The Waking
Ruminate Magazine Online
Ruminate Happenings Spotlight on Allyson Armistead
Ruminate Happenings Spotlight on Allyson Armistead.
Pink Balloon
To my mind, I am looking at a snapshot of myself and my dad at the same age. I remember then thinking how my father, a carpenter by trade, could fix anything, and maybe a decade or so later, how he seemed to break everything. When caring for animals, it’s straightforward: be gentle with them, be firm when necessary but never hurt them.
Ordinary
I, too, crave the ordinary. I desire the familiar comforts of a beautiful home, a healthy family, steady income, and fulfilling work. It’s so easy to shut out noise around me – the evils that haunt me – the challenges that face my world, my country, my neighborhood.
Awaiting Further Instruction: A Letter to Virginia Woolf
Dear Virginia, I’m writing with some wonderful news. I’ve done it! I have secured a room of my own: a third floor home office in which resides a perfectly adequate writing desk, yellow flowered armchair ideal for reading, and windows overlooking my backyard. As per your wise suggestion, it is even possible to lock the door.
Hazy Skies
Where I am living now, the seasons have no pivot... Springs are mercurial, senselessly violent in their cold and snow. I experience winter here like a death, wait endlessly for a green that will outgrow my grief.
On Transitions
To end, I will not offer any more of my own words on this transition—the small one (me leaving Ruminate) or the big one (the pandemic). Instead, I turn to the words of the regular contributors of The Waking. Collectively, their voices tell a story—one of grief, hope, and resurrection.
Contemplative Consequences from a Decade of Singing
Don't dwell on if the notes you sang were fine-tuned or not, as you can't take the notes back. A lot of plans in life fall flat, but the best that one can do is learn from it and aim to do better the next time.
How to Be Divorced
Your sister who has gone through her own divorce not long ago and still was able to show up and walk alongside the whole time. You look at her struggle, her transformation, her healing. You study it, not wanting to miss anything.
Letters To You
Dear Grandma, One day, I came home from school, and you were just gone. Mom said it was because you missed Grandpa and you missed Korea. I knew better. You left because you were fed up with me, fed up with trying to teach Korean to a granddaughter who kept refusing it.
The Annunciation
To DeFeo, her Annunciation wasn’t specific to Mary or Christian interpretation. It was a promise to her, in particular, a “realization of all that is good in this existence…and of certain powers creatively.”
How to Find Water (For Thieves)
Krishna is a thief. A good thief. He steals wonderful things—milk and kisses, butter too. Love, actually. That’s why he’s dark—and radiant; he tries to hide his goodness in the night.
Put Down the Ducky: Sesame Street Wisdom for the Age of Attachment
I love my thinking mind. I have awesome thoughts; they keep me responsible, help me earn a living, form my sense of identity, entertain me. I’m scared to put them down, even for a short ten minutes.
All Saints
Perhaps, I might be excused for wondering, who in the hell loses their vision at 29? Answer: the same people who die at 34, who leave behind widows, who fight in wars they do not believe in, who waste away in prisons for beliefs deemed inappropriate.
Psalm for My Earthly Soul
I will lift you up on eagles wings / And you shall rest with the fawn by the stream, / bathed in the light of the sun, / still and knowing that I am God, / my kingdom shall come / and you shall have your daily bread
Destiny of Cumin
Jasmine V. Bailey's nonfiction piece "Destiny of Cumin" appears in Issue No. 54: The Everyday.
The Portrait
This portrait was, by contrast, honest. It contained texture and dimension. Beauty informed by design and ineffable grit. Its splendid composition carried a story of what it felt like to live in a female body—and the contradiction and cultural weight that came along with it.
Black Space, Dark Matter
I allow the same for my soul. Sit in the unshapen, breathless; being. No push to rush away the restless, the flush of alone and feeling of being lost in charcoal soil. According to divine creation, there is pause, quiet, unwind from action.
Holocene
The trees are still a vibrant green, hardly a red leaf in sight. It’s hard to think of “loss” in this space so thick with greenery, but there’s no other word for it—loss of the seasons, loss of species that can’t cope with the persisting warmth.
Hello, You Nervous Wreck: Choosing Self-Forgiveness
Few people speak openly of the pain that comes from ending a non-romantic relationship. That means when your platonic bond does fall apart, it makes you feel like there’s something wrong with you. You aren’t equipped to deal with it, and you’re left drowning in a sea of doubt, self-loathing, and uncertainty.
Issue 54: The Everyday Readers' Notes
We are thrilled to share some hand-picked readers notes from Issue 54: The Everyday. Be sure to check out our spring issue which releases mid-March!
The Promise of 4 p.m.
Our busy and occupied lives slowly chip away at our ability to experience rest. The city never sleeps and so neither do we. When a moment of rest finally arrives, we meet it filled with restlessness. Even in the stillness of my quiet house, I search for noise.
Letter from 1996: Rembrandt and Winter on a Turkish Peninsula
I am here to read, write, and draw. I am here to find solace, a new center, to torture myself in the wake of a failed marriage. I am here to avoid anyone who might perceive my heart is broken. To hide. When the sun comes out, I walk by the sea.
Dreaming of Predators: Entrepreneurship and Healing Creative Wounds
And entrepreneurship is petrifying. Of course my throat is closing. Of course my body is resisting. Of course I wake from nightmares clutching my neck. Vulnerability once meant death.
Navratri: Nine Nights of Goddess
A shiver moves down my spine, and I wrap my sweatshirt tighter. Sometimes, despite the incantations, I really just need one of your many arms to hold me. To hold all of us. I want to shout out—Bhoodevi, the earth, is at the bottom of the ocean.
A Year (And Counting) of Mercy
Mercy has become an exercise in noticing: the unexpected coffee bought for me by a friend, a kind email from a colleague, a whole chocolate cake left on my desk by a volunteer at a nonprofit I work for. If this past year has been one of sorrows, it has also been one where I step from mercy to mercy.
Finding Peace in a Greenhouse
Greenhouses toe the line between the natural world and the built environment. They protect crops by controlling natural forces such as heavy rain, cold, and strong winds. Though they contain aspects of the natural world like water, soil, plants, and microbiota, they are still highly cultivated and thus disconnected from the wilderness.
Reaching the Perimeter
God creates change in our circumstances and us. I have changed as a result of this season, and I have learned that saying, “I do not have enough,” will have to suffice. I do not believe that God created us to be boundless.
In the Beginning was the Beginning: On New Year’s Parties and Boundaried Beginninglessness
I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings, and anyone who thinks a lot about beginnings begins to understand there’s no end to thinking about beginnings. New Year’s is a beginning, and time. So is creation: the first brick of a house, the first step across the threshold of a door.
The Wait, The Light: Ruminate Advent Reflections
Advent is a time spent in waiting and preparation for Jesus' birth and his return. Here are 5 articles on The Waking about Advent, a time of light, waiting, and hope.
I Used to Love You
I love God. I really do love God. However, I do not love the church. I have slightly given up on the church. It is hard to reconcile the trauma that the church continues to give people. I struggle at letting go.
Wishing Upon Shooting Stars
I am a sucker for shooting stars. Sometimes I’ve seen them. Other times I’ve not. We live life in the space of both /and, where we can hope, despite there being no guarantee that our hopes are realized.
A Quiet Truth
The poem read: "In America they kill their children." What if there’s a quiet truth to what this person, and most likely many others, think about our country?
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The Waking is the online publication of Ruminate Magazine, a reader-supported magazine helping you slow down, read deeply, and live awake. The Waking is interested in reviews, interviews, and short form prose that, as Bernard Cooper says, "magnif[ies] some small aspect of what it means to be human."
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