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By Michael Lyle  Art: Ludvig Christian Møgelgaard, Public domain The Carvers were a trial. There was a Carver on the rescue squad, a Carver in the church choir and every Sunday school class in the church, a Carver in the high school band, a Carver in the middle school, a Carver in the elementary school, a Carver on the church softball and volleyball teams, a Carver on community t-ball and soccer teams, a Carver at every picnic, meeting, or prayer group, a Carver in every parade. Every manifestation of church or community included at least one Carver. Hank Carver, sometimes-employed husband, father (five times over), and generally good fellow, attended worship regularly, worked faithfully with the rescue squad and Ruritan, and did whatever good he could whenever he could. His wife Amelia (who on the occasion of her fifth delivery insisted that the doctor remove all possibility of a sixth) taught Sunday School, sang in the church choir (along with her eldest, a son and exceptional soprano), attended every PTA meeting, volunteered every time the pastor asked for help, and did whatever good she could whenever she could. The lesser Carvers (son Jamie, daughter Edith, daughter Grace, daughter Candy, and son Joey), were, quite literally, everywhere else. It was not unusual to find several Carvers at the same place, and/or at multiple and widely diverse places, at the same time. The Carvers, like Moby Dick, were believed by many to be ubiquitous. The Carvers also possessed other universally attested traits in addition to their great, good hearts, outgoing personalities, and omnipresence. Their cars were frequently under repair, their bills were usually overdue, the children perennially lacked transportation, among other things, and they were often caught in the grips of some extenuating circumstance or other. Hank was perpetually on the brink of a new job, or just one seventy-five dollar part away from getting his truck back on the road. Amelia’s worn-out sedan was frequently one tank of gas, or one inflated tire, short of a trip to the doctor’s office, the pharmacy, the school (to drop off or pick up one of the kids, or to meet with one of their teachers), the church, or the supermarket. The kids usually lacked the instrument necessary for them to play in the band, funds for a week at summer camp, the deposit for the school trip, breakfast, funds for the youth ski trip, new shoes, hats, coats, umbrellas, lunches, belts, matching socks, dinners, pairs of glasses, or prescriptions filled. They lacked these things until someone in the community heard about it and came to the rescue. If it takes a village to raise a child, it took an entire town to keep the Carvers going. The Carvers were at the heart of the community, and the community’s heart never had an opportunity to stray very far from the Carvers. It was a textbook symbiotic relationship, except the community sometimes felt inadequate and occasionally resentful of its role. The Carver kids were legendary for emptying any and every candy dish a household had to offer in one quick pass. It was nothing to see them flying out the door, mouths and pockets at maximum capacity. If no treats were clearly visible, one of the little ones would usually ask about availability. Certain families stopped answering the phone on the days Candy would likely need a ride to (and of course from) soccer practice. In those days, before the Internet and smartphones, many acquired caller ID primarily to identify the Carvers. Everyone knew that once they agreed to give Candy a ride to the soccer game, or pick Edith up from band practice, or get Joey from preschool, they could be saddled with the child for hours, and sometimes through at least one meal. And because folks were uncomfortable dropping a nine-year-old off at home when they knew no one else was there, everyone opened their minivan doors, their refrigerators, and their hearts over and again despite promises recently and vehemently made to themselves to the contrary. Eventually, the Carvers found their way into the very language of the community. If one had provided money, transportation, clothes, food, or any other means of support, or, as happened on occasion, all of the above, they considered themselves “Carvered.” Giving a lot of money, keeping a child overnight, or paying a utility bill was considered to be a “Major Carvering.” Dropping a Carver child off at home, inviting one to a family meal, or swinging by the Carver home to take a late-sleeping Carver to school, was considered to be a “Minor Carvering.” To the extent that pretty much everybody in the community had been “Carvered” at one time or another, it was doubly true of the church. Mom Amelia often latched on to one person or family in the church at a time. About every two months, I got a call from a different upset and confused parishioner with the familiar story. Amelia had “been sharing with them,” and they had “started helping out.” Then Amelia had started asking for additional help. Then Amelia had asked for increasingly larger forms of help. Then the person began feeling used and confused and decided to call the pastor. Those within the congregation who had been “Carvered” grew at an alarming rate. The Carvers were a trial, and a peculiar kind of godsend. The Carvers generated more theological discussion and more visceral wrangling with Christian ethics than any sermon, class, lecture, presentation, or activity I’ve experienced. They provoked ongoing wrangling with servanthood, forgiveness, honesty, patience, love, stewardship, and the nature of Christian community. The Carvers gave liberally of what they had: love, honesty, strong bodies willing to work long and hard, musical talent, faith, and their unique selves. The Carvers loved and served well, and they were well-loved and served in return, as well as fed, transported, tolerated, subsidized, clothed, forgiven, gossiped about, complained about, embraced, prayed about, prayed over, prayed for, and avoided. No one ever figured out what to do, what not to do, or when and how to do it, or not. Everyone occasionally wished the earth would open up and swallow the Carvers and their needs whole, and everyone simultaneously wondered how to love them better and how we would get by without them. The Carvers were a trial. Every family and every person was ultimately left to make her or his own peace with the Carvers and how they should be handled. My moment came one Christmas Eve. I grew up hearing about how Santa was always so worn out from his work on Christmas Eve that he slept for a week, carefully ministered to by Mrs. Claus and the tireless, subhuman elves. It didn’t take many Advents and Christmases as a minister for me to completely understand such fatigue. I’ve done manual labor, worked in a department store during the holidays, and worked in other high-stress jobs, but the weariness I feel on Christmas Eve as the pastor of a local church surpasses anything the secular world has thrown at me. And it’s not the multiple services, the secular expectations, the inexhaustible details, the parties, receptions, celebrations, or engagement with rampant consumerism that does it. It’s the illusory holiness that can’t quite be grasped that really takes it out of me. My family had given up on me years before. I had surrendered being “normal” during Advent and Christmas, and they had given up trying to interact normally with me. Everyone had learned to maintain a certain distance. Sometimes I would catch them whispering about how I seemed to be doing when they thought I was out of earshot. They would give me looks of genuine compassion and periodically inquired as to how I was “making it,” or would simply place a loving hand on my shoulder. But by the time Christmas Eve arrived, the parsonage decorations were up, gifts wrapped, and my wonderful wife, daughters, and sons-in-law safely gathered in, I was pretty much beyond reach, and everybody knew it. They loved me anyway and waited patiently for my eventual, gradual return. The Christmas of my “Carvering” was as idyllic as it could possibly be under the circumstances. Our lovely, historic town was decorated to a standard sufficient for any Christmas story set in any English village or Currier & Ives lithograph. The beautiful, old church was glorious in its Yuletide finery. It was appropriately cold, and flurries had swirled all afternoon. The town always celebrated a 7:30 P.M. ecumenical service at which one of the town clergy preached and all the others participated in the service. These community services were much anticipated, and the preacher usually started on her or his sermon in October. (I still recall the sermons I preached on those occasions as well as the ones I heard. If we all had put that kind of time and energy into our weekly efforts, there wouldn’t have been an empty pew for miles.) These were occasions at which the host church, host pastor, guest preacher, and everyone present displayed their very best. Grown children of local families knew that if they were coming home for Christmas at all, they’d better have themselves present and presentable by 7:30 P.M. Christmas Eve. College students home for the holidays sat with their families and acted like their faith was more important to them than ever. These were much-anticipated, special gatherings of a close-knit community in which all cared about the others and knew more about one another than was healthy or necessary. By 10:00 P.M., however, everyone had resorted to home and hearth. A few still visited from house to house, delivering home-baked goodies and spreading Christmas cheer, but most were done and gathered in. The town lay quiet, as only we Methodists ventured back out for 11:00 communion. So picturesque was this particular Christmas Eve in the Blue Ridge Mountains that I had begun to believe this might just be the year that I arrived home from the 11:00 P.M. candlelight service ready to relax and celebrate. In spite of myself and the vagaries of the season, I mostly looked forward to those late services on Christmas Eve. They had become the essence of Christmas for me and for a goodly number of others, and they attracted a diverse crowd. People who didn’t even attend worship on Easter ventured out in the late-December cold each Christmas Eve to hear the story again, sing the familiar carols, and light their little candles. Those services, of the many in my life, remain the most beautiful and peaceful of my experience. That particular evening, a mystical holiness hung palpably in the air. The service flowed seamlessly, the worshipers departed in joy tinged with awe, and scattered snowflakes fell as I wished the departing congregation “Merry Christmas” on the church steps. My family waited patiently with me as I made sure all the candles were well out and began switching off lights. Finally, I told them to go along home, that I would be there in a few minutes. The parsonage was a short walk up the street, just on the edge of the town. I simply wanted to spend a few minutes alone in the quiet sanctuary. Tears filled my eyes as I knelt at the communion rail in the stillness of the darkened church. Like a shipwreck survivor fresh from a perilous, crowded raft, safely ashore at last, wrapped in a blanket and cupping a mug of soup, I blubbered heartfelt thanks for deliverance and my life’s innumerable blessings. Spent and calm at last, as I rose to gather my things and enter ever more fully into the childlike joy of Christmas, I was startled by Candy Carver’s silhouette, illuminated by the light coming through the doorway leading to the rooms behind the sanctuary. “I need a ride home,” she said. How long had she been standing there? Had she watched me kneel and cry like a sentimental child? Where had she been as everyone else was departing? How had she gotten there? Where was her family, and on Christmas Eve for God’s sake? My cozy Christmas Eve was suddenly adrift in a fog of resentment, covering me like a pall of lead. Here I was again on Christmas Eve, spent yet again, my expressions of relief and release answered by a punch in the gut. “Where’s your family?” I asked. “Isn’t someone coming for you?” I thought of my family waiting for me up the street, anxious to open our one Christmas Eve gift each before turning in, and ready to finally get “Christmas” underway. I thought of how they were probably expecting more of me than usual because of the good place in which they had left me just moments before. “Mom said I should get a ride with somebody.” Except we were all out of somebodies. At that moment it felt as if every other somebody in the world was sitting around the tree with their family sipping eggnog while I stood there wishing all the Carvers lived on Mars. Of all the somebodies in the whole world, I was the one being “Carvered” on Christmas Eve. “Can’t we call your house and have somebody come pick you up?” “Our phone’s not working right now.” “Get your coat. Let’s go.” I fumed all the way to the car, all the way through town, and halfway out to the Carvers. Finally, I came out of myself and looked over at Candy. There, all in a heap, bundled up in a worn-out coat two sizes too big, sat the entire Carver story embodied in that one child: all the embarrassing situations, the awkward requests for assistance, the hand-me-down clothes, unpaid bills, unappreciated duties grudgingly performed by over-used friends, neighbors, and church people. It all draped from that child like the acolyte’s robe she had but recently hung in the sacristy. Only this time it was her pastor whose irritation shone through. “What do you want for Christmas, Candy?” I heard a kindness in my voice that hadn’t been there since I’d bidden my family to go ahead home. After a silence, Candy named a couple of things popular with her age group that year. Both were expensive, and I knew she wouldn’t be getting either. “Anything else?” She named a couple more little things, and then we were at her house. “Thank you for bringing me home,” she said. “You’re welcome, Candy. Merry Christmas! I hope Santa is good to you. You deserve it. And thank you for being our acolyte tonight.” She smiled and closed the door. She let herself in the house. The light was on, but nobody greeted her except the two scroungy dogs that lived under the house and had come barking and snapping at my tires as we pulled up. Candy alone, of all her family, had come to the late service that night to acolyte for me, for all of us, and I was so caught up in myself that I hadn’t even noticed. Too embarrassed to impose on anybody else, she had waited around to ask her pastor for a ride home. She had waited for the safest person to impose upon, and yet had experienced the same old resentment yet again. Had I undone everything the service might have offered Candy? Had we really offered her much of anything in the first place? The wonderful feelings of my personal Christmas experience certainly weren’t hers. She was a Carver. Carvers were a trial. It was deathly quiet as I drove through town, passing the churches, houses, and small businesses of people I knew. As I passed my own now-dark church and headed up the street to the parsonage, I knew Candy would forgive me, probably already had if she was thinking of me at all, and that the seasonal, popular Christmas spirit had been replaced by something altogether more profound. Michael Lyle is the author of the poetry chapbook The Everywhere of Light (Plan B Press), and his poems have appeared widely, including Atlanta Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Crannóg, The Hollins Critic, Mudfish and Poetry East. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Michael's other work on Foreshadow: Wick of the Soul (Poetry, October 2022) Tennis Players (Poetry, October 2022) Yahweh (Poetry, October 2022) Family of God (Poetry, October 2022)
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By Carl Winderl on that starry starry silent night in His stone cold manger pondering just what Is It God hath wrought in that slightly more than a pound of flesh, or so about to be some day, soon in a couple weeks or so to feel the knife’s slice . . . as if some sacrificial lamb He will sometime be. but til then, on this bleak midwinter night in the silence of His Mother’s smile I see Him there enwrapped as if some Handful of clay created “how” . . . but for now, cradled in a swaddling of Flesh. . . . Carl Winderl holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from New York University and maintains a home in San Diego, California. He is the author of the poetry book, The Gospel According. . . to Mary (Finishing Line Press, 2021).
Carl's other work on Foreshadow: kneeling at the Manger (Poetry, December 2022) at the anti-tower (Poetry, June 2022) At Judas' funeral (Poetry, March 2022) A Writer Is Always at Work (Part 1 of 2) (Interview, May 2021) Book review by Rachel Fulton Brown  Carl Winderl, The Gospel According...to Mary. Georgetown, Kentucky: Finishing Line Press, 2021. xiv+90 pp. I did not expect to enjoy this book. I tend not to like free verse—I much prefer iambic pentameter—nor do I enjoy most modern efforts to imagine what Jesus or Mary thought or said. The idiom is always off, not scriptural enough, too psychoanalytical or colloquial, making Jesus anything but divine and his mother either victim or “strong woman,” at once too ordinary to be hailed as “full of grace” and too powerful ever to have said “Let it be to me.” A book of poems written in Mary’s voice without meter or rhyme? At best, I expected to be irritated, if not downright annoyed. And yet, when Carl invited me to review his poems, I said yes, even as I questioned how it could be that I should find joy in them. What can I say? Mary has a way of nudging me when she wants me to look at something. The Song of Songs as sung at the feasts of her Assumption and Nativity, the psalms as sung in the Hours of the Virgin—these were the texts that medieval Christians turned to when they wanted to hear the voice of Mary speaking with her Son, about which I have previously written on other occasions at Mary’s behest. I say Mary’s behest, but more accurately, Wisdom’s, the voice of Our Lady conceived at the beginning of the world. I felt her nudge in Carl’s request. There is something here you need to learn. Do what he has asked you. Take, read. What would it be like to be the Mother of the Word when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us? To be filled with words, and yet silent, keeping them in your heart? One might catch a whisper here, a gesture there. The Spirit blows where it wills, overshadowing the letter. Sentences are reduced to fragments and promises, changes in font taken up from the Font. Each word becomes a riddle stretched out on the Cross of the page, crucified with the Son. There are glimpses of veils, shadows of types, the poverty of print made medium for the Light. “Do whatever he tells you.” Trust Him. Take it slowly. Have patience as you follow the lines down the page, collecting gemstones and drops of blood. It is cruel to ask a scholar to review a mosaic of Light, to render, dismember, shatter in prose. And yet who but a scholar—or lover—would catch every word? Hear the echoes of the tradition in the turn of half a phrase? The margins of the book fill with scribbled notes: I hate this effort to make heaven earthbound (on Mary sitting in the laundry, immaculately conceived). Like marginal labels in a medieval illuminated manuscript, glosses on images the poems assume (on Pilate’s wash water and the witnesses to His scourging). Mary knows the science of creation, quadrivium as well as trivium (on the chemical reaction of Good Friday’s leaded sky). Images leap out at you—tied to the creator of the world (“a lump of coal”). Sometimes it is difficult to tell who is speaking to Whom, when punctuation fails and no words are capitalized. Only the pronouns merit a capital letter, condemned: Him, His, He. Does the Son speak of the father or the Father of his son when Isaac lies stretched on the cross “trussed up, in trust”? Citations to Scripture are throughout unmarked, leaving marks in the margins, the imagery slipping from Old Testament to New and back again, shimmering, bloody, hidden in a life-time of prayer. Should I give my references? Tell you how I know that when Mary says (10) thus I now see and I know it’s not just a hypothesis, nor a theory it is Law that she is speaking the Reality of love, the transfigured Trinity made three-dimensional on the Cross buried in her womb, as medieval commentators like Richard of St. Laurent averred? Can I explain how I know, with Mary, that Christ was marked with tattoos—in Black and Blue Old English on his right bicep “Born to Raze Hell!”, a Serpent Green & Red on his left forearm, a Valentine’s Heart over His breast, broken in two, labelled M-O-T H-E-R (13)—because I wear tattoos of my own on my shoulders and back? Can I tell you how it makes sense to see the Transfigured Christ in the flying crosses of the airplanes, including the one flat, dull, shadow-less and life-less, on the ground in its hangar, awaiting its Passenger (20–21), because I have lived through the mechanical horror of air travel myself? Halfway through the book, the pain of understanding is almost (but not quite, because I am not Mary) too much to bear. Another marginal notation: Like eating the whole bar of chocolate in a single sitting, trying to read the whole book—“just one more.” And another: Difficult to read—force you to think—cannot glide over the words—not about “information.” We need instructions on how to read. Another living poet comes to mind. Anglican priest and singer–songwriter Malcolm Guite writes about poetry as necessary to theology, to the understanding of the Incarnation: tasting the Words, hearing the Echoes and Counterpoints, delighting in the play of Images and Allusions, Ambiguity and Ambivalence, Perspective and Paradox: “Poetry may be especially fitted as a medium for helping us apprehend something of the mystery embodied in that phrase ‘the Word was made flesh’” (Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination [London, 2008], 2). In Carl’s poems, we are in the presence of the Word whom only the womb of His mother could contain. Rhymes and puns live in the gaps between sense and sound; Mary is the kenning of Christ. It is impossible to read enough in the tradition to catch all the references. All the references are in Scripture, breathed out over centuries in the liturgy. But the poems are incarnate, too. They depend on their layout on the page, on the line breaks and isolated words. Without meter or rhyme, they hold anticipation not in their sounds, but in their sense. They are incarnate, yet mute, handmaidens of spoken verse, structured in the pauses between words. This is a typographical Mary, the Mary hidden from the outside world, made visible on the page. Silent in her physicality, not to be quoted, as she remembers the day when her Son died. “X marks the spot” on the hill where the “decidedly veryUpperCase” “old Rugged Cross” stood, a marker for “latterday Pirates who / abbreviate their cache en vellum / with the selfsame Grecian phoneme” marked on the hands and feet of her Son and worn on ears, necks, breasts, and lapels, fashioned in silver and gold, “causing me to also reminisce ... / the day so long ago when Romans played / Pin the Cross on Jesus” (38). Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. The title of the book promises coverage--The Gospel According ... to Mary—and so we read the Gospel not in linear time, but in memory, Mary’s memory overlapping events from Good Friday to Christmas, the time of her memory enfolded in the time of the liturgy, the cycle of seasons turning, turning in her memory like the laundry in the washer and dryer in the opening poem. Once I surrendered to the brokenness of the lines, the soiled references to the modern world (expected, but not expected to resonate), I found myself in a mosaic of light, a medieval worshipper sitting in darkness, sunlight streaming through the glass stained by the colors of story, God’s Incarnation into Time Past, now Time Future made Time Present. Yet another marginal notation, at a place where the line break broke apart the words: “first planted His minis- / Tree in the Great / Temple Hall” (67): aslant—looking aslant through figures / glass / refractions. I cannot tell you what it was like for me to experience reading these poems, except in broken excerpts. Do we wonder to find Mary so silent in the Scriptures, she who contained in her womb the Word by which the heavens and earth were made? Take, read. You will find in these poems good wine. Rachel Fulton Brown is associate professor of History at the University of Chicago. She is author of From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200, and Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, both published by Columbia University Press. She has co-authored and edited two books of poetry with the Dragon Common Room, her online classroom for training poets in iambic pentameter. She blogs on the internet mosaic as Fencing Bear at Prayer.
The Gospel According...to Mary by Carl Winderl Carl's work on Foreshadow: kneeling at the Manger (Poetry, December 2022) at the anti-tower (Poetry, June 2022) At Judas' funeral (Poetry, March 2022) A Writer Is Always at Work (Part 1 of 2) (Interview, May 2021) A Writer Is Always at Work (Part 2 of 2) (Interview, June 2021) By Carl Winderl staffs at their sides, hushed mouths agape, reeking not of frankincense and myrrh, but of linseed oil, sulfur, pitch, and tar, these rough men stare, stunned by My Son’s birth, shocked in amazed gazing, at Him. Their faces though I recognize, they’re the providers of the Paschal lambs, at Passover for the Temple, they breed and they take from the ewes their firstborns to bleed and suffer, sacrificed to atone for Israel’s sin, but when their shepherd eyes meet mine I see on their adoring faces a glimpse of mute surprise, some wonder; in an eyebrow’s rise dis- belief, while something in their furtive sidelong glances causes me to further ponder more, for they have been trained to know a sacrificial lamb when they see One Carl Winderl holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from New York University and maintains a home in San Diego, California. He is the author of the poetry book, The Gospel According. . . to Mary (Finishing Line Press, 2021).
'kneeling at the Manger' first appeared in The Christian Century. It has been republished here with the author's permission. Carl's other work on Foreshadow: at the anti-tower (Poetry, June 2022) At Judas' funeral (Poetry, March 2022) A Writer Is Always at Work (Part 1 of 2) (Interview, May 2021) A Writer Is Always at Work (Part 2 of 2) (Interview, June 2021) By Josh Seligman Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. Jonah 4:5 In my foreword introducing the season, I reflected on the prophet Jonah, especially how, at one turning point in his life, he reorients his life to God: 'I worship the LORD', he says, accepting responsibility for his actions and offering himself entirely to God. This, I suggested, can serve as a model of how we, too, are called to continually reorient ourselves towards God. (This calling to worship God will be explored more deeply next year.) But there is a second turning point in Jonah's story, and this takes place at the very end. Jonah has (reluctantly) proclaimed God's word to Nineveh; the Ninevites have repented. Mission accomplished! But the story is not over. There is still more work to be done: although Jonah has performed his task, although the Ninevites have turned from their violent ways and although even God seems to have changed his mind, now sparing the Ninevites from destruction, Jonah's heart remains unchanged. Jonah leaves Nineveh and sits down somewhere east of it, '[waiting] to see what would happen to the city' (Jonah 4:5), perhaps hoping that it would be destroyed anyway. Then, through growing a vine to shelter Jonah from the scorching wind and later destroying the vine, God teaches Jonah that, just as Jonah has cared for the vine, so God also cares for Nineveh. The story ends with God's question to Jonah: 'Should I not be concerned about that great city?' (4:11). Here, Jonah is faced with another turning point. Will he remain as he is, angry enough to die, or will he understand the great love and mercy God has for Jonah's enemies, and so live the richer, fuller life that God has for him? Although Jonah has completed the first task God has given him, resulting in the salvation of his enemies, there is a deeper task to which he is called, resulting in his own salvation. He is now called to understand more completely the mystery of God's love, to be transformed so that he might begin to love the people and land he has been sent to save. This second calling of Jonah surprises me because when I think about vocation, I usually think about it in terms of external work people do for God or others. As examples of such work, I can point to the abundance of compelling writing and conversations we have published this year, such as Kathryn Sadakierski's description of serving children as a spiritual mother, Alina Sayre's personal essay on her calling as a writer or my interview with Tim Harvey on tending a congregation as an ordained minister, to name just a few. While such external tasks are important, the ending of Jonah's story suggests that they are only made complete with our inward transformation. In other words, vocation is not only about our deeds but also about our character formation. It's not only about the work we do in the world; it's more fundamentally about the work that God is doing in us, with our cooperation, to change us, heal us and make us whole. When Jesus calls the Apostle Peter to follow him, for example, this calling certainly involves specific tasks he must do, such as strengthening, nourishing and teaching the other disciples. But in order to do these and other things, Peter's heart must first be transformed. Indeed, after Jesus' resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we see that Peter develops the courage and power to serve Christ faithfully (this ongoing transformation of Peter's character is expressed wonderfully in Sandro F. Piedrahita's short story 'The Crucifixion of St. Peter'). As Peter would write concerning vocation, such a transformation is nothing less than '[participation] in the divine nature' (2 Peter 1:3–4). Who we are called to become, therefore, are humans ablaze with divinity. The Church has historically understood that such a transformation is the very reason God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. As Church Father Athanasius said, 'God became man that man might become [like] God'. Although this transformation is a gift from God, it requires our engagement. Peter urges his listeners to 'make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love' (vv. 5–7) so that our work for Christ does not become 'ineffective or unproductive' (v. 8). In other words, these qualities, the foremost of which is love, are required ingredients for living fully into our calling, enlivening and empowering our activity. Also, we must do all we can, with God's help, to cultivate these qualities. Without this internal work, whatever external work we do is incomplete at best. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians, even if we do the holiest and most sacrificial deeds, if we do not have love, we gain nothing (1 Cor. 13:1–3). Our podcast guest Valencio Jackson, for example, has held a variety of different jobs, from engineer to aquatics director to music teacher. But as he describes to Will, he understands his calling as putting God and other people above himself in whatever he is doing, keeping himself open to God's voice. I imagine that, like sunlight shining through several different stained-glass panels at once, such an orientation has enlivened and empowered each of Valencio's roles. Such a disposition, I would argue, is also what God is trying to cultivate in Jonah. The book named after him ends with a question: 'Should I not be concerned about that great city?' (Jonah 4:11). This implies, 'Should you, Jonah, not also be concerned about that great city? Should you not also pray and work for the well-being of the people and animals that live there? Should you not also be transformed so that your heart resembles mine, offering mercy even to your enemies?' As we go about seeking to fulfil the work God has given us to do, may we hear for ourselves God's question to Jonah. May we understand our calling not only in terms of what we do but also who we are becoming -- and may we continually embark on that pilgrimage towards transformation in Christ. -- Thank you to all of our contributors and guests this season! It has been a privilege meeting and working with you all, and the Foreshadow team hope to see more of your work next year. Thank you also to the Foreshadow/Forecast editorial team for their insights and hard work. I've included links to many, but not all, of the work we published this season in the article above based on their relevance to my message. Unfortunately, I was unable to include everyone's work here, but I encourage you to check out all of the writing and conversations from this past season. Next year, our theme will be 'Songs of Ascents: Pilgrimage and Worship'. Stay tuned for a foreword introducing the theme in January 2023. In the meantime, submissions for next year open on 1 December 2022, and look out for bonus material over Advent and Christmas. Josh is the founding editor of Foreshadow and a co-host of its podcast, Forecast.
Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book.  After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google and other platforms. Listen to other Forecasts here. This final episode of Season 2 begins with Will responding to the previous episode on congregational singing, and then Will and Josh review the conversations from the second half of the season, offering their takeaways on vocation. They discuss how calling is both dynamic and grounded, and they review the three dimensions of calling that they developed in previous episodes, including their relation to the parable of the talents. In summary, we are called to be faithful to God in the midst of the joys, challenges and choices of daily life, as illustrated by the Virgin Mary's acceptance of her call to become the mother of Jesus. Additional resource: Art: Study for the Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner (Public domain) Will is a co-host of Forecast.
Josh is the founding editor of Foreshadow and a co-host of Forecast. Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. By Abigail Leigh Stripped of vision, I fumble on the cliff-edge against the rush and roar of ocean armies—feud for foothold salt and wind biting my eyes And my outer self rips away-- A tremor shifts the mountain, my faith too just like my legs, my spirit folds in on itself; ground and grief piling on top. Into the abyss I dive interrogate shadows, excavate for answers. What’s unveiled—earth’s veil the heavens dawning as morning light like brightness after rain an imperishable promise sprouting over an impermanent problem For a weighted world: eternity—light And this assured insurance dispels disbelief Suddenly, bowed valleys rise up laden stones roll away a path through the sea—revealed uncrushed, my soul walks forward does not grow weary. I am binding hope to my heart: over that hill I will be, eyes stretched, waiting-- And behold, a beacon across open sea, seen ascending, glorious! The power of the waves The throat of the wind The promised sun—rising! You are there, God You are here. Abigail Leigh is a harpist and poet from Oregon. As a self-proclaimed paradox, both a creative and analytical being, she draws inspiration from life's dichotomies: the belief that light and darkness, growth and decay, and joy and sorrow travel in tandem. Every season has a story to tell, and she writes because she is committed to unveiling truth from learned experiences. Her poetry has been published in Darling Magazine, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Equinox Biannual Journal and Clayjar Review.
Abigail's other work on Foreshadow: A Deeper Calling (Poetry, October 2022) The Mountain Sermon (Poetry, October 2022) The Fruitless Tenant (Poetry, October 2022) Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. By Bryant Burroughs Each day that comes before soon becomes a yesterday. Its skies awaken with hope, then the sun moves, and stars play, and the day fades away, lost in our three-score-and-ten scope, wherein even two millennia of days blink past. We survive all our days but our last. Then we, too, fade away to await the Youngest Day. The Youngest Day will neither age nor wane. Our false king, Imperial Time, long our master and bane, will be unnoticed, immaterial, as on Christmas Day with family all around, or holding hands walking in the rain, or a fresh dawn with birdsong its only sound. And Time, with death and tears in train, will be exiled to a shore far away. And we, awakened and washed clean, will be undefiled on the Youngest Day. Bryant Burroughs is a writer and lives with his wife Ruth in Upstate South Carolina with their three cats. His work has appeared in online literary sites such as Agape Review, Clayjar Review, Pure in Heart Stories and Faith and Hope & Fiction.
Bryant's other work on Foreshadow: The Widow Whose Son Lived (Fiction, July 2022) Please support us by sharing this post and buying us a book. By Alan Altany Lethal gateways to mortal demise, the Seven Deadlies mock divine love, sneering at all godly virtues with a tolling of pure disdain. Pride is an egocentric spinning, a centripetal conceit of fierce hubris, contempt for God’s blazing acts of ultimate humility. Envy is the devil’s finest resentment leading to the living of constant dying, a perpetual blaming and craving that voids every remnant of charity. Wrath’s wild rages expose renegade emotions, like feral mustangs pounding the earth with abandon, having none of the Crucified Christ’s merciful patience. Sloth discloses a mediocre body and soul, too sedated with ennui to care for anyone, languishing in vain idleness, so spiritually lukewarm as to preclude fruitful diligence. Greed generates a fantasy lure for ever-elusive satisfaction and powerful pleasures that disorder and spurn all the gracious good found in generosity. Gluttony is eating, drinking, drugging beyond the pale, where self-stuffings create gods out of ego-addictions, leaving no room for tolerating any temperance. Lust’s deluded seductions are many in kind, base desires with no intimacy, a full immersion into transient carnal power without the moral dignity and courage of chastity. Yet all the Deadlies are divinely forgivable and lose their dreadful odors in sorrowing repentance where scars of awe-struck healing descend from the virtue of God. Alan Altany, Ph.D., is a septuagenarian college professor of religious studies. He’s been a factory worker, swineherd on a farm, hotel clerk, lawn maintenance worker, small magazine of poetry editor, director of religious education for churches, truck driver, novelist, etc. He published a book of poetry in 2022 entitled A Beautiful Absurdity: Christian Poetry of the Sacred. His website is at https://www.alanaltany.com/.
'The Seven Deadlies' first appeared in A Beautiful Absurdity: Christian Poetry of the Sacred. It has been republished here with the author's permission. Alan's previous work on Foreshadow: Grunewald's Crucifixion (Poetry, September 2022) Habit of Being Wise (Poetry, October 2022) Please support us by sharing this post and buying us a book. By Linda McCullough Moore It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. When you sneeze, all your body functions stop, even your heart. Still, I keep trying. Linda McCullough Moore is the author of two story collections, a novel, an essay collection and more than 350 shorter published works. She is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, as well as winner and finalist for numerous national awards. Her first story collection was endorsed by Alice Munro, and equally as joyous, she frequently hears from readers who write to say her work makes a difference in their lives. For many years, she has mentored award-winning writers of fiction, poetry and memoir. She is currently completing a novel, Time Out of Mind, and a collection of her poetry. www.lindamcculloughmoore.com
Linda's other work on Foreshadow: A Little Thing I Wrote (Poetry, October 2022) Wait It Out (Poetry, October 2022) Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. |
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