Master of None
What if our words were less like swords (sharpened, polished) and more like textiles—equally demanding to make, but designed to warm rather than to wound?
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with a BA in English literature and violin performance, and he completed an MA program in medieval studies at Western Michigan University in 2020. He is currently a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, which means his plans to be in school forever are working out well. When not writing, he can be found playing violin, drinking coffee, making excruciating puns, and trying to learn Old French.
Best of 2022, Part One: Peers’ Picks
Our teachers are each other.
The Jersey Shore
Rusty antennae form a kind of industrial crown of thorns, and the typeface doesn’t say “beach day” as much as “we interrupt this program to bring you a SEVERE WEATHER ALERT.”
Smells Like School Spirit
You could smell the hesitant air looking for its next class in all the wrong buildings.
Concertgoing
The employee scanning tickets even told me excitedly that I was the second person ever to use their “add tickets to Apple Wallet” feature.
Monky Business
I watch over my friend’s shoulder as they make mistakes and then correct them, reassured somehow that typos aren’t just a modern malady.
Theology Needs More Sex Scenes
Sex was evil until it was not, and then it was amazing even when it wasn’t.
Lover (Of My Soul): A Taylor Swift Worship Experience
Perfect for a congregation to sing together even when half of them think the “walls” are corporate income taxes.
Wait Without Hope
Historically, whenever Christians declare or expect victory, bodies pile up.
Calvin, Redacted
Nearly all sound consists of God and dew.
Tree Song
You grew the way trees have always grown, glorying in each new branch and stretching toward the sky to show them off.
Disney Attraction Drink Pairings
The pure chaos of this new ride requires equally chaotic imbibing. Maybe one of those middle-school numbers where you mix all the soft drinks together?
Soundscapes
Notes are like quantum particles, emerging and colliding and disappearing without leaving a trace.
Meeting Princeton’s Ghosts
Albert Einstein strolls through campus regularly, I imagine, on his way back home from running whatever errands ghosts run downtown.
Why I’m in Seminary: A Confession
Confessions prompt action, and if action isn’t taken, they’ve failed.
Forgive Us
And often I decide that these excuses are all stupid and that I’m failing the world and God by not taking more drastic action.
Not Interested
I know that I’m a meat-eating, AC-loving hypocrite with an oversized soapbox.
Hilary and Me
I wanted to give my audience that same assurance that everything was under control, that beauty and certainty could coexist.
Singing the Cookbook
But when you set anything to music, it comes to life.
Reinventing the Wheel (of Fortune)
For paying customers, the Ferris wheel of Fortune has become a ski lift.
Of Basilisks and Weasels
Celebration ensues, and Hogwarts is renamed Weaselnose in honor of the martyred mustelid.
“That Place is to the West of Us Still”
Despite the islanders’ departure, the islands of St. Kilda are still there, still beautiful, still alive.
Epiphany and After
But Herod—he’s never hard to find.
Best of 2020, Part One: Writers’ Picks
This year’s entire catalog is proof that even pandemics and poisonous politics can be spun, however feebly, into something worth reading.
Reading and Breathing
The unheard deserve hearing, the unsafe deserve safety, the forgotten deserve our imagination.
Praise Ye the God of Gold
How many times have Christians, distracted by their frantic, sixteenth-note lives, mistaken idolatry for piety?
Which Disney Villain is Donald Trump?
That point aside, though, Trump doesn’t have Maleficent’s stoicism, Mother Gothel’s manipulative skills, or Ursula’s show-stopping stage presence.
The Ballad of the AeroPress
I asked the fair barista, “Sir,
Have you the stock I seek?”
“Alas,” said he, “our shelves are bare,
And will be for a week.”
Arvo Pärt’s Musical Breastplate
A Deer’s Cry therefore asks us to reconsider our assumptions about divine help and protection.
Jesus and John Piper: The Radicalization of a Research Assistant
For those of us who have never been on the blunt end of sexism (or racism, or ableism, etc.), things can look funny or tragic or intriguingly disgusting when they are actually evil.
