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Why You Need to Know What’s Happening on God’s Island
Earl Swift spent the better part of a year on Tangier Island and grew to love the people and the culture of the place. But when he wrote about the experience for his new book, his takeaway was not subtle. It’s there in the title. He believes the island is not long for this world.… →
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Dreams Nursed in Darkness: Tommy Orange’s There, There
The best way to understand the ending of There, There, Tommy Orange’s new novel, is to remember that the bullets were always coming. Orange tells you this in the non-fiction prologue to the book where he describes what it’s like to be a Native American today. The Europeans who ‘settled’ the land “fired their guns… →
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Burning from Beginning to End with Scott Cairns
It’s all here. Beginnings and endings. Heaven and hell. Divine intentions and bodily appetites. That’s what you get with the poet Scott Cairns. Look for the kitchen sink. I’m sure it’s in there, too. Recently I came back for a season to Philokalia: New & Selected Poems, Cairns’ 2002 collection. It’s as rich and evocative… →
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Eating Spinach with Mr. Wesley
One of my great unfinished reading projects is The Works of John Wesley. A long row of books from the series lines one of my shelves these days holding the collected works of the principal founder of Methodism including sermons, journal entries, and minutes of the first conferences. This week I received Volume 32: Medical… →
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O the Stories We Could Tell!
What if we ran out of stories? It doesn’t seem like we’re any danger of that. Netflix announced earlier this year that it was going to spend $8 billion on original content in 2018. Other media outlets are increasing their output. Even amateurs with a smartphone are producing YouTube series. Our appetite for stories doesn’t… →
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In Praise of Bad Writing: David Bentley Hart’s New Testament
The New Testament, as translated by the influential Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, is bad. But that’s what makes it such a good read for Christians who need their settled understandings tweaked. Hart’s new translation doesn’t strive for literary heights. He has an ear for beautiful language, something that comes through in all of his… →
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Picking Up the Pieces in Iraq: A Review of Frankenstein in Baghdad
However St. George died, (and the catalogues of his gruesome tortures are legion), he was reputedly hard to keep down. “The king ordered that the saint be placed in the olive press,” one story goes, “until his flesh was torn to pieces and he died. They then threw him out of the city, but the… →
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Bears and Birds and Cooperative Ministry
Loneliness is a bear. No one wants to feel unsupported, unheard, or unloved. You would think, in a world of so many new ways to connect, that loneliness would not be a problem. But Instagram, it turns out, is no answer to the human condition. Churches—especially churches in rural communities—often experience their own kind… →
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Why You Need to Know This Bitter Southerner: Heartlands Interviews Chuck Reece, Part 3 of 3
The Heartlands Interview with Chuck Reese begins here. Chuck’s train of thought is interrupted by the sound of a dish being set carefully on a white wicker table gracing a wide screened porch. (I’m imagining.) CR: Oh my goodness, what is that, sweetheart? Stacy [Chuck’s wife]: Blueberry muffin. CR: My wife just brought me a… →
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Why You Need to Know This Bitter Southerner: Heartlands Interviews Chuck Reece, Part 2 of 3
The Heartlands Interview with Chuck Reece begins here. Chuck Reece can’t help but share some of his favorite stories of finding new writers for The Bitter Southerner. There was the piece Cy Brown, a University of Georgia student, pitched him about A Carolina Dog. “I don’t know about you growing up in Virginia, but in… →
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