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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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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. 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) Support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. 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) Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. 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. 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) Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. 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.  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. 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:
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. Please support us by sharing this post or buying us a book. 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. 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
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