Memory is like incense: as the censor passes, so does the intensity of the aroma, leaving only faint wisps. The substance is ephemeral, becoming vague and imprecise with the passing of time. No gathering in of the incense of our past can reveal a precise picture or bring back the past in such a way that we can lay hold of it. It inevitably slips through our fingers. But the wisps of memory that surround us–like the smell of brewing coff ...
Lovers' Almanac is a collection of poems that explores the varieties of love that human beings experience. Anchoring the volume is a 12-poem sonnet sequence featuring an intimate dialogue between a man and woman, each poem keyed to one of the months of the year. The book offers a range of poems engaging divine love, agapeic love, familial love, fraternal love, parental love, and homage, the love we bear towards artists, saints, and heroes. ...
Poems of nature and childhood initiate this poetic journey of the heart. The loss of family and friends prompts the search for divine relation. Pastoral lyrics, elegies, and colloquies culminate in the «necessary» breaking of the heart as it mystically «hatches» and the Incarnate life shines through. ...
Collage of Seoul is a book of poetry tracing the spiritual journey of a man who, unnamed at birth, looks to both Eastern and Western cultures to form an identity through a love story that culminates with the decisive act of naming his two daughters. Through a mix of narrative and lyric poetry, Collage of Seoul transports the reader into a simulated flight between dreamscape and reality, faith and doubt, and allegory and biography as we are invit ...
The poems of Cries of Earth and Altar speak of human laughter, mystery, work, play, sorrow–and even rage–as an oblation set upon heaven's high altar, which, as Calvin noted, is Christ himself. Upon that altar, the cries of earth are made a cry of glory, «Abba, Father» (Mark 14:36; Rom 8:15)! With the exception of those poems labeled «out of season,» each poetic text is given a place in the Christian liturgical calendar: Advent-Epiphany, Tra ...
Arjan Plaisier believes audiences who view Shakespeare performances and readers who study the plays deserve better than some of the recent interpretations of the Bard's work. In their attempt to be «modern,» these interpreters commit historical amnesia by slighting the Christian ethos of the early Renaissance period in which Shakespeare wrote and by riding roughshod over the religious underpinnings of his plays. This neglect skews the playw ...
"Duende is that place in us where the two halves of our life are conjoined. It is the place where we go down into the self and gather up that opposing force to our immediate nature. It involves the undoing of the 'pretending-everything-is-okay-mechanism' in us and it is an overall waking up to the forces of conflict in life and actually mustering a strength to make abiding choices. Many throughout time have likened this awaking pr ...
In August of 2001, Kaethe Schwehn needed her own, personal Eden. She was a twenty-two-year-old trying to come to terms with a failed romance, the dissolution of her parents' marriage, and her own floundering faith. At first, Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center nestled in the Cascade Mountains, seemed like a utopian locale: communal meals, consensus decision-making, and eco-friendly practices. But as the months wore on, the idyll faded ...
The Spirit of Adoption explores many of the complexities inherent in adoption and its relationship to spirituality, challenging us to move beyond the common mythologies about adoption to consider the more difficult questions adoption raises about the nature of God, family, culture, loss, and joy. Rather than hearing from experts in adoption, this collection uses the narratives of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees themselves, bearing ...
