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In These Certain Times
Certainly you’ll get a kick out of this:
ANNOUNCING! Peace in the Last Third of Life: A Handbook of Hope for Boomers by Paul Zahl
SURPRISE!! We’ve dropped hints here and there that Paul Zahl has been working on a new book. The hardcover will be out this summer, but given our present circumstances (and the urgency of the book’s message), we wanted to get it into your hands as soon as possible. So we’ve done something unprecedented and have released it first as an e-book, which you can purchase as we speak! Here’s the blurb:
Everyone wants peace and hope.
As we grow older, we feel a special urgency to make peace with the past and to discover hope for the future. In his newest book, Peace in the Last Third of Life, the Rev. Dr. Paul F. M. Zahl provides a roadmap to finding peace and hope for the ‘Boomer’ generation. Zahl’s wisdom comes not only from decades in pastoral ministry, but also from cultural and historical illustrations as varied as Philadelphia Soul, War of the Worlds (1953), and the skin of St. Bartholomew. With piercing wisdom and unflagging humor, Peace in the Last Third of Life connects the core questions of Boomers to the Supernatural Power of God.
Grab your copy today!
When Your Worst Day Is Preparation Day (Mark 15:43-47)
This morning’s devotion was excerpted from An Easy Stroll Through a Short Gospel: Meditations on Mark, by Larry Parsley. Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. (15:43) If true love asks for nothing in return, […]
“Dream at Bethel,” by Mischa Willett
Quiet now, but for camels’ tongues,
lopping fat and sticky in the young
desert night, big wind in the black backdrop
of sky, crickets and their ancient legs, log-pops
from my small fire. Cool on my feet,
this breeze after two days walking since the trees
of my village waved their shaggy good-byes. My wool socks
stuffed in boots, I relax; put a smooth rock
under my head, start to dream the dreams of my life:
I can fly like hawks, have green-eyed wives
from the east, am a sailor with a swift ship,
fish, kingdoms under me, then this:
a ladder leaning into clouds reaching high as noon,
quick as raindrops, up and down, angels, bright as moon.
Then a whisper comes sliding too, down the ricket of the bars,
promising peace and plenty, descendants like the stars.
The fire is dim as voices when the drop
of my leg wakes me. Blinking, I prop
on an elbow and look around for stairs, an unnatural
hint of spirits, but see only my bearded camels,
some lights on a hill from town, my boots, provisions.
I think better of my strange vision.
At breakfast I splash oil on my pillow rock—
it seems holy still—and get ready to walk, pack
everything, give the camels some straw,
call the place Church, to remember what I saw.
From The Elegy Beta: And Other Poems by Mischa Willett. You can purchase this collection from the Mockingbird store, Amazon, and elsewhere.
The Best Hope There Is: A Brief Devotion for Easter Monday
This morning’s Easter Monday devotion comes from today’s Almost Daily Devotional by the Rev Paul Walker: The magnitude of what God has done in raising Christ from the dead continues to unfold in my mind and heart with each passing Easter. Perhaps this year, especially, as the reports of deaths are in the daily paper […]
Good Friday in a Time of Corona – Paul Zahl
The latest from our “Grace in a Time of Corona” series of video devotionals:
Grace in the Time of Corona – Paul Zahl from Mockingbird on Vimeo.
Join Us for Palm Sunday!
This week we’re streaming the service from All Saints Winter Park FL, with Stuart Shelby presiding and Paul Zahl preaching:
Join Us For Morning Prayer
This week we’re streaming the service from St Albans in Waco, TX, with Aaron Zimmerman preaching:
“Come Crack the Frozen Branch-Ends / That’ve Had You So Long”: Foreword to The Elegy Beta
This foreword to our newest publication, The Elegy Beta, by Mischa Willett, was written by Mark S. Burrows. What are poems for? The question is a perennial one, and the answers range across a wide spectrum of musings. Poets, as “practitioners” of the art, have their own take on this. One of them, the German Romantic […]
Now Available: The Elegy Beta: And Other Poems, by Mischa Willett
Never before has Mockingbird published a book of poetry — but with The Elegy Beta, that changes. From critically acclaimed poet Mischa Willett, The Elegy Beta features impressionistic meditations on faith and everyday life. In concert with Rilke’s Duino Elegies, this collection simmers with luminous, transcendent language. It is elegant, sharp, and frequently funny.
The Elegy Beta is available today in hardcover and paperback. You can find it in our online bookstore, on Amazon, and elsewhere.
Meet the author at the book launch in Seattle on March 10, and RSVP to the event here. Willett will also read at MockingbirdNYC in April. You can find out more at mischawillet.com.
Meanwhile, early reviews are in:
“Mischa Willett has an absolutely distinctive voice, angular, refractory, often unsettling in flashes of psychological and spiritual insight that go deep, by-passing categories. The Elegy Beta begins in sharp, arresting jolts to consciousness and conscience, then moves in the grand title poem to a symphony of symbolic resonance that invites deep pondering and re-reading. A remarkable volume.” – David Lyle Jeffrey, author of In the Beauty of Holiness
“Find a quiet spot where your tongue can delight your ears and read these poems aloud. For some you’ll want to kneel. For others, slap your thigh and guffaw. In some an epiphany will dawn like a sun surprising you at midnight. Dwell in the lilt of Willett’s play. He’s dead serious and death-defying.” – James K. A. Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Image Magazine; author of On the Road with Saint Augustine
“Here is a striking and original collection which responds to both our biblical and poetic heritage with a fresh contemporary voice. The best response to poetry is itself poetry and in Willet’s new sequence The Elegy Beta, Rilke’s great Duino elegies are reimagined in ways that will spur readers on to their own creative response.” – Malcolm Guite, author of After Prayer
“In a world awash in a flood of cheap chatter, and numb from the noise of ALL CAPS weaponizing of words, good poetry is a healing, sensitizing balm. Willett’s The Elegy Beta displays the capacity of poetic language to remind us of the world—its everyday glory and profound peculiarity—that gets lost in the noise. These poems neither weaponize nor worship words; they rather let words do their work, like the sun does its: warming, illuminating, drawing forth life.” – Brett McCracken, senior editor, The Gospel Coalition; author of Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community
What We’re Watching and Listening To: February Edition
Sarah Condon Dracula. This version (BBC/Netflix) takes a wildly beautiful twist where Professor Abraham Van Helsing is replaced by Sister Agatha Van Helsing. It is totally engaging and utterly rapturous. In other words, this is Fleabag season 3. Miss Americana. Hear me when I say: I’ve always been a little suspicious of Taylor Swift. Hear […]
The New Mockingbird Digest!
Dear everyone,
We invite you to subscribe to our new e-newsletter, delivered conveniently to your inbox fortnightly (once every two weeks-ish). It will be a compendium of fresh posts, pertinent archived material, and other grace-filled goodies. Think of it, maybe, as your good-news news.
Note: If you are already subscribed to the Mockingbird mailing list, this is not the same thing. Add your email below to receive new content on a more regular basis.
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