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Have you stood silently
surrounded by the crescent sweep of planted daffodils and abundant lilies-of-the-valley with an angel at the gate guardian of the garden keeping out despair? Or seen hydrangea globes let direct sunlight change their palette of pastels? Walk beside the chosen rocks that are a threshold from grass to flower beds and the stones scooped out with water pockets that draw the thirsty birds. This is a sight to slake my own deep thirst. Beside a day-lighted stream and granite steps moisture-loving plants abound and there, look quickly, is a peacock in the shade displaying a hundred eyes watching over our steps -- Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught courses on Early, Medieval, Reformation and Modern Christianity. He lives in a small village in the heartland of Ohio, surrounded by a nature conservancy and Amish farms.
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Gracie sits beside me at the pot-luck luncheon.
She wears lacy half-sleeves to cover her tattoos now that she is born again. Those arms flash out in frustration toward my piled-high plate when I compliment her string-bean casserole, and I mean it—it is good. “No,” she insists. “If it hadn’t sat in the church kitchen through the long morning service, with moisture gathering under the foil, the onions on top would have stayed crispy. Instead they’re mushy. I just wish you could’ve tasted it before.” I understand. Once, my offering was at its finest, fresh, poised, and able like crisp onions. Now I am unseemly, white, and frayed, my song like soggy bellows. I aged out of freshness in my turn, as happens after decades of long services spent under foil. Yet, as I live, something tasty may persist, and while I wish you could’ve tasted it before, this is what I have to share anymore. -- Michelle Shelfer and her husband, Jerry, operate a non-profit called Prepare a Room Ministries, which seeks to help those hurt by abortion and disciple the next generation to embrace life and the Giver of life. Her poetry has been published in Ekstasis, Penwood Review and Solid Food Press. Her poetic themes often centre around motherhood. She can be found at michelleshelfer.substack.com/ and on social media at @preparearoom. Splintered bones set hard, out of place.
I limp among those I cherish, gripping onto furniture, before I sit, defeated. From the crucifix, your steadfast eyes say, What’s mine is yours. To offer this pitted stone—my heart—is pain; but you do not take a hammer. Quiet light penetrates, halos me, burns the muscle-memory that mires my feet. How cheap the word miracle—one step, and now immersed in grace, I stride, serene, across the river’s bridge. The agony was always yours. The pasture greens. Your breath is holy. I fill my lungs. -- Emma-Jane Peterson writes for magazines in the US and the UK, where she lives. Her poems are published in BoomerLitMag, The Clayjar Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Metphrastics, Penstricken, Black Nore Review, Prosectrics and Pure in Heart, among others. She is the co-author of a book of children’s Bible stories (Parragon). Clumped among the frothing mounds,
flung onto shore, a tiny wholeness in baby bib overalls, awaits the finding: this is what you have for me. Brush away the flies—shoo now, gull! unweave fingers of emerald, garnet, opal seaweed, and midwife a new sort of glean from out the lashing waters onto my-side, land-side, sand-wide world. Make his cradle in the turn of my hand and lift him to where my neck is a cleft to share dry skin and warm, encircled by wind moans in lullaby. We both are foundlings found in the finding. All that the tides have snatched from us is now repaid in this, a crowning catch-- perfect transfer of seed to the barren, speech to the silent, orphan to his rest. -- Michelle Shelfer and her husband, Jerry, operate a non-profit called Prepare a Room Ministries, which seeks to help those hurt by abortion and disciple the next generation to embrace life and the Giver of life. Her poetry has been published in Ekstasis, Penwood Review and Solid Food Press. Her poetic themes often centre around motherhood. She can be found at michelleshelfer.substack.com/ and on social media at @preparearoom. The evening breeze through the window,
As I look back into the low Tree dancing to the silent play Of clouds and moon, and hue of gray; Pale blackness on the deep'ning sky, Its shades of dark made beautiful By lack of light, absence of ray, When silence ends a Maker’s day-- Empty'ng beauty. Bending echo Of weathered creation outgrows The night. Then, a low distant cry Striates hist'ry. Lost in time full Laces of blue displayed his rule, While the trees sing its Lullaby. -- Yannick Imbert teaches theology in southern France at Faculté Jean Calvin. He is a Tolkien scholar and publishes books and articles at the intersection of theology and culture. He has also published online in Transpositions, Ekstasis, Macrina, Inklings Studies and other theological journals. He writes in French at delagracedansencrier.com. What a waste to be hiding,
didn’t we think? So I gave you my sight line and the quiver behind, shedding several old skins in the course of my tears. You rowed down that river, the heart of my darkness, and tethered your soul to the floodplain spine. You were a part of my yesterday, my tomorrow too, and this moment, I’m hoping, in the wounds broken open, the courage you planted finally took. And I’ll grow into love because of you. -- For K.P. and R.H. Aisling Cruz is a Midwest-based poet and artist. Her work has appeared in Gotham Literature, Agape Review and Oyster River Pages, among others. In my soul is a gate
I cross every morning, Mindful of the great Bright dawn daily rising. I cross every morning, The threshold of my soul – Bright dawn daily rising Of His constant presence. The threshold of my soul – Ambiguous border Of His constant presence – Receptacle of Grace. Ambiguous border: In my soul is a gate, Receptacle of grace. In my soul is a gate. -- Yannick Imbert teaches theology in southern France at Faculté Jean Calvin. He is a Tolkien scholar and publishes books and articles at the intersection of theology and culture. He has also published online in Transpositions, Ekstasis, Macrina, Inklings Studies and other theological journals. He writes in French at delagracedansencrier.com. after artist Michael Healy
Can I hold your image as the panes of glass? There the golden sunrise nudges up the field, rosy luminescence bleeds out from a flower. The blueness of water skips on the rock that once carved a valley from the spotted hills. Every place you walk in whinnies with light, though I often do not notice this. Sometimes I spend hours wanting to be noticed, just to find myself curled over your shoulder, covered in dust and merino spirals. You tell me I have been here for years. -- Aisling Cruz is a Midwest-based poet and artist. Her work has appeared in Gotham Literature, Agape Review and Oyster River Pages, among others. I’m not good with plants
But I found this seed, if you can help. There are some cracks, Exposure has caused it to suffer. The soil doesn’t look good: Dry and inhospitable. Are you surrounding it with manure? Is that the right thing to do? The plant looks sick. Ashen leaves with brittle branches. Do we need to resoil? Replant? Will fresh water be enough to save it? Can you take this seed, this dream, in my heart – That time and heartache have beaten down, And make it something more? Will you breathe new life into this and cause something to grow? -- Kris Green lives in Florida with his beautiful wife and two savage children. He’s been published over 60 times in the last few years by the wonderful people at Nifty Lit, The Haberdasher: Peddlers of Literary Art, In Parentheses Magazine, Route 7 Review, BarBar Magazine and many more. He won the 2023 Barbe Best Short Story and Reader’s Choice Award for his short story, 'Redemption'. Currently, he has regular nonfiction articles being published by Solid Food Press on fatherhood entitled 'On Raising Savages'. ‘We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…’ (Hebrews 12:1)
I walk into the small church, and the first thing I notice is that the walls to my left are covered with icons – of Christ, angels, saints. Hardly an inch of brick shows between each frame. The faces watch me through the dark fog of incense and candlelight as I sit in a chair near the back. I have heard of icons being described as windows into heaven, mirrors reflecting holy light. Is this why they strangely make me feel at home here, even though I have never to my memory encountered anything like this place? It is like a footpath lined with tall, leafy deciduous trees quietly breathing, exuding life, oxygen into the atmosphere. I am surrounded by icons. The priest in bright robes slowly walks out of one of the doors screening the altar area. He is clasping a censer, which looks like a lantern dangling from golden chains, but instead of light, it gives off clouds of smoke every time he shakes it before each person as he drifts to the back of the church. The clanking chains sound like sea waves crashing, and waves of people bow in response, some making the sign of the cross. Now he is curving round back towards the altar. He looks at me and shakes the censer towards me. I feel this is a greeting of some kind, perhaps a blessing. I bow in gratitude. I later learn that Orthodox priests cense both icons and people in this manner to show honour to God. As St. Basil says, ‘The honour paid to the image passes to the prototype.’ Just as when one kisses a photograph of a loved one, they are honouring not the photo but the beloved, so when the priest censes an icon, honour passes through the wood and paint to the saint it depicts. And when the priest censes a person, honour even passes through that person to Christ, the prototype of us all. I am surrounded by icons. Behind my desk in my classroom where I teach, on a cable box running along the wall, sits an icon of various people serving the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner – each one Christ in disguise (see Matt. 25). Every morning, I look at the icon to remind myself that in a mysterious way, each of the students I will teach this day is Christ. In other words, when I teach, I am standing before twenty to thirty living icons. (How I sometimes wish my students were as calm as icons!) Beyond the classroom, whenever I meet someone, I am meeting a living icon, since every person is made in God’s image. (The word ‘icon’ comes from the Greek word eikon, which means ‘image’). My wife, children and wider family. My colleagues, my neighbours, people at church. The commuters I pass on my drive to work. The strangers I meet once whom I may never meet again, at least not in this life. Even my enemies. I don’t usually think of them as living icons. Sometimes I get stuck on someone’s behaviour at a certain moment or their reputation or my prejudices against them. Sometimes I’m preoccupied with my musings that I fail to recognise that before me is a reflection of God that I am called to honour, just as the priest censed me on my first visit to an Orthodox liturgy. As Joe Bisicchia writes, ‘Perhaps we suffer / too much self-admiration to notice… / how bread breaks / in every face’. But such poets help me to notice and remember. KPB Stevens describes how Christ’s light deepens his vision of the people he loves so that their often clunky forms are ‘almost lost’, and ‘they hide within the radiance’. I would push this image even further: perhaps their forms are not lost in the radiance as much as found in it. An iconographer would tell you that each depiction of a holy person uniquely captures their personality through such distinctions. The bald head of St. Paul, for example, or the dismembered and restored hand of St. John of Damascus. Some icons include key objects from a saint’s life, such as, in the case of St. Melangell, a hare. Despite the common features that icons share, such as halos or gold, each one is simultaneously unique and identifiable. The saints’ distinctions are not lost in their holiness but transfigured. In other words, perhaps we are called not to be illusions (meaningless fantasies) or elusions (in which our identities are forever hidden) but allusions, in which we mature distinctly while finding our home in Christ, the fullness of the image of God. So if we are living icons – masterpieces, saints in the making – then how do our lives, including their peculiarities and particularities, offer glimpses into God’s presence? Do I step out of the way enough to let God’s light shine and to notice his image in others? I'd like to think that reading wholesome literature, such as we strive to share on Foreshadow, can help us here, can remind us of who we are called to become, can teach us to honour God’s image in each person. Like a wall of icons, many of the works we have shared this past season have reflected truth and beauty, sometimes in unexpected places, such as in ‘Herald Across the Divide’, ‘Burning Bush’, ‘Pharasaic’, ‘Dust’, ‘Carpet’, ‘St. Luke at Nazareth’ and ‘Vesper Sparrow’. Others have portrayed choices and turns in the lives of ordinary people that reflect the archetypal victory of Christ, such as in ‘The Story of Prisoner 16670’, ‘That Poet’, ‘Like a Land of Dreams’, ‘Doubt’, ‘Waiting for the Word’, ‘Narration’ and ‘Poems to God, No. 139’. May we always be, and remember that we are, surrounded by icons. -- Josh Seligman is the founding editor of Foreshadow. Note: We are now accepting submissions in line with our next theme: ‘Offerings and Open Hands’. At its heart, the theme is about offering ourselves to God in trust that in so doing, he will bless and transform us for the life of the world. Also keep your eyes out for a new Foreshadow project called Anaphora, a resource hub for people reflecting on the relationships between teaching, faith and literature. |