Ten Minutes
Then the boxes are labeled and slid into the corner, waiting ominously to be lugged onto a trailer. They speak a steady word: change is coming; change is here.
Brad Zwiers (’12) graduated from Calvin College in 2012 and Western Theological Seminary in 2015. He will not be graduating from any more schools. He often stares at books he wishes he could read but knows he will not finish and goes for long walks with his wife, Gwyn. Sometimes he plays basketball and always he follows the greatest sporting club in the world, Liverpool F.C.
by Brad Zwiers | Jul 27, 2015 | 0 comments
Then the boxes are labeled and slid into the corner, waiting ominously to be lugged onto a trailer. They speak a steady word: change is coming; change is here.
by Brad Zwiers | Jun 27, 2015 | 0 comments
But what else? What more can we say about heroes and villains? I don’t think it requires much life experience to realize that our heroes are often not so heroic, and our villains hold some goodness somewhere in themselves.
by Brad Zwiers | May 27, 2015 | 4 comments
I have a tattered, taped-up copy of East of Eden that I’ve read somewhere around ten to twelve times. Whenever people ask me my favorite book, I’m quick and decisive.
by Brad Zwiers | Apr 27, 2015 | 0 comments
You will find dark corners and blood capsules, both of which hide secrets. Here you will find costumes, gimmicks, and masks all covering something but creating something else.
by Brad Zwiers | Mar 27, 2015 | 0 comments
That computer fan breathes so loud now that I can’t ignore it. My mind fixates on the sound and won’t let it go, an act pretty typical of my mind in the midst of anxiety.
by Brad Zwiers | Feb 27, 2015 | 0 comments
The advance of modern science has also shaped our sensibilities in such a way that we don’t have room for mystery or a reality infused with another reality.
by Brad Zwiers | Jan 27, 2015 | 0 comments
We park up against the failing fence near the bathrooms. We get out of the car, feel our feet on ground, and keep talking. A lot has come before us here.
by Brad Zwiers | Dec 27, 2014 | 0 comments
So if a thesis has to be mined from The Weakerthans’ incredible corpus, it must at least mention strength, the loss of it, and its recapture.
by Brad Zwiers | Nov 27, 2014 | 2 comments
See the thing about power is, God, we love to critique it but when it’s ours, we hold that shit so tightly it would cost us our life to let go.
by Brad Zwiers | Oct 27, 2014 | 1 comment
We have to rail against injustice and doggedly lament evil. We have to mourn and cry out and punch the air and scream that this is not the way things are supposed to be.
by Brad Zwiers | Sep 27, 2014 | 0 comments
Nick’s life is a mess, he knows it, and yet he moves through. Cynicism lurks behind almost everything he says (“Don’t trust your government, kids”), but it never dominates his character.
by Brad Zwiers | Aug 27, 2014 | 0 comments
I realize this sounds rather impressive, a Hebrew “intensive” packed with flow charts, tense paradigms, parsing worksheets, and a severe lack of cognates.
by Brad Zwiers | Jul 27, 2014 | 0 comments
What if I still went out for drinks with those block-building friends I had in kindergarten? What if I still talked with my favorite deskmate from elementary?
by Brad Zwiers | Jun 27, 2014 | 0 comments
The idea of prayer “kicking things off” isn’t all that poor. God should be at the beginning of what we do. But it becomes a problem when the only time we pray is at the start of something.
by Brad Zwiers | May 27, 2014 | 0 comments
Ticks are tiny mini-monsters, basically the equivalent of the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker except they carry Lyme disease and not superpowers.
by Brad Zwiers | Apr 27, 2014 | 0 comments
Though part of me might wince at how bildungsroman this all is, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s where I am. Besides, aren’t we always “coming of age”?
by Brad Zwiers | Mar 27, 2014 | 1 comment
Coach and player, mentor and mentee, human being and human being. It reminds me that sports, in the end, do not matter. But also that they do.
by Brad Zwiers | Feb 27, 2014 | 0 comments
I try and roll out of the fetal position and into some semblance of a standing straight-back stretch, but I can’t hold the stretch for long though, because like I said, I am dying of thirst.
by Brad Zwiers | Jan 27, 2014 | 0 comments
It is impossible to come back from that trip and not feel encouraged by what we saw and heard and encountered: a people standing upright and resolute, and new life filling the cracks.
by Brad Zwiers | Dec 27, 2013 | 0 comments
If you’ve paid attention to end-of-the-year album lists, you’ve probably noticed a soft pink album with nine capitalized letters on its cover sitting somewhere near the top.
by Brad Zwiers | Nov 27, 2013 | 1 comment
I thought it might be interesting to write about the trip for this blog in two parts, the first now, roughly a month and a half before we depart, and the second after we return in January.
by Brad Zwiers | Oct 27, 2013 | 1 comment
At the time this post is published I will have jumped up and down with all the fanboy enthusiasm in my 23-year-old body.
by Brad Zwiers | Sep 27, 2013 | 1 comment
This tension comes from the American obsession with performance. The public wants an aging athlete to keep playing, but only if they can still perform.
by Brad Zwiers | Aug 27, 2013 | 2 comments
On June 3, 2013, Jared Scripture moved in with us. Two things you might ask: 1) Is his last name really Scripture? 2) Who is “us”?
by Brad Zwiers | Jul 27, 2013 | 2 comments
Lately, my brother Drew and I talk a lot on two subjects: the NBA and hip-hop. We analyze the Pistons’ draft day maneuvers over text message: -WHAT? HOW COULD THEY NOT DRAFT TREY BURKE??- -Caldwell-Pope? Just what we need, another athletic wing player.- Or we discuss...