Ruminate Blog
Every Moment Grace to Me
The medicine that saved my life was no longer saving me, and so the darkness came. The summer passed. Now I am in the in-between...I am in the not-knowing.
A Year of No Buying: A Fourth Quarter Report
In the face of a culture that is constantly telling us otherwise, A Year of No Buying allowed us to separate our joy from our things. We were left to find it elsewhere...We had more family outings and more lazy Saturdays, and in the bargain got laughter and creativity and relationship and rest.
God's Business
I’m proud of the work I’ve produced. I’m grateful to have had the books published. It’s soul writing. It feeds my spirit. Truth is, though, it does not always feed my family. That’s just the reality of it. And that, too, is the struggle.
5 Favorite Blog Posts to Revisit from 2018
For a review of the highlights, here are the top 5 most-viewed blog posts of 2018. I hope you enjoy these ruminations.
Lessons Learned: On Winning the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize
Stories have a way of percolating in people. They land, they ripple outward, they settle. Over time they become a part of us through their telling and retelling, a new limb through which we feel the world. Their lessons latch on to our senses and color anew everything we experience.
Faith and Femininity
When I watched my ponytail fall to the floor, I was surprised by the lurch in my stomach. The definite markings of my femininity would soon be swept into the forest, leaving uncertainty: How would I embody femininity now that I had chosen to withdraw from traditional feminine expectations?
The Grace of Waiting and Its End
There’s a magic that comes of waiting and watching—a magic only apparent when the waiting is over. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Queen of Waiting. I have no problem waiting out anything, even if it takes years. I have a patience born of soap operas.
Small Miracles & Happy Dances
With each order that comes through we seriously do a happy dance knowing that the good work of our contributors will be seen and held by more hearts and our little nonprofit is earning the funds that will help us start the new year strong. Our staff is deeply encouraged as we witness each intimate act of one human sharing something they love with another.
Stories and the Lives They Save
Stories do save lives—they always have, and they always will. We use stories to make sense of the world around us. We may sometimes turn to them for escape, and other times for answers to questions that plague us. Stories instruct. Stories uplift. Stories...validate the fact that we matter, that we are not alone.
Waiting with Simeon
There in the dust and bustle and eventual hush of familiar religious practice, the Old and New Testaments interwove suddenly, quite simply. Between God’s unlikely prophet, and the newborn—the oh, so unlikely One foretold.
Rebuilding My Life: Making Sense of Burnout and Depression
After 14 years of teaching, I finally decided that it was time for me to leave the profession. A few days after I handed in my resignation, I broke down. I didn't return to work again. Since then, I have been trying to function daily with a body and mind that is challenged by limitations, pain, and struggle.
The Story of Ordinary Time
Ordinary time is normal time, boring time, unpunctuated-by-excitement time. Consequently, time without narrative. It has no set Scripture. Instead, the Christian is supposed to somehow contemplate all aspects of the mystery of Christ.
The Quandry for Us All
I often wish I had more time to write. The minutes of my days are too short, and I cannot produce either the quantity or quality I desire, and there is an ultimate end to my time. It needs to be spent well, and that is the quandary for us all.
greening our golden hour grief: how not to be afraid of the end of the world
When I’m feeling optimistic, I wonder what kind of future world we’ll live in, how children could sit around imagining the monsters of eras past and whisper climate change between cupped hands. When I’m feeling pessimistic, I don’t like to wonder about the future.
The Piano Student
Kira Archibald's short fiction "The Piano Student" appears in Issue No. 49: Mattering.
For the Faint of Heart
The light that emanates from the heart is not likened to the breath of ripe plums or the fire of life. The heart’s job is steady, caged and bloody. To see the heart’s work, one must hold an elite membership, must be willing to cut and pull back the flesh.
Wounded Into Words
Sugercoating and over-sentimentalizing the world doesn’t help. But neither does wallowing in the world’s sheer darkness. So where does that leave us? How do we write the wound?
you will dig me from the earth with your bare hands, in order to resurrect me
Paula Harris's poem "you will dig me from the earth with your bare hands, in order to resurrect me" appears in Issue No. 49: Mattering.
How to Love Your Ugly Feet
Against your white wood ceiling, your feet and ankles framed in the dark denim, there’s a little beauty. This is strange because your feet are the last thing on your body you’d acknowledge as beautiful....they tell you, We carry you. We will keep carrying you.
The Art of Living Well
Sculpture, found art pieces, pottery, and paintings on various mediums were nestled in every corner of the property from their family home, to a purpose-built workshop, to the vineyard itself. I saw in Annibale a great love for and patronage of the arts.
Iceland Landscape
Aaron McPeake's visual art "Iceland Landscape" appears in Issue No. 49: Mattering.
Phantom Tears
My mother is alive. She’s floating toward me through the membranes of sleep. I don’t know if she is cognizant of this, if mom is in her own spiritual realm peering at me through jaded, tired eyes and desperately wanting to connect, or if it’s my own psychic energy trying to restore some sense of balance, who I am and where I’ve come from.
Wine and Miso
For a moment, both the cashier and I think this will be the end of the exchange, but the woman forges ahead: “My husband just died.” The cashier opens and closes his mouth a few times, like a goldfish, and then says, “I’m so sorry.”
Layering Place: In Ourselves, in Our Writing
When we write about people of our own creation, when we write fiction, there’s different work to do. We aren’t just noticing and deciding how to tell what we’ve noticed or experienced...We’re painting in those faint images and sensations ourselves, layering them onto more concrete descriptions of place and reality.
What We've Been Looking For
Yes, the tethers of our bodies are linked like so many dandelion stems in a springtime wreath. Our tendons and muscles and bones are pieced together with the softer parts we’re made of, a promise of completion if we remember to weigh in the soul and the heart....
A Year of No Buying: A Third Quarter Report
Today is my son Oliver’s high school orientation. As it happens, he will be attending my alma mater, a giant public high school that’s home to some of my favorite memories. This afternoon is therefore inducing in me a curious mixture of nostalgia and anticipation.
Autumn Rush
As September waltzes into October, nature extends an invitation for all to come outside and join in its pleasant song. And once you begin to notice its melody, fall takes its time to rise to a crescendo.
foreign, or nyctophobia in twelve parts
I am so desperate to explain. I understand you!...It burns my mouth, the shameful logic my parents taught me. I’m Nigerian, not African-American. I am black, but not in that way.
Love Note to Life: Keep Breathing, Believe it’s Enough
In just over 3 months, I will become 3 years younger than my father was when he died without warning. The closer I get to that number, I am sobered by how young he was. Even more than that, I am sobered by how much he accomplished during his life, and—comparatively speaking—how much I have not.
How to Lose a Friend
People lose friends all the time. I wonder if they ever give any thought to how they should. Or did they just look back one day and realize that person was gone and feel a simple sorrow because they never said goodbye?
Survival as Neighbor-Love
For the last sixteen months I have been occupied with the task of survival. I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar II, and the odds against my continuing to live are steep. Fifty percent of people with my condition will attempt suicide at least once. Fifty percent. That statistic is utterly daunting...
Editors Ruminate: Exposure
The poems in this issue are in and of themselves exposures. They bring to light the unsaid, the repressed, the ignored and model how poetry itself is an act of exposure. The “I” unadorned and vulnerable exposes itself to damage, critique, and harm.
Uncertainty
I hear in the forecasters' voices how they hate, respect, how they cannot help but admire such a powerful, mesmerizing creature. I admire her, too. I'm not a good evacuee.
Baby Shoes
A collection tells the story of the collector. A collection is a shoring up against the things that have gone missing. So much goes missing.
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Finding a Vocabulary of the Heart
by Abigail Carroll
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