What Ruminate Gave Me
By Dave Harrity
When I first started writing poetry, I was a college student struggling to find kinship among my peers. I wrote contemplative poems; I wrote poems toward God. Most of my peers didn’t know what to make of them, however kind they were about them. And I didn’t know what to make of the absence of writerly peers whose work was trying to commune and express what mine was.
Enter Ruminate. I first came across the journal at my college, and was hooked. The tag line said clearly what I couldn’t: “Chewing on life, faith, and art.” That’s what I wanted my work to do. I had never articulated it before, but that was it. I wanted to “chew.”
I got up the courage to send some poems to them. In six months I had five that I thought were good enough. I sent them. They were rejected. But with a kind, handwritten note from the editor, Brianna Van Dyke, who encouraged me to send more work when I had some.
I worked and worked at other poems. Once they were ready, I sent them. A few months later, I heard back. Three poems had been accepted and I was elated.
Ruminate was the first magazine to pay attention to my work, to compensate me for my work, to artfully render my work, and put my work in the world. I’m thankful for them—for what they have done for me, and what they’ve done for the landscapes of faith, art, creativity, and Christian imagination.
I’m not the only author who feels this way. Many writers of faith from my generation have met through the pages of Ruminate—finding one another and building communities from there. Ruminate has helped us articulate our aesthetic—one where art and faith aren’t mutually exclusive, where the artist need not sacrifice quality, voice, content, or subject on the altar of religious or intellectual piety.
In the world of faith and creativity, a production like Ruminate’s is a rare thing—accessible, gorgeously printed and designed, and of consistent and provoking quality—which deserves the attention and support of faithful practitioners of art and artful practitioners of faith everywhere. But they’re struggling, and they need some help.
In the next 6 days, make a choice to stand with Ruminate, giving what you can, spreading the word, and showing support by sharing this message—or any other message from one of their supporters—so that we can help them get out of the red and allow them to continue making beautiful work!
Art matters to faith, and no one knows that better than Ruminate. Ruminate matters to faithful artists, and no one knows that better than me.
Get on it—make a pledge like me. Click here to donate now!
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The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and image-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.