Archive for July, 2008

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Journey to a Voluptuous God

A “voluptuous God” was the exact opposite of what I grew up with.
I became a born-again Christian at the age of 13 in the ultimate act of teenage rebellion for the household in which I was raised. It was a household in which my mother, a single parent and schizophrenic, had been prostituting to […]

3 Comments » - Posted in Dark Night of the Soul by Lora Freeman

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

Remote Landscapes

There are many landscapes which evoke for me the longing that I feel subcutaneous, just under my skin, just out of reach. The evergreen fields of Ireland, squared off by ancient stone walls; the basined and ranged deserts of Nevada, sweeping and endless; the oceanic Sand Hills of the Great Plains, recently visited, essentially […]

2 Comments » - Posted in Dark Night of the Soul by Bill Glenn

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Letting Go

Letting go, emptying—over and over. Some days I feel like I am that little symbol used by the email system where I used to work, for deleting deleted files. The little trash can with trash levitating out of it and drifting off to the bigger trash can in the sky or […]

Comments Off - Posted in From Belief Systems To Relief Systems by Billie Hinnefeld

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

The God Problem

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand–or to figure out what I think about–the force or power I call “God.” I grew up in a Midwestern holiness church, convinced that I was called to teach Japan’s “lost” about God’s only son Jesus. My wife and I spent parts of our Cape Cod honeymoon discussing how […]

Comments Off - Posted in From Belief Systems To Relief Systems by James Huffman

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Ordinary Magic

When I was a kid I loved magicians. My parents gave me a magic kit one Christmas. In it was a little tube of gooey salve that if you rubbed between your fingers, smoke would rise up. This little trick made me feel powerful in no small part because of the way it […]

Comments Off - Posted in From Belief Systems To Relief Systems by Robert "Voluptuous" Thompson