little Light
Service ended last Sunday and the balcony filled, hummed, then emptied as people found their classrooms. We’ve moved our ladies’ Sunday school class to the gym to leave gaps between tables— social distance. It makes things awkward, because our voices ring off the walls and ceiling and basketball backboards. But it’s good, because Mrs. Barb … Continue reading Lightdrops
There’s a lot I could do, write, remember, cry over, and give thanks for at the end of 2020. I keep shadowboxing the scary idea of summing it all up— wrestling the last twelve months into a corner and chalking them up as “good,” “terrible,” or “sanctifying” (all the above). But summaries tend to accentuate … Continue reading A Year in Books
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