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Cemetery of Beloved Memory: Meeting Paul Escamilla at General Conference
I once heard Paul Escamilla give a sermon in which he talked about a family cemetery in the Southwest borderlands. It was so rich that I felt I was walking the grounds with him, lingering over memories and sensing a deeper Spirit, one that binds us together across boundaries of time and space. Yesterday I… →
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In the Dreamtime that was Portland – Poetry Before General Conference
At the 2016 United Methodist General Conference in Portland, Oregon, I watched a group of children playing in a fountain and was moved to write a poem about the struggle my church was going through. I still hold on to the dream that we can breathe again as the 2019 Called General Conference convenes in… →
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My Restless Year with Wendell Berry
I decided to spend a year with Wendell Berry. He spent 33 with me, walking the circuits of his Kentucky River valley farm on a Sunday, sharing the fruit of his Sabbath poems written between 1979 and 2012. What I’m saying is that it was a slow year. I received This Day: Collected & New… →
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Grey Goblin of a Morning – Friday Poetry
Grey goblin of a morning, raining on my parade, What fancies do you offer as a token substitute? Or should I expect the dim return of my dark shadows? Depression and all its nearer kin? Not today. –Alex Joyner →
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The Prodigal Son’s Older Brother as Wimbledon Chair Umpire – Friday Poetry
What the older brother squandered was his sweat, which, had he known it was as dissolute as life in the far country, he might have traded out for something more exciting. But his fierce fidelity to the American dream was his particular delusion. “Virtue can be earned in honest labor.” Only honesty was not his… →
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Top 10 Posts of 2018 – Heartlands
A word of thanks and best wishes to all the friends of Heartlands who have supported this labor of love in 2018. We’ve grown this year with more views and visits. The top posts reveal a lot of interest (and probably anxiety) about where the United Methodist Church is headed in 2019. But look down… →
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Silence, Poetry & the Salvation of Seamus Heaney
A Review of Christian Wiman’s He Held Radical Light The poet Seamus Heaney paused in the middle of dinner and leaned over to make a confession to Christian Wiman, who was, at the time, the editor of Poetry magazine. Knowing Wiman to be a Christian not only in name, Heaney admitted that he “felt caught between… →
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The Coasts of Anhedonia – Poetry
The land, this land, is not a problem to be solved. It is a matrix, this mother, for health. The great migrations of the day— from Syria, the South, central Africa— are symptoms of a greater dis location. It’s not just about resources and economic opportunity (or lack thereof). These are… →
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How to Get Over the Election – 2018 Edition
We went to the polls. We voted for change or not. We resisted or didn’t. And in the end, we remain divided. One pundit I heard this morning said that the most profound and confounding divide in America is the rural-urban/suburban split. As a site begun after the 2016 elections and devoted to understanding the… →
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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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