Life With You
You stood as still as you could in the yard, pretending to be a bird feeder in the hope that somebody might land on you.
Journals
Most of my journals were destroyed. They were never perfect enough to keep.
What Ancient Burden Moves
God’s belly-deep groaning plead
from lake and trees’ lips;
I don’t fear, no, I tremble.
East Washington
I didn’t like my room when I first moved in. It didn’t have Flynn, for one thing.
Wisconsin
“I’m glad you’re here, Will,” said David, “because Sarah and I have an announcement to make.”
The World Got Bigger
So I let go, and I felt immediately liberated from the burden of trying and failing to imagine a loving God in the day-to-day.
N is for Northwest: A Letter
I can’t get over how urgent this essay published in 1836 remains today. And I urgently, madly want to annoy you all with it.
tsunamis along the coast
what if status updates become souls.
A Cedar Hymn
For the most part, Cedar Campus remains largely the same as when I was born, a fact many of us—who have grown from infants to adults, from adults to elders; who have gained families; who have lost loved ones—marvel at.
Rediscovering Paul
Paul’s vision of goodness is, shockingly, based on subjective morality, another thing I have been told is unbiblical.
Old Sunlight Wet Pavement
I can’t I try they know they laugh I’m withering with love them.
Lift Up His Countenance
Our theme for the month of March is “Ask the post calvin.” We’re taking on questions submitted by readers and offering our best advice. Dear the post calvin, My prayer has always seemed dry and not heartfelt. I’ve tried different methods, but I feel like...
Children
I’m just trying to say that given what little is truly required of uncles, it follows that the bond between parent and child, when pursued in good faith, has no parallel.
Offerings and Exaltations
Sadness is that way: temporal. Each encounter comes with a demand singular to the day of its arrival: here is a powerful feeling, attend to it, reconcile its nature with yours.
Teaching Revolutionaries
“Mr. Montei, who is your favorite rapper?” asked one of my high school freshman students.
Smell It While It’s Hot
“WE ARE ON A WALK. WE ARE OUT FOR A FREAKING STROLL.”
While on a Walk
Standing there, I have a similar sensation to the one on the Peter Pan ride at Disney World when your pirate ship escapes through the window of the children’s bedroom to reveal a sleepy London beneath you.
Jack
As if knowing he was a caricature of a human, Grandpa Jack did most if not all of these things with a pipe in his mouth.
Purity
I think there is a divine vision at the root of “purity” that remains a potent challenge today: that apart from oneself, on the other end of every sexual encounter is another self equally as mysterious and indefinable as existence.
Christianity at Present
Christianity did not remain relevant in the events of the world at large for two thousand years because of strict adherence to dogma.
Social Strata
Though I’ve never defined myself by a job title, I came to the realization that without my previous one, I had little to define myself with at all.
Unaccounted Years
They tumbled into my lap to watch Puffin Rock. Two on my knees, one on my crossed ankles. I’d have been little more than a chair were I not kissing their cheeks.
All The World A Burden
After listening my alarm blare for five, ten, or twenty bleary minutes, I started to admire whoever designed the heinous tone.
A Goodness
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.
We Wanted the Entire World
Someone would pass a six-pack of cold root beer up and all of us would lounge in a circle and talk about nothing, and it felt like everything.
Wrinkles
I was once told the way that my eyebrows slope down symbolizes wisdom, but it looks like sadness, which might be the same thing.
How Everything Felt
So much of poetry is naming things.
The Men I’ve Loved
We would say it without worrying about whether or not it came off to anyone within earshot as romantic. As you say it to your family, so we said it to each other.
Smart
Outward Bound, Super Camp, tutors, counsellors, mentors—my parents spared no expense in trying to figure out my 2.33 cumulative high school GPA. Nothing worked.
Places I’ll Never Know
Lights shine along Seattle’s hills, illuminating all the homes where everyone no one knows eats, sleeps, listens, and loves.
