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.
by Josh Parks | Jan 8, 2023 | 2 comments
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?
by Josh Parks | Dec 29, 2022 | 0 comments
Our teachers are each other.
by Josh Parks | Oct 8, 2022 | 0 comments
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.”
by Josh Parks | Sep 8, 2022 | 3 comments
You could smell the hesitant air looking for its next class in all the wrong buildings.
by Josh Parks | Aug 8, 2022 | 0 comments
The employee scanning tickets even told me excitedly that I was the second person ever to use their “add tickets to Apple Wallet” feature.
by Josh Parks | Jul 8, 2022 | 1 comment
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.
by Josh Parks | Jun 8, 2022 | 0 comments
Sex was evil until it was not, and then it was amazing even when it wasn’t.
by Josh Parks | May 8, 2022 | 3 comments
Perfect for a congregation to sing together even when half of them think the “walls” are corporate income taxes.
by Josh Parks | Apr 8, 2022 | 0 comments
Historically, whenever Christians declare or expect victory, bodies pile up.
by Josh Parks | Feb 8, 2022 | 2 comments
You grew the way trees have always grown, glorying in each new branch and stretching toward the sky to show them off.
by Josh Parks | Jan 8, 2022 | 2 comments
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?
by Josh Parks | Nov 8, 2021 | 2 comments
Notes are like quantum particles, emerging and colliding and disappearing without leaving a trace.
by Josh Parks | Oct 8, 2021 | 2 comments
Albert Einstein strolls through campus regularly, I imagine, on his way back home from running whatever errands ghosts run downtown.
by Josh Parks | Sep 8, 2021 | 5 comments
Confessions prompt action, and if action isn’t taken, they’ve failed.
by Josh Parks | Aug 8, 2021 | 2 comments
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.
by Josh Parks | Jul 8, 2021 | 6 comments
I know that I’m a meat-eating, AC-loving hypocrite with an oversized soapbox.
by Josh Parks | Jun 8, 2021 | 1 comment
I wanted to give my audience that same assurance that everything was under control, that beauty and certainty could coexist.
by Josh Parks | May 8, 2021 | 2 comments
But when you set anything to music, it comes to life.
by Josh Parks | Apr 8, 2021 | 2 comments
For paying customers, the Ferris wheel of Fortune has become a ski lift.
by Josh Parks | Mar 8, 2021 | 6 comments
Celebration ensues, and Hogwarts is renamed Weaselnose in honor of the martyred mustelid.
by Josh Parks | Feb 8, 2021 | 2 comments
Despite the islanders’ departure, the islands of St. Kilda are still there, still beautiful, still alive.
by Josh Parks | Dec 29, 2020 | 1 comment
This year’s entire catalog is proof that even pandemics and poisonous politics can be spun, however feebly, into something worth reading.
by Josh Parks | Dec 8, 2020 | 1 comment
The unheard deserve hearing, the unsafe deserve safety, the forgotten deserve our imagination.
by Josh Parks | Nov 8, 2020 | 5 comments
How many times have Christians, distracted by their frantic, sixteenth-note lives, mistaken idolatry for piety?
by Josh Parks | Oct 8, 2020 | 4 comments
That point aside, though, Trump doesn’t have Maleficent’s stoicism, Mother Gothel’s manipulative skills, or Ursula’s show-stopping stage presence.
by Josh Parks | Sep 8, 2020 | 6 comments
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.”
by Josh Parks | Aug 8, 2020 | 1 comment
A Deer’s Cry therefore asks us to reconsider our assumptions about divine help and protection.
by Josh Parks | Jul 8, 2020 | 26 comments
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.