CJ Green is the managing editor of the Mockingbird website and head of Mockingbird Publications (store.mbird.com). His favorite books are for ages 7-12.
About CJ Green
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Experts and Engines: Ode to a ’99 Heep Cherokee
An indulgent dive into “My Documents” brought me to the following essay, which I began writing several years ago. Some time-defying adjustments—minus a metaphor, plus a William Davies reference—made for something I’m happy to dredge out of obscurity. Glad I’m past all of this… Having attended 3-4 different churches in the last five years (not […]
At the Bottom of Your Vanilla Life
For me, this could not have come at a better time—the opportunity to sit down and read the newest publication by Chad Bird. Chad is a writer/speaker (and frequent Mockingbird contributor), and the book is the friendly-looking Upside-Down Spirituality: The 9 Essential Failures of a Faithful Life. What a title! Keep your eyes on this […]
Another Week Ends: Breakfast of Lutherans, Celebrity Prayer Candles, Junkyard Playgrounds, All the Correct Opinions, and the X-Men Family
1. On this week’s Killing Eve, the morally obscure mastermind Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw) refused to eat breakfast, instead pulling from a water pipe and saying, “I can’t stand breakfast. It’s just constant eggs. Why? Who decided?” The woman has a point. Whether yogurt, cereal, waffles, or bacon, our breakfast items of choice reveal greater […]
The Human Is Very Important Right Now
At the soup kitchen where I accidentally volunteered for a couple of years, the following exchange happened more than once. Observing the guests at plastic fold-up tables, a volunteer would whisper what we’d all at some point wondered. “How do they afford it? Who pays for these phones?” Ostensibly low-income, possibly homeless, the guests were […]
Another Week Ends: Good Friday, a Grand Miracle, Boomers’ Death Boom, Lazarus Is Dead, Meritocracy, Performance, [chill / lofi / jazzhop], and Oat Milk
1. Today is Good Friday, which means, if ever there were a time to consider the brutal instrument of death at the center of a major world religion, that time may as well be now. Off-putting and oft-baffling, the cross carries a multifaceted meaning that can prove elusive for onlookers and skeptics (and, much of […]
The Problem with Paradise (According to Toni Morrison)
Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1997) begins with a startling act of violence, then, in a landscape of confounding spirituality, unfolds the stories of several different women. The book was, in part, one novelist’s answer to a question that will be familiar to anyone interested in the language of faith. How might religion be rendered in a […]
Psychic Disintegration in Jordan Peele’s “Us”
Unfortunately, there is no doubt about the fact that man is, as a whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. – Jung Nighttime: inside a secluded beach house, a family […]
Another Week Ends: Zen Evangelicalism, Rumors of Narnia, Invisible Forces, Digital Eidolons, Liquid Bread, and Deleting Social Media
1. Say you’re jonesing for a stirring interreligious discourse this weekend — have I got the thing for you! In a great piece for the latest First Things, art historian Matthew Milliner discusses the relationship between Eastern religions and evangelical Christianity. “…it is often thought,” he says, “that evangelical Protestants have little to offer interreligious dialogue.” […]
“Have a Token Lent” and Other Seasonal Suggestions from a Weary Jesuit
John L’Heureux was a Jesuit for 17 years before he quit in ’71 and got married. He’s also written an insane amount of fiction and poetry which I am slowly working through, and loving. I first encountered his work with The Rise and Rise of Annie Clark from a New Yorker issue last autumn and am […]
The Risk in the Naming of Love
There’s a trope in teenage romance movies where one of the young lovers will drop the L word at the wrong time. Worse, they might even say, “…forever.” After that, you know the relationship’s going to bomb. It’s too early, and the kids don’t know each other. They haven’t yet uncovered how much they doubt […]
Another Week Ends: Bad Romance, Marriage Therapy, Shania Twain, First Date at Denny’s, Techno Tyranny, and the Paradox of Control
1. In high school, a friend of mine found a single rose waiting for her on each of her desks for six classes in a row; she was later offered yet another six roses and asked to the prom via guitar-serenade. The routine was sweet but seemed a little familiar, as if from a movie. […]
The Peril of Good Things (from Milkman, Pt 2)
I tried to…unravel the distortions, have her right mind restored to her. She said it was impossible, that it was perilous to focus on good things when there were bad things, all these bad things, she said, that could not be forgot. She said old dark things as well as new dark things had to […]
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