A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...
About Kendall Gunter
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Variations on Beowulf, Feminist and Christian
“Why not Face / the Boss, and at Death Seek / Salves, not Scars?”
Devotion and Metaphor, Consciousness and Grace: Mark Jarman’s Dailiness
“Failure is the Reason for Grace. We Might Say it is the Reason for Poetry.”
When Atheists Have More Faith Than You Do
Braswell Found that Keeping the Crucified Jesus in His Mind Stabilized Him in a Crisis
Just Getting By, but Decadently: Christian Wiman’s Survival Is a Style
“For Love Read Faith / Into These Lines that So Obviously Lack It.”
The Moral Dilemma of Jesus is King
My friends and I approached the concession counter. (One of us wanted Milk Duds.) An employee, a black woman, glanced over and inquired which movie we three white men were seeing. I replied, “Kanye’s,” with a hopefully self-aware smirk. She rolled her eyes and shook her head wryly. A lot of people have some thoughts […]
The Lord’s Prayer as Portrait of Jesus
I rarely said the Lord’s Prayer growing up. My ministers, suspicious of any swish of ritual, took it as a template and taught me to ad lib to Our Father. I’ve learned to value that emphasis on spontaneous communication and individual requests. Although I now recite Jesus’ formula more often, I decided to do so […]
The “Insane Refusal to Accept Help”: Kierkegaard and the Demoniac
What episode from the Gospels fascinates you? For John Kaag, it’s the Gerasene Demoniac. Even now, after leaving his churchy childhood and growing up into an agnostic professor of philosophy, that story still holds his focus. Apparently it’s grabbed Mockingbird’s attention, too, since the story has appeared a couple of times here on the site. […]
Son of Cloud and Being Not-Alone
Musicians use funny names, sometimes with little rationale. Jonathan Seale has a story for his. When his parents were missionaries in Venezuela, members of the Yukpa tribe gave him the name “Son of Cloud.” Now as an adult, he’s embraced it in his self-titled first album. Seale has been producing for a number of years, […]
“All Things Are Lawful” for Christian Flesh
“I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.” (Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself 2) My hygiene is deficient, one friend told me. She said I needed to use lotion (she swears by Jergens), on my […]
And a Time to Laugh: The Comedy of Christmas in Auden and The Second Shepherds’ Play
Christmas is ridiculous. That’s probably one reason it took the spot of ancient midwinter festivals like Saturnalia, when everything went topsy-turvy. Consider this excerpt from Auden’s For the Time Being, when Simeon at last sees Jesus: SIMEON Because in Him the Flesh is united to the Word without magical transformation, Imagination is redeemed from promiscuous […]
Loving the Dreadful Day of Judgment: Fleming Rutledge’s Advent
The Rev. Fleming Rutledge’s “generous orthodoxy” defies pinning down. She loves both the Day of Judgment and the oppressed in society (and thinks the former will relieve the latter); she believes in Purgatory (without indulgences) and in the nine ranks of angels; and she boldly declares Christ to be Lord and King and coming again […]
Chewing Tinfoil, Wanting God: Christian Wiman’s He Held Radical Light
What is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? Christian Wiman’s new essays resist review. Reviews of art are always a strange effort, anyway. An exhibition of paintings or a play or a concert or a novel or a poem, all are experiences, experiences of difference—when our action is displaced but our hearts and […]
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