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The Seven Deadlies

31/10/2022

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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. 
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Untitled

31/10/2022

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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)


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Misjudged

31/10/2022

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By Steven Searcy

Of course you will be
misunderstood.

Christ was a coward,
cold and uncaring,
reckless, foolish,
a loner, a lush,
arrogant, ill-tempered,
soft, and strange,
a troublemaker,
a small, stupid man,
a meaningless martyr.

What are you?

Steven Searcy lives with his wife and three sons in Atlanta, Georgia, where he earns a living working as an engineer in fibre optic telecommunications. His poetry has been published in 
Ekstasis Magazine, Reformed Journal, Fathom Magazine and The Clayjar Review.

Steven's other work on Foreshadow:
Morning Prayer (Poetry, August 2022)
​Do What Cannot Be Left Undone (Poetry, September 2022)
Being (Poetry, October 2022)


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Wait It Out

31/10/2022

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By Linda McCullough Moore

April waiting
I intend to spend in a bus station
in Falls Creek, Pennsylvania,
where in 1956 my aunt Delores
– no, I didn't like her –
bought me peach pie, a piece
– yes, homemade – expecting
I'd be nice to her.
Because.

The waiting room, old then,
before these sixty years
clock-ticked, drop-kicked
my life. Gray lint, gum wrappers
bussed here from America,
something rumpled in the corner,
a ragged shirt a man from Lithuania
worked eleven hours for, wrinkled
tickets, a carry-all no one has opened
since the war before the war.

The ticket window's closed.
The tattered magazines named
Look and Life and Cosmopolitan.
(Why Men Pay for Love, p. 17.)
My mother will not wonder where I am.
The air is cold, old gasoline perfumes
rust on the radiator. No sound arrives,
no hiss, exhaust, no bus’s exhalation.
I‘m seventy-two years old.
I still have homework due on Monday.

My childhood wasn't much.
It's all I think about.

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)

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Being

31/10/2022

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By Steven Searcy

He is still sitting with me--
the gentleman I saw
hunched over his walker,
slowly making his way
down the sidewalk in the park
early Friday morning,

and how he paused to make
the sign of the cross
to the empty tree-lined path
laid out before him.

Oh, my frantic, fractious heart
needs the patient peace each day
to pause, smile, and say:
   I can move!
      I can breathe!
         I can be!

Steven Searcy lives with his wife and three sons in Atlanta, Georgia, where he earns a living working as an engineer in fibre optic telecommunications. His poetry has been published in Ekstasis Magazine, Reformed Journal, Fathom Magazine, and The Clayjar Review.

Steven's other work on Foreshadow:
Morning Prayer (Poetry, August 2022)
Do What Cannot Be Left Undone (Poetry, September 2022)


Support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. 
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Family of God

31/10/2022

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By Michael Lyle

Zebedee sits in the boat
among the torn nets
and sees his sons
walk away with the Nazarene.

His burnt cheeks sting,
embarrassed to be heartbroken
in front of the hired men,
watching the brothers
disappear down the shore
as Galilee laps the hull.

Michael Lyle is the author of the poetry chapbook The Everywhere of Light (Plan B Press), and his poems have appeared widely, including in 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)

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Habit of Being Wise

24/10/2022

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By Alan Altany

“… the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.”
Flannery O’Connor
​

A good man now is harder to find
among the standardized waste land
violence that bears hope away
despite the triumphs of profane
progress and techno-futurisms
in the wizened blood of the times.
Original misfitting of the soul
is scoffed in a nihilistic clouding
with hubris seeing the grotesque
and the dearth of God as natural,
with no immunity from the disease
of a dark-rising and crippling culture.
A contrary-wise “Christ-haunted” prophet
pushes theological absurdity “towards
the limits of mystery” in maimed stories
of memento mori and of a salvation long-
forgotten and even longer disdained
as a medieval relic of a reckless God
brutally dying for dreary-down souls.
In this modern age of radically ungraced
self-saving and hapless secular sufficiency,
a local lady tells stories of divine comedy
breaking open infernally brazen addictions
to oblivion, blazing tumultuously graced,
shocking faith where in an ironical city
always “the good is under construction”,
and evil suffers itself towards the sacred.

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/.  

'Habit of Being Wise' 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)

Please support us by sharing this post and buying us a book. ​
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A Weirdness Worth Embracing: Congregational Singing and Vocation (Forecast Ep 39)

24/10/2022

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You can also listen on ​Spotify, Apple, Google and other platforms. 
Listen to other Forecasts here.

People are singing less in church, and that's a problem, writes Episcopalian priest Benjamin Crosby in his recent article in Plough. Jarel and Josh discuss Crosby's article in light of their experience making music and singing for worship among churches, whether with worship bands or choirs. They explore the tension between being relevant to the dominant culture and providing a life-giving alternative that challenges or discomforts. Then they describe what the hymns 'Be Thou My Vision' and 'What Wond'rous Love Is This?' and the song 'Instrument for Noble Purpose' suggest about vocation. 

Additional resources:
  • 'Is Congregational Singing Dead?' (Plough article) by Benjamin Crosby
  • ​'Be Thou My Vision' (hymn video)
  • 'What Wond'rous Love Is This?' (hymn video)
  • ​'Instrument for Noble Purpose' (song by George Williamson)

Art: Thomas Webster, The Village Choir, oil on panel, 1847 (Public domain)

Jarel is a co-host of Forecast with a music emphasis. 

Josh is the founding editor of 
Foreshadow and a co-host of Forecast.

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The Fruitless Tenant

24/10/2022

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By Abigail Leigh

One day, He’ll tell me
“It’s time.”
No chance to gather my years
To pack up relationships
To sign across the line

It will be a day
Begun just as others
Then, with trumpet sounded
Clouds will be parted
The vineyard master reappearing

My tenancy expired
By herald hastened
I’ll climb the hill
Blow out my lamps
Look upon entrusted fields below
The ones promised—tomorrow
Still to plow, unripened now

“Too busy!” my plea
Preparing to be busy
Shall reap solely season-sown futility

“Too worried!” my apology
Worrying what worry was left unworried
Shall inherit merely misused opportunity

“Too distracted!” my confession
Digging up the next distraction
Shall unearth but poor-stewarded possession

“Too perceptive!“ my rationalization
Perceiving perceivers’ possible perceptions
Shall produce not proper-planted attentions

Days of cultivation and harvest
Threshed before Him
What have they to say--
A seedbed left un-watered?
A garden tended half-hearted?
A branch, by thorns, overgrown?
A foundation without Cornerstone?

What fruit have I to give
To the One whom I now beg—forgive?

          Only pray by grace, for this empty plate
          There still may be a place
          Set at the table of my Heavenly Host.

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)

Related work on
Foreshadow:
The Parable of the Talents (Poetry by Bill Ayres, April 2022)


Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. 
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A Little Thing I wrote

24/10/2022

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By Linda McCullough Moore

People are forever saying, Can I read you my poem?
and I say No, my oven’s broken and I have a cold
casserole I have to find a fire to heat so I can
feed a small village else they starve before
night blackens the jungle round them,
plus my leg is cramping probably
thrombosing, and the phone
is ringing with a call I’ve
been expecting my whole
life. But I wish I
could, I like poems
(one lie more).
I mean to do acts
of kindness every day.
And I would if the people
in my life would stop
trying to read their
poetry to me.

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

Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. ​
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