Hey readers!
Check out my latest poem, Recipe for an Appetizer, and other good reads,
in the latest issue of The Paragon,
a literary journal available online.
(I’m on p.51)
Category Archives: Books
American Gods and America’s gods
To peek into the world of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is to peel back the curtain of America’s culture and see, through one artist’s creative lens, the temple of what the culture truly worships. It is a perverse world that feels too ancient, and yet uncomfortably familiar. In one way it feels like a post-colonial protest. In another it feels like an anthropological experiment. This is an untold story not just of the religious practices America does not admit are religious, but also of the religious practices that have carried over from immigrants across the world. Continue reading
Handmaid’s Tale: 5 Thoughts About Our Christian Identity
The Handmaid’s Tale has been much talked about ever since the famous novel became a miniseries on Hulu. Like any good dystopian story, the novel wasn’t meant to ask “what if” about the future so much as “how so” about the present. Dystopian stories warn us of what might happen tomorrow. Great dystopian stories plumb deeper, asking what it is about us now that could bring us there.
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Reading Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person”: Part II
Part II—All the Colorful, Useless Peafowl
[Read part I here]
In part two of O’Connor’s story, Mrs. Shortley has left the farm and Mrs. McIntyre is left with the displaced Pole and her black workers. We’re given more insight into her character through her conversations with the older farmhand, Astor. While Astor remembers well her husband, the Judge, Mrs. McIntyre is haunted by her late husband. Astor has noticed two things: The decline of the peacocks and the incline of Mrs. McIntyre’s greed.
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Reading Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person”: Part I
For fans of Flannery O’Connor, “The Displaced Person” is a a short story that occupies a special place, not only because it exhibits her love for peacocks, but because of its more overt religious themes. The story takes place on a farm, the inciting incident being the hiring of a “displaced person” (or refugee) from Poland. O’Connor, a devout Catholic, is one of America’s most famous writers, known for her southern stories of grotesque people encountering beautiful grace.
6 Simple Ways To Tell If That Email Forward Is Bogus
Chain mail has been around for a long time. You may have been first introduced to them when you first received an email telling you that if you didn’t forward it to at least 5 people, something bad would happen. Or if you did forward it to at least 50 people, something good would happen. The more gullible people were, the more viral the email.
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Unwinding Neil Schusterman’s Unwind
What if the abortion debate was settled by one piece of legislation that compromised both sides?
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The Bible Project in a Year
In 2016 I embarked on a journey to read through the entire Bible, which I hadn’t attempted in over a decade.
I made a deal with the middle school class in our congregation. If I did it, they would do it.
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My Short Story, “The Calvinist,” Published in Liminoid Magazine
First publication of the new year!
Liminoid Magazine has published my piece of short fiction, “The Calvinist,” in their winter issue.
Read it for free here.
“If he runs, he ends, and if he ends he has ended. The other him is safe at home, his uniform is being washed, and he is complacent at the table, returning to the plate again and again and again. While the shirtless children chase the wingless birds that cannot fly.”
Seamus Heaney’s “The Haw Lantern” at Christmas Time
Our first Christmas together as a couple my wife gave me Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s collection of poems, The Haw Lantern. Reading the title poem, I was drawn by the imagery of fruit and dying light in winter, and and I thought of Christmas tree lights, but knew that the reference to Diogenes meant something else was going on than a cute comparison of two plants. Years later, I open the book again and turn to the poem, drawing a light on how the poem has grown on me, what fruit it now bears. Continue reading
