Resurrection among the ruins
Can there be resurrection /
among the ruins? /
Dare we imagine new life /
rising from these streets of death?
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God is in the searching
My career as a writer was launched in 1980 when I sent an unsolicited article to Calvinist Contact – and it was accepted! The impetus for my article was born on a gold-tinged Sunday afternoon in September: the golden leaves of autumn in the woods next door, the golden sunlight streaming over the hill behind…
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Flannery’s life of faith, grit and grace
Wildcat is the story of a fiercely devout artist who seeks to honour God through her art amid physical suffering and other challenges. Flannery O’Connor, who died in 1964 at age 39, is primarily known for short stories often classified as “Southern Gothic.” Some readers may hesitate to identify with her flawed characters, but they…
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The lost art of letter writing
I have been reading a lot of letters these past few weeks, letters stored in an archive. Hand-written letters, letters typed on type-writers, postcards. Some are written on airmail sheets, but often original envelopes are preserved as well, with stamps I recognize from long ago. I used to love writing and receiving letters before email…
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A label in search of a disease
Quite frankly, I am not sure what the term dyslexia means, and from the voluminous scholarly literature on this topic, it’s clear there is little consensus about its meaning there, either. After earning a doctorate in Reading Education from the University of British Columbia in 1981, I spent twenty-eight years teaching at The King’s University…
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A beautiful madness
When I first heard tell of Robert Hudson’s novel The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham: A Tale About Loving God, it was described to me as a campus novel. I had my own notions about that particular subgenre as practiced by noteworthy British writers like David Lodge or Malcolm Bradbury. Those somewhat satirical novels typically…
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Order out of chaos
After a long pandemic hiatus, faithful readers reconvened for a much-anticipated reunion at Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing on April 11-13, 2024. In the opening chapel, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes invited attendees to slow down and practice sacred self-care. The balm she prescribed was to reject the impulse to constantly feel and express outrage…
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Bethlehem County Bus Number 615
I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but my mother has changed a lot. She used to be one of my favorite people. Now all she does is ask questions, try to micromanage my life, and embarrass me just by being who she is. Of course, she still throws in an occasional hug, which –…
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Baby shoes, supercomputers and God
Google released an Artificial Intelligence chatbot called Bard last March. When asked to summarize the New Testament it took Bard five seconds and only 17 words to do so: “The New Testament is the story of God’s love for humanity which was revealed through Jesus Christ.” The following is a short short story, usually attributed…
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The robots are coming
Could you tell if this editorial was written by a robot? I started asking this question in mid-December right around the time my husband, Jakob was spending his evenings talking to something (someone?) who wasn’t human at all. He had discovered ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, a company co-founded by Elon Musk….
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Strawberries and Cornels
“When we were boys, born and raised in inland regions, we could already imagine the sea, after seeing some water in a little glass; but until we tasted them in Italy, the flavour of strawberries and cornels could in no way come into our minds.” (Augustine, Ep. 7.3.6) When the first taste came…it was, I…
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CC wins 10 awards!
On May 5, the Canadian Christian Communicators Association held its annual awards ceremony showcasing the best in faith-based writing, design and content creation for the 2021 season. Christian Courier (CC) competed against at least 18 other publications and received 10 awards, including first place in the Feature Article, Interview and Photo Essay categories. “They’ve combined…
