New Story

Fathom Magazine awarded and published one of my stories ––Once in This Bread–– this morning. Below is an excerpt (and link): On the college library steps, she finds Adam reclined, waiting on her. He eats a sandwich from a paper bag while the vestige of summer heat slides out of October. “This might be the […]

Beginning

I always wanted to be an animator. Then I tried and gave up after 10 seconds. I did this for Ryan Culwell’s song “Piss Down in My Bones”. It took me several weeks to get this far. I felt like that scene in Parks and Rec when Ben Wyatt realizes that he spent six weeks […]

My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday. G K Chesterton (via revenantwaltz)

Reading Dr. King: Part 1

In signing [the Voting Rights Bill of 1965], the President announced that “Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that’s ever been won on any battlefield… today we strike away the last major shackle of…fierce and ancient bonds.” One year later, some of the people who had been brutalized in Selma and […]

The questions of language and war are often intertwined: a language is just a dialect with an army, as the saying goes William T. Cavanaugh. “Killing for the Telephone Company.” Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church. (34). Eerdman’s.

And I realized then that the answer to “why write? Why talk? Why read? Why publish?” is that we are not primarily writing and reading and publishing to “fix” the City of Man. I mean, maybe things will in the future “swing our way,” and maybe our words will have had something to do with […]

In some quarters of American life, evangelical Christians are viewed as fearful and xenophobic—afraid of “the other.” Perhaps in a few cases, which happen to make the news. But in fact, US evangelical churches are refugees’ best friend. If anyone looks fearful and xenophobic, it is the federal government and its broken immigration policies.    […]

Pen and ink studies of a dove found dead after a storm.

This ease of access is in itself a blessing, but its misuse can make it a curse. We are all of us tempted to read more poetry and fiction, look at more pictures, listen to more music than we can possibly respond to properly, and the consequence of such over-indulgence is not a cultured mind […]

Once aroused, the urge to violence triggers certain physical changes that prepare men’s bodies for battle. This set toward violence lingers on; it should not be regarded as a simple reflex that ceases with the removal of the initial stimulus… it is more difficult to quell an impulse toward violence than to rouse it, especially […]