Monthly Archives: September 2017
by Laura Sheppard | Sep 30, 2017
Making friends, it turns out, meant finding people I didn’t have to be funny around—those I could trust liked me even when I wasn’t confident or cracking jokes
by Scott Harkema | Sep 29, 2017
“Why weren’t you in church this morning?”
I still haven’t told her.
by Matt Coldagelli | Sep 28, 2017
We’ve since come to realize that there’s no perfect way to feel while pregnant. There’s not an emotional experience you’re supposed to have.
by Brad Zwiers | Sep 27, 2017
The rupture between God and humanity is crystal clear in this one, and as the play careened toward its tragic ending, no one in the theatre was surprised.
by Nick Meekhof | Sep 26, 2017
During the hour it took to fill in the shapes of Michigan, Huron, Superior, Erie, and Ontario, I learned a lot about tattoos. Apparently, no design is off-limits, so long as you can find an artist willing to draw it.
by Jack Van Allsburg | Sep 25, 2017
I thought that I would feel more in touch with nature after. Like I had somehow participated in an older way of living, or taken on some inherited, but forgotten role in the forest. But instead I felt sick.
by Lauren (Boersma) Harris | Sep 24, 2017
Paul calls the Corinthians, God calls us, to run to win. Our faith journey should be so committed that we’re willing to do it with half a lung and still come out on top.
by Julia LaPlaca | Sep 23, 2017
Time isn’t food, money, a place, or a feeling, or an object or a person—it just is. Despite a wealth of idioms, it’s still hard to talk about time and harder still to savor it.
by Paula Manni | Sep 22, 2017
And for twenty-five minutes I am warm and more alive
than the seven hours and thirty-five minutes between walls and cabinets three floors above.
by Andrew Orlebeke | Sep 21, 2017
It cannot be emphasized too much or too often: Supporters of this bill do not care about you or about making lives better. They are unfit to govern and need to be removed from public service.
by Gabe Gunnink | Sep 20, 2017
Meanwhile, I am childless, jobless, and directionless. I don’t feel that I’ve wasted my time, and I don’t feel dismayed, but I’m also tired of feeling crushed under the weightlessness of potential and gawking at figs like stars I could never align.
by Mary Margaret Healy | Sep 19, 2017
Once someone no longer needs unemployment assistance because they’ve gotten a job, things should be much easier: more money, more independence, more control, more freedom. But DeParle wants to show us just how much harder it gets after welfare.
by Ben DeVries | Sep 18, 2017
The smoothies are revoltingly healthful. One recipe, dubbed “The Beginner,” calls for pear, banana, pineapple, avocado, and a full six cups of kale.
by Tony Ditta | Sep 17, 2017
I tried not to include too many live songs because that’s sort of cheating, but there are some REALLY good live ones, so those have been included.
by Andrew Knot | Sep 16, 2017
These three things struck me about the way Gopnik writes about place. Perhaps they contain a few lessons that will help us in writing about where we’re from, where we are, and where we’re yet to go.
by Cassie Westrate | Sep 15, 2017
Still, grace is not always a shout. Sometimes, it’s a whisper. Sometimes, it’s day zero, rather than the third day.
by Will Montei | Sep 14, 2017
A few days later I was back in Seattle and it felt like coming home, like jumping into your bed’s cold sheets and warming them as you fall asleep. I feel bad about that, for loving two places at once.
by Catherine Kramer | Sep 13, 2017
I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to get to know me. You, my friend, are the master of mixtapes. Each week, you introduce me a new crop of tunes.
by Abby Zwart | Sep 12, 2017
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
by Elaine Schnabel | Sep 11, 2017
When a church breaks, her people realize they broke her themselves. By not acknowledging the extent of our own broken fingers and bent hearts, we pursued something that might not have been the gospel.
by Jenna Griffin | Sep 10, 2017
The light pooled on the horizon, stretching like taffy, growing and receding. When it faded away in one direction, we looked behind us to see it growing in another corner of the sky. It seemed to breathe.
by Bart Tocci | Sep 9, 2017
If a Bart sings in the woods and no one hears him, does he make a sound?
by Paul Menn | Sep 8, 2017
As a young teenager, I always assumed that once you got married, you and your partner just sort of…stayed the same.
by Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak | Sep 7, 2017
This is the curtain call, a standing ovation for being present. We all saw the curtain between earth and heaven rise and fall again.
by Josh deLacy | Sep 6, 2017
Wildfires ravage and Irma bears down and nuclear tests keep happening, and I am heavy bored.
by India Daniels | Sep 5, 2017
Last Sunday, I stopped to get coffee before church when a woman hesitantly approached and asked if I was a Christian. I told her I was.
by Caitlin Gent | Sep 4, 2017
Three days later, an industrious little nibbler gets into my bag of white cheddar popcorn. We stash our remaining food in Rubbermaids, bleach everything, and riddle our kitchen with even more mousetraps.
by Meg Schmidt | Sep 3, 2017
I think everyone has childhood hurts that they carry with them, and these are mine.
by Carolyn Muyskens | Sep 2, 2017
I left that professor’s office thinking: I am the kind of person who has the potential to do anything but the proclivity to do nothing. I am the kind of person who is paralyzed by choice, instead of empowered by it.
by Katerina Parsons | Sep 1, 2017
Maybe—and this is hard to admit—I care more about the plight of The Poor than about individuals in poverty with names and faces, each with different dreams.
