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.
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he has since earned master’s degrees from Western Michigan University and Princeton Theological Seminary. This fall, he’s starting a PhD in religious studies at the University of Virginia (so his plans to be in school forever are working well). When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
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.
by Josh Parks | Jun 8, 2020 | 4 comments
10. incendiary
You don’t often expect to find onomatopoeia in long, Latinate words.
by Josh Parks | May 8, 2020 | 2 comments
I pray, I type, I read, I write more ands.
by Josh Parks | Apr 8, 2020 | 2 comments
Using this definition, cities, industrial parks, and suburban developments are just as “wild” as Russian Arctic National Park.
by Josh Parks | Mar 8, 2020 | 1 comment
It feels like the stars are marching on inevitably but purposelessly, favoring—as always—fear, anger, patriarchy, and established power.
by Josh Parks | Jan 8, 2020 | 2 comments
Dear Supportive Friends, Middle School English Teachers, and Madcap Coffee:
by Josh Parks | Dec 9, 2019 | 4 comments
It’s like—gasp—a song can be both well thought out and an Oscar-baiting money-grab.
by Josh Parks | Nov 8, 2019 | 2 comments
On the seventh day, God rested. He’d had a big week—you know how it goes.
by Josh Parks | Oct 8, 2019 | 3 comments
Borges describes a fictional language that completely lacks nouns, and I tried to work out what this might mean in practice.
by Josh Parks | Sep 8, 2019 | 0 comments
When scrawled or scratched on the skin of a beast
Or the earth’s frozen entrails, or the flesh
Of a leaf-maker, then I last longer.
by Josh Parks | Aug 8, 2019 | 2 comments
This workshop is tuition-free, assignment-free, and pretty stress-free, but soon I’ll be back at my own school, and the cloud of duties will descend.
by Josh Parks | Jul 8, 2019 | 0 comments
After all, what could sound older than a harpsichord?
by Josh Parks | Jun 8, 2019 | 0 comments
These live-action remakes might not always succeed in being great stand-alone movies, but maybe that’s not a fair standard to hold them to.
by Josh Parks | May 8, 2019 | 0 comments
I was further convinced of the potential goodness of Twitter on Sunday, when my Twitter feed was filled to the brim with two conversations.
by Josh Parks | Apr 8, 2019 | 0 comments
I can make completely brilliant points, crack absolutely hilarious jokes, and ask ridiculously insightful questions and get absolutely no response from my students. What’s up with that?
by Josh Parks | Mar 8, 2019 | 0 comments
And maybe that’s what Star Wars movies are now—a portal to a world we love.
by Josh Parks | Feb 8, 2019 | 0 comments
Way to show those probably-reprobate, semi-Pelagian Catholics, Mel! Sola freaking fide.
by Josh Parks | Jan 8, 2019 | 0 comments
Guinness played Obi-Wan in the original Star Wars trilogy, and I stumbled giddily upon his recording of Eliot’s poems while studying them for a class at Calvin last year.
by Josh Parks | Dec 8, 2018 | 0 comments
I’ve made a list of twenty authors—twelve who wrote after 1900 and eight from the centuries before—whose work I’m going to limit myself to.
by Josh Parks | Nov 8, 2018 | 0 comments
Thank you that this country is a democracy and that the universe is not.
by Josh Parks | Oct 8, 2018 | 0 comments
“I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, ’This is what I believe. Finished.’ What I believe is alive … and open to growth.” (Madeleine L’Engle)
by Josh Parks | Sep 8, 2018 | 0 comments
Rautavaara challenges the assumption that music belongs unequivocally to humanity by making birdsong a challenger and equal partner to “humansong.”
by Josh Parks | Aug 8, 2018 | 0 comments
If I really believe that the Bible was inspired by the creator of the universe, it should be much easier to find that trust than it is with a series of young adult fantasy novels finished a decade ago.