• How long have you been an Image reader? How were you introduced to the journal?
• What’s an especially memorable Image piece or event for you? Why?
• How do you typically read your new issue of Image: from start to finish? By genre?
• Where do you typically begin? Do you save anything until the end?

• What’s a piece from the latest issue of Image that you wished you could share with someone? What was it about it that piece that compelled you to share it?
• Was there anything from the latest issue that left you with questions? What was the piece? What questions do you have?
• Was there anything in the latest issue that had you thinking about or looking at your own life differently? If so, would you be willing to share more?

Molly McCully Brown, “Nebraskan Mystery”| Guest Editorial (Page 3)

• How does Molly McCully Brown's reflection on driving through the Nebraska landscape, with its grain silos and wide fields, challenge or relate to your own relationship with awe right now? She speaks of feeling distant from wonder—have you also experienced a similar longing for a sense of wonder and awe? How do we re-engage when they feel far away?
• Brown references Lucie Brock-Broido’s “Magnum Mysterium” and Cameron Awkward-Rich’s “Meditations in an Emergency”. Consider reading these two poems aloud as a group. How do they each conceive of the world around them? How are their postures similar and different? Is there one that resonates with you more right now?
• Brown writes of the struggle to sustain attention amidst the distractions of daily life and the anxiety of our times. What strategies do you use to stay attuned to the people and world around you?

Murzban F. Shroff, “This Is Not My Son’s Head” | Fiction (Page 17) 

• How does this story contribute to the way we think about grief?
• Specifically, Shroff’s piece portrays the mother’s denial of her son’s death, shifting between inner turmoil and outward composure. How did you experience the tension or dissonance between her interior monologue and fragmented memories in the narrative?
• The flashback to the zoo adds a moment of levity and reveals the son’s playful nature. How does memory nuance our experience of loss? How does fiction help specifically to capture this nuanced experience of grief?

Bernd Haussmann | In the Studio (Page 92) Sarah Lee | In the Studio (Page 82)

• Sarah Lee describes her early fascination with stormy weather and how it made her feel both vulnerable and connected to forces beyond human control. How do you perceive this in her paintings? How do these memories and emotions connect with your own experiences of nature, in all of its unpredictability?
• Lee’s paintings are notable for their lack of human figures, inviting viewers to place themselves within the landscapes. How does the absence of people in her work affect your response to the paintings (whether creating a sense of solitude, alienation, peace, or otherwise)?
• In her recent work, Lee explores the tension of conflicting elements—day and night, wind and stillness—existing in the same space. How does this tension between opposites influence your experience of her paintings? Do you explore contrasting elements or themes in your own creative work?
• Lee’s painting, “Butterfly Dream” (2022), created in isolation during the pandemic, was a particularly vulnerable piece for her to share, yet it received the most traction from viewers. Have you ever felt similarly vulnerable sharing your own creative work? What was helpful for you in that process? How did your audience’s response compare to your own relationship with the piece? 

Joel Cuthbertson on Christian Wiman, "Experimental Testimony" | Culture (Page 103)

• Cuthbertson discusses the challenge of expressing faith through testimony, which can often feel inadequate or “hollow.”. How does one navigate between personal spiritual experience and the limits of language? How does Christian Wiman offer a helpful model?
• Wiman’s work in Zero at the Bone uses multiple forms—poetry, memoir, and philosophy—to explore faith and doubt. How does Wiman’s use of multiple genres reveal their utility and, also, their insufficiency in exploring the full experience of a life of faith
• Cuthbertson suggests that Wiman doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of either a whole-hearted Christian or a modern nihilist, but rather into a new category of mystic or experimentalist. How does this label strike you? What thoughts does this stir in you about your own faith experience?

Jenny Hykes Jiang, “My Father at Love Feast, Dallas County, Iowa, 1949” | Poetry (Page 120)

• Jiang’s poem contrasts the child’s physical thirst with the adults’ spiritual hunger. How do the boy’s repeated, persistent requests to quench his thirst relate to the spiritual longing at work in this scene? What does this reveal about the relationships between your own physical and spiritual needs?
• The sensory details in the poem—the smell of hot-pressed cotton and lye soap, or the sight of cornfields and birds—help to root this religious gathering in the material world. What imagery from your own life comes to mind when you think of ordinary moments that carry a sense of the sacred? What sensory experiences would you include in this list?
• On that note, how does this attention to your own surroundings and their scent of the sacred contribute to the discussion on wonder stirred up by Molly McCully Brown’s editorial?