Issue 55

Walter Brueggemann is professor emeritus of Old Testament studies at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, where he taught from 1986 to 2003. He has authored hundreds of articles and over sixty books, including Genesis (Westminster John Knox, 1982), The Message of the Psalms (Fortress, 1984), Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile (Fortress, 1986), Hope…

Even the kids negotiating friendships on that yellow school bus racketing past know it’s a different scenario every day, not just the same elemental hostilities like ocean versus sand, tough places to make a living. To see things as they are, keep your eyes open. This morning on the bay side of Egg Island I…

Roger Williams, 1678 As I was weeding in my squash patch, I heard the braying, as of an ass, down at the nether end of Towne Street, the first I have heard since England, and I do love those raggedy-faced beasts. A crowd down there was milling about some distraction, which parting revealed the poor,…

Pieces of torn bread on the tablecloth. Plates empty in front of them as if they have just removed the halos they will wear in a few years. Jesus holds out his arms like he is scolding them for such a mess. They look startled, like they are seeing it for the first time: it…

And one, from hunger and bitterness, wrung the loaf as if it had absorbed all the promises he had believed. But between hands it regathered itself, the way a cloud gathers itself from within, and they didn’t see that it stayed about the same size. He listened. His lips sweetened. Then he slept. When he…

Come into my garden, the Christ Child said to me. Here is the lily for what’s past, the rose for what’s to be. Here is the emerald mound where love lies till the day all sleeping souls must rise and do what the hardest scriptures say. Here is the sapphire pool from which the laughing…

The stab to the heart that is such music, the light beyond brightness that is such sight— For the sake of this season in the stories I will cease my wars with God tonight. I will choose, with open eye, the talking beasts, the white-in-the-snowdrift Christmas rose, the legends of wandering a bitter way, high…

PETE DZIEDZIC’S TEETH lay buried a half-mile south of the Da Nang Air Base. There the lance corporal had quarreled with a private over who’d recorded “Sea of Love.” Guys in the outfit were singing along to Armed Forces Radio when Pete said, “That singer’s from the northern U.S.” “He’s from my hometown,” replied the…

Each man has a silence that revolves around him as he beats his head against the earth. But I am laughing hard and furious. I pour a glass of pepper vodka and toast the white wall. I say we were never silent. We read each other’s lips and said one word four times. And laughed…

YES, APPLY the Hippocratic Oath,” Paula Morriset said, so softly she doubted the young house surgeon, head bent over the consent form, indicating with his superior pen where she should sign, heard her. Then she took the thick silver pen and signed fluently, a good sign. Her mother, Lorna, now successfully sedated, her broken hip…