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.
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?
Putting In
I find this tussle with ambivalence on-going in my writing life, rooted I know in fear. So, when I’m able, I listen for the voices of mentors. I listen for their guidance and faith as I consider tip-toeing in.
Put Me to Sleep, Doctor
“They put pets out of their misery,” my mother said. Mom then glared at her newest visitor. She continued with, “Why can’t you do that with me?” Mom was stitched together by rows of metal staples. They appeared like the tips of landmines on the battlefield of her abdomen.
A New Chapter for Ruminate
It is with a mix of gratitude and sadness that Ruminate announces the departure of our founder, Brianna Van Dyke, from her thirteen-year-long tenure as editor-in-chief.
Nature Lover
It is difficult for me, and I imagine for many of my generation, to step outside and engage with the natural world in any way without worry. Is this the end? Will we lose it, all of it?
Sparrows, Breath, Memory: On Writing and Identity
I think, sometimes, that we are at every moment, poised between perspectives, and sometimes it is unbearable to have to choose, again, how to look at a thing, ourselves, and sometimes it is freeing and joyful to know we can choose.
Rooftops I + Fragments V
Seth Clark's visual art "Rooftops" and "Fragments" appears in Issue No. 53: Shelter.
Imperfection
My husband’s scant eight weeks in hospice were the best eight weeks of our marriage. We rediscovered our deep love for each other and I saw the meaninglessness of my striving. Suddenly, there was peace.
Broken
My sick body is still good. She is still me. She is still wise and strong. My female body—to which others believe they are entitled—is still my home. She is still my power. Our stressed and strained bodies are waiting for us to return to them.
God Didn't Save Me—You Did
Teaching has saved me some days. When I didn’t want to get up but had to because there was George Saunders or Sandra Cisneros to read and discuss, I was saved from the pit of Myself Left To Myself that I remember preachers often scaring me into.
Asian Dramas: On Displacement, Vulnerability, and New Perspectives
When I was growing up, the beautiful people with interesting lives were American or European, like me. Always. This reality remained unexamined for me, as did its implied negative—that it’s a little less desirable to be anything else.
!Feliz Día de los Muertos!
The streets were alive with color, music, and chatter. Many people had painted faces, some sang, others danced, and most of us marched up the hilly street to the cemetery gates. This is how Mexico celebrates los muertos WITH los muertos.
Lights, Stories, and Celebrating Joy—Diwali
While I am not particularly religious, Diwali fills me with a strange sense of hope and light and all things new. Being away from home, I even indulged in a bit of worship as my mom taught me how to do it. This is the only festival I am willing to make the compromise on.
the practice of hope: reminders on how to be (or, contemplative practices against capitalism)
Share: meals, music, resources, festivities. Create alternative economies based on generosity and care. Sit on front porches. Feast well, and often.
Write Around the Mulberry Bush
At home, my computer dings, illuminating the puzzle of sentences. My fingers punch the keys, tap the space bar, cursor the thesaurus. Cut and paste, insert, delete. Reorder, revise, redo.
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Ruminate Community
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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.