Sweeping

by Andy Conner


The Sikhs’ magnificent Harmandir, or Golden Temple, is the centrepiece of the temple complex in the holy city of Amritsar.

Auntie
Respected, rich
Humbles herself

Auntie
Knowing what pride precedes
Hitches her sari above her feet

Auntie
A forward thinking lady
Descends the stairs backwards

Slowly

Clears her mind
Cleans God’s house
For the pious
For the tourists
For the peasants who spend their lives
Swallowing dust

Not born to be a cleaner
She sweeps
Bare-handed
Right to left
Right to left
Gathering tiny piles
Of unholy dust

Each movement
Physically
A speck of dirt

Each movement
Spiritually
A broadstroke golden universe
Of love and hope

Sweeping
Unkind thoughts
Sweeping
Everyday sins

Sweeping
The one thing
No rug is big enough to cover

Outside
Sweet water reflects
Ten heavenly smiles
Nanak to Gobind

Inside
The eleventh
Pauses its reading
And bookmarks
The purity
Flowing in and out
Of four open doors


Andy Conner is a Birmingham, UK-based poet, activist and educator, with a long track record of performing his work nationally and internationally. His work has also featured in numerous publications. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
His credits include BBC Radio 4, Jaipur Literature Festival and India International Centre. He has also conducted workshops for The British Council.

Absolution by Flip Flop

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by D. Walsh Gilbert


As soon as I dropped
my flip-flop into Charlestown’s

Atlantic, knee-deep in outgoing
tide, it was gone, and I

caught myself before chasing it,
knowing all about the undertow

and the importance of the breachway.
There I stood with the other

looped onto my pinkie finger.
I closed my fist.

Ask me if I can speak
of balance, loss, and distance.

I’ve hobbled forty years
in a single sandal.

Forty—the root for quarantine,
the weeks for full-term pregnancy,

the length of fasting in the wilderness,
of temptation by devils, floods

and wandering in deserts.
Forty years before I pulled the saved one off,

and, finally waltzing barefoot, tossed
it to the undertow and currents.


D. Walsh Gilbert is a thirty-year breast cancer survivor. She serves on the board of the non-profit, Riverwood Poetry Series, focusing poetry against hatred, and as co-editor of the Connecticut River Review. She lives in a rural setting in Connecticut with her husband and two old dogs.

Today

by Rachel Racette


Today is a good day.

Today I woke with the sun and spent a few minutes basking under its warm glow. (It felt like your smile. The gentle brush of your fingers across my scalp.) Then rose and cleaned the grime I’d accumulated from the last three days from my skin, washed down the drain and put out of mind. My reflection shows my face full of color once again.

Today’s a new day. I roll my shoulders the heavy cloak of yesterday falls. I stand tall, breathe deeply, and a smile seems to have made permanent residence on my face. Today will be a good day, I feel it in my bones.

(Not like yesterday. Yesterday was a bad day. I woke to the fading memory of you. A dream that should have been a dream, not the tainted and bitter nightmare it became. I sobbed until my chest ached and I couldn’t breathe. Again.

Raised my voice like a killer’s dagger at my loved ones and snapped at every little thing. I wanted to bury myself and fought with teeth when they tried to draw me out into the light. I screamed, and your name fell like a curse from my lips.

Yesterday I remembered and missed you, and my emotions thrashed me like a violent thunderstorm. Yesterday was a bad day.)

Today I apologise and mean it. I make breakfast for my family, and their understanding and sympathetic smiles don’t dig like hooks under my skin. I smile, and my spirit bends under the relief in their eyes. I finish my plate, press kisses to my parents’ cheeks, and slip out, throwing my bag over my shoulder.

I walk, not stomp or run out the door, down the walkway. Birds sing, and when I pass my little sister, I let her pull me down and press flowers into my hair. She grins, a bright wonderful thing as I ruffle her hair, beating a hasty retreat when she reaches for me again. She laughs, and I laugh with her.

(Without a lie in my throat. Without the echo of your sound to bring me down. Anger doesn’t rise, and my mood brightens even more.)

I stroll down main street, flowers still in my hair. The elderly woman who lives next door looks up from examining the fresh fruit and waves. She’s always one of the few up so early, always the first customer on the block.

“Good morning!” She calls.

“Isn’t it just?” I reply. Her eyes gleam and she nods, turning to finish selecting the last of her groceries. I pause, the ghost of hands brush my shoulder, and I offer to help her carry her goods. She accepts, and I find I enjoy the detour.

Her house smells of lavender, and her big fluffy cat welcomes my pets without hesitation. She offers a peach, and I step out the door swallowing sweet juice and tender flesh. I dig around in my bag, find an abandoned zip lock and pocket the pit.

(You used to laugh at my oddities. My choice in books, clothes, the pieces of life I kept that people normally threw away. It turned you off more than a few times, until you saw what I did with those pieces.)

I rush back to main street, slip into the back of the only craft store for miles, and clip on my nametag and hat. The slip the flowers from my hair into another zip lock, this one filled with a variety of dried flowers. I wheel out with new and replacement supplies and immediately get to work. My co-worker watches from the till, her usual painted smile reaching her eyes.

Today is a good day for me. So it should be a great day for everyone else.

The rest of the morning passes by quickly, the steady buzz ruined only when two boys nearly knock over a display. They stutter apologies while the mother sighs. I stand tall, twisting my hat back as I brush off their worries, ushering them towards the kits on display, asking how they feel about knight and dragons.

The two leave weaving words excitedly as only children can, the mother’s face a bit brighter, a bit calmer than before, and rushes after her children, smiling and shaking her head at their backs.

(You used to shake your head like that at me, when I rushed through my words like there was never enough time to say it all.

There wasn’t, in the end. The sad thing I’m realising is; I think few people reach the end having said all they wanted to say. I wonder if you were one of them, if there were things you wished you’d told me when you still had the time.

I wonder what they would have been.)

Late afternoon comes and I walk home under yellow fading warmth. Home smells of the promise of a hearty dinner. I call out and am welcomed by a throng of voices; my parents from the kitchen, dancing around the tiles like they’re the Gods of this little place of pot and spices; from my younger sister before she rushed up the steps; from my even younger sister and brother drawing and playing in the living room.

I make my way to my room, shutting the door gently behind me. (I don’t turn the lock. There’s no silence ringing click. You told me I shouldn’t lock out the world.) I drag out the box from underneath my bed. Inside, are my tools; paintbrushes and paints, little bits of metal and rocks, carving tools and a mini-glue gun, wire and string and buttons. Inside there are dried flowers and crafts formed from collected and carved wood, horns, and a dozen other little odds and ends. Such as little figurines carved from peach pits.

I cross my legs and dig through the box, the pit sitting, waiting at my side. Something crinkles under my supplies and I stop. I shuffle things around and from the bottom, a little wrinkled and splattered with paint drips; is a picture of you and me. Smiling, holding each other close.

(It hurts, even after so long. A terrible inescapable pain I never knew could exist. Time feels so slow and too fast without you. Colors look duller, music feels lifeless, and there is a cold void in my heart where you had made a place for yourself. Life, is… difficult.

But– 

Today was a good day. Tearful memories will not make it untrue.)

The sun has set, and through my open window I stare up at the stars, praying tomorrow will be okay. Hoping the hole where you used to live is easier to bare tomorrow. I have loved you and will love you till the end of my days, but I will learn to live without you, because life is wonderful. You taught me that. (I’m trying not to forget it.)

Today was a good day. Tomorrow is uncertain, but I have a good feeling, because today, today I was made a little more whole.


Rachel Racette, born 1999 in Balcarres, Sask. Loves writing characters and creating new worlds. Has always loved books of fantasy and science fiction as well as comics. Published in The Spelunkers: A Chipper Press Anthology.
E-mail: rachelracette@yahoo.com
Website: www.racheldotsdot.wordpress.com

Nails

by Courtney Cameron


In my father’s closet, catacombs,
Upon the dusty, sacred wall,
A humble hammer, aged, hangs
With broken stubs for claws.

The head is pocked, the handle chipped,
And taped around the fraying grip,
“Remember all the nails this drove”
Proclaims a note, in ancient script.

When the years weigh heavy on me,
And I feel worse for the wear,
I recall that one cannot grow worn
Without first driving many nails.


Cortney Cameron (crcameron.com) is a Tampa-area geoscientist and writer. Her poems and memoir essays have been featured in The Appalachian Journal, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Sisyphus, and The Dead Mule. A nature therapy practitioner and instructor, she co-authored Nature Therapy Walks (Tenkatt). She is also the main writer for the forthcoming Catians comic series (Scout). Originally from the Appalachian Foothills, she holds a B.A. from Duke University and an M.S. from North Carolina Central University.

Crave

by Matthew Miller


I’m sipping tea this afternoon. Some sons nap.
Another asks, Daddy, spell special for me.

I have no letters to spell special for me.
But words for him: apprentices and spaces.

Certainty spawns danger in novel spaces.
New wine demands new wineskins, not more patches.

I want to walk in soft grass, not burnt patches,
so I overwater brown until it’s smooth

and squashy. I sink in like a pen that’s smooth,
like my hand sliding across unwrinkled thighs.

I wish I was young again, unwrinkled eyes
on watermelon slices, unsure what God says.

You can’t want wrongly with me, God says.
In wells, I find thirst; sipping while some sons nap.


Matthew Miller teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry – hoping to create home. He lives beside a dilapidating orchard in Indiana, and tries to shape the dead trees into playhouses for his four boys. He secretly the groundhogs, rabbits, and cardinals that share the orchard’s fruits.

Thy Kingdom Come

by Bryan Grafton

    
“How much farther Grandpa?”

“It should be up ahead just a little ways. Not too much farther.”

He wondered if his grandfather could remember. If they were even on the right road at all. After all his grandfather was eighty eight and getting forgetful at times.

He had the job now of looking after his grandfather since his father had passed away last month.  He had driven all the way down here from Hoffman Estates to this god forsaken rural community in west central Illinois that mockingly called itself Forgottonia, nothing but dried up little towns and field after field of corn and beans. He had gotten his grandfather from the Happy Endings Nursing home, and now was taking him out, per his request, for a nostalgic trip down memory lane, a ride in the country to see the old family farm where he had grown up. He had never been there so he was relying on his grandfather to show him the way.

      They had driven for quite some distance in silence when his grandfather suddenly spoke up and said, “Stop. Stop here please.”

      He brought the car to a stop in the middle of nowhere on a dusty gravel road.

     “Grandpa there’s nothing but that old abandoned building over there. That can’t be where you grew up. That doesn’t even look like a farm to me.”

     “It’s not. That’s where I went to school.”

     “In that little dilapidated old falling down building? You’re kidding me.”

     “Graduated eighth grade there.”

     He knew his grandfather had never graduated high school. There was no need to then if one was going to be a farmer and his grandfather had been one all his life. When he got too old to farm his father had tried to get him to come live with him in Barrington. But Grandpa refused. Consequently his father trekked down here to ‘Forgottonia’ once a month to visit him and now that responsibility fell on him.

     “Do you want to get out and go take a look, Grandpa.”  He asked more out of politeness than practicality for he knew his grandfather would say no since he was semi mobile and they hadn’t brought his wheelchair.

    “No that’s okay.”

    “Well tell me about it then Grandpa.” He knew his grandfather was dying to tell him. After all that was the whole purpose of this trip to begin with, to harken back. 

    “Okay, I will,” he said a smile upon his face. “See how the school is oblong shaped. See the windows there only being on the east side, the whole east side. There’s no windows on the west. That’s to avoid the afternoon sun making the place too hot. Morning sun on the east side wasn’t so intense and let in enough light so we could do our lessons.”

    “Well that makes sense,” he commented, beginning to take an interest in this now.  “How many kids went there Grandpa?”

     “Forty give or take a few.  First through eighth grades.”

     “What’s that metal thing sticking up out of the ground there?” he asked pointing to it.

     “Oh that’s the pump. That’s where we got our water. Drank it straight out of the ground. Had a long wooden trough in front of it to prevent a mud puddle from forming under the spout.”

    “You mean you didn’t have running water inside back then?”

    “Yep. That’s exactly what I mean.  Didn’t have flush toilets either. Just kind of had outhouses inside the schoolhouse.”

    “You’re putting me on Grandpa.”

    “No I’m not. When you came in the front door you entered the cloak room where we hung our coats and left our muddy boots but off to the right was the boys room and off to the left the girls. No flush toilet. No wash sink either. Just had a stool over a hole in the ground. Teacher used to dump chemicals down it every so often as to keep the stink down.”

   “Suppose you didn’t have electricity back then either huh Grandpa.”

   “Yep. Didn’t have central heat back then either. Had a wood burning stove. The back room of the school was the woodshed. Kind of got a little cold in the winter at times. Had to keep your coat on all day.”

    His curiosity was definitely aroused now. He wanted to see for himself so he said, “Mind if I get out and go take a look around and in the window Grandpa.”

    “Don’t believe me do ya?”

    “I do. I just want to see that’s all.”

    “Okay go ahead then.”

    He got out of the car and entered the school yard.

    “There used to be a couple of swing sets and a slide over there,” his grandfather hollered, pointing to the east side of the school.

    “Where there’s none here now,” he hollered back.

    “You’ll see the old footings where they used to be. Take a look.”

    He went to the old well first and tried the pump handle. It was frozen in time and didn’t move. The ten foot long or so wooden trough was there just like his grandfather said, rotting away. It was hard for him to believe they drank unfiltered water straight from the ground. No government regulations back then evidently.

    He saw the concrete footings that once had anchored the swings and slide in place. Someone must have stolen them for scrap metal he thought.

    He went up to the window and pressed his nose against it.  There was nothing in there. Whatever had been there was long gone. Probably someone had stolen all the old desks too he thought and sold them as antiques. He could see a hole in the wall where the smoke stack used to be. To the front he could see the open door that led to the cloak room but he couldn’t see the doors to the inside outhouses. He wanted to see them.

    He went around to the back of the building first though to the door to the back room. It was falling off its hinges and as he swung it open it fell completely off. There in the back were some old broken damaged desks that evidently no one thought worth stealing. The kind that had an inkwell in them, no ball point pens back then. The kind where one was attached to the one in front of it so that the boy behind the girl could stick her pigtails in his inkwell.  There was also a pile of cut wood. He could tell varmints had been living in it; their dried droppings were everywhere. He went around to the front door, tried it, it didn’t budge. Oh well forget it. He’d seen enough. He better get going and take Grandpa to his old farm house.

   “Well it was just like you said Grandpa,” he informed him as he got in the car and started off down the road to yesteryear.

   “It was called Kingdom School,” his grandfather announced.

    “Kingdom? Why that Grandpa?” He knew his grandfather was having a good time and so was he now.

    “The original man that owned the land here back in the 1830’s was a some kind of disposed or deposed royalty from England. So he came to this country to establish his own little kingdom right here in Illinois.  Story is he actually called his farm his ‘Kingdom.’ Back in those days there were no public school systems but everyone wanted a school and since he owned most of the land in the center of the township he agreed to give up that little tract there for a schoolhouse since it was centrally located. It pained him though to part with part of his ‘Kingdom.’ So he put a clause in the deed that if the ground wasn’t used as school, it would revert back to him, or his heirs, if he was dead.  The locals jokingly named the school Kingdom since it was located in his ‘Kingdom’. The school was closed back in the fifties when they started busing the kids to school in town here. Anyway the school was supposed to go back to this supposed land baron. Course he had been dead some seventy years by then and nobody knew who his heirs were. That’s why the school’s just sat there and fallen apart. Nobody’s ever come forth claiming to be an heir.”

   They rode in silence for a while.

   “How much further Grandpa?’

   “Not much.  I used to walk to school every day. There was no bus service back then you know.”

    He drove on a ways then, “Slow down, it’s just up ahead.”

   “I don’t see anything Grandpa. You sure?”

    “Slow down. Stop right here at the intersection.’  

    He did as ordered. Again they were all alone out there in the middle of nowhere by themselves.

    “There’s just a cornfield here Grandpa.”

    “Well it was here. Right on the southeast corner here. That big corporate farm I sold out to must have torn everything down. Aren’t many family farms left anymore.”

    The grandfather wiped his eyes, took in and blew out a deep breath, straightened himself upright. “Well we might as well go back now.”

   They got back to the nursing home. He helped his grandfather inside.

   “Grandpa, I had a good time today but I better get going now. I got a long drive ahead of me. I’ll try to get back sooner next time.”

    “Your father came once a month you know.”

    “Yah I know but he never took you out to see the old place did he?”

    “No he thought it would be too hard on me. Thank you. I really do appreciate you doing that for me.”

    ”Oh you’re more than welcome Grandpa.”

   “You know next time I think I’ll have you wheel me up to the window there and help me stand up so I can take a look inside. Okay?”

    “Okay Grandpa we’ll do that,” He went up to his grandfather and gave him a big hug, fighting back the tears welling up inside him.

    The next time came one month to the day. They went to the school again and his grandfather got his look inside. He died the next day.

     He cremated his grandfather per his prearranged instructions and buried his ashes next to those of his grandmother in the little burg there. Didn’t bury all of them though. No he held some back and scattered them at Kingdom School. Did that just by himself as he said goodbye to his Grandfather.


Bryan Grafton is a retired attorney.

Reconciliation . . . God’s Reason for the Season

by Karen Lynn Woo


Justin and Josie, 17-year-old twins, stood arguing in the kitchen about the recent election. Although they were not yet old enough to vote, they were old enough to have very definite, and vastly different, opinions about what should be (in their opinion) the priorities of the president of the United States. Rachel was proud of the fact that her children were smart, savvy, and interested in world events. She was also tired of hearing them bicker.

“Mom,” said Josie, “don’t you agree the reason we have had so many fires this year is because of climate change? Our president’s top priority should be the environment!”

“Wrong!” shouted Justin. “The states just need to make forest management THEIR priority! Less fuel. Less fires!”

Rachel shook her head. This type of argument had been going on for months . . . years really . . . just like the arguments that were taking place all over the United States. This despite the fact the elections were over. The problem was such arguments were also beginning to erode their relationship . . . just as such arguments had eroded relationships across the nation. “You know,” she said turning to face them, “there was a time when Americans of different viewpoints could argue their point of view, recognize that neither side was 100% right, and come together to find a better solution together than either of them had come up with individually. Now it seems everyone from the various members of our Congress right down to you two has decided they are God . . . that they alone know better than anyone else what is best for everyone else. But that is just not true. You are both intelligent teens. How can you not see that neither climate change nor forest management alone will stop the fires? Just as we need to manage our forests, we need to manage the way we live to minimize the effects of climate change. But both must be balanced with the needs of the American people and their relationships with one another . . . relationships which are breaking down as we . . . more and more . . . worship the god called, “Me, myself, and I.” No man is an island. We need one another. We need to listen to, and carefully consider, the viewpoints of others; we need to work together to come up with the best ideas and solutions. God made people to look, think, and act differently . . . even twins like the two of you . . . to complement one another and make up for one another’s deficiencies. None of us is perfect, save for the one human being who was also fully God . . . Jesus . . . God incarnate. Do you remember what he said is the greatest commandment?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength,” said Justin.

“The second is this,” continued Josie, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”

“Yes, exactly,” replied their mother. In other words, “Love God. Love Others.” Unfortunately, what we see in today’s world is not “Love God. Love Others,” but “Love those who are like me. Love those who think and act as I do. Everyone else is an ignorant bigot.”

After a few moments of silence Justin turned to Josie. “I’m sorry sis,” he said. “I don’t think you are ignorant, and I know you are not a bigot.” He paused and then continued, “Mom’s right. Politics is important but not THAT important.”

“No, it’s not,” replied Josie. “I’m sorry too. To be honest, I’ve missed collaborating with you on our school projects. Mom’s right. We do our best work when we work together. And you know, in four years there will be another election and by then we can each vote for the candidates of our choice!”

“And agree to disagree if we cast our votes for different people,” said Justin with a grin.

“And we can also encourage our senators and representatives to work together for the good of the American people,” said Josie.

“Agreed,” said Justin nodding.

Rachel sat down at the kitchen table and motioned to the twins to do the same. “Whoever or whatever you decide to vote for, I hope you will vote for the person or issue that best aligns with your Christian faith.”

Justin and Josie stared at their mother and then at one another. “But we’ve been told in school that faith shouldn’t play a role in the decisions made by our leaders,” said Justin. Josie nodded in agreement.

“I know of no true believer who can separate their faith from who they are. The foundation of our character is our faith. Jesus said, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’ Yet Jesus never forced himself on others. He simply showed through his teachings and by the way He lived His life who God is, how God relates to His people, and how we are to relate to one another as God’s children. Likewise, we are not to force Jesus or our beliefs on others, but we ARE called to show them the love of God through our words and actions.

Silence ensued as Justin and Josie considered their mother’s words.

“You know mom, what you’ve told us today is something others need to hear too,” said Josie.

“I agree,” said Justin nodding. You’ve given us a lot to think about.

“Yes, well,” said Rachel with a smile, “then don’t be surprised if you hear it from the pulpit.” And getting up from the table she went over and kissed the heads of her two children, sat down at her computer, and began to type her sermon for Sunday.

Turning to Josie Justin said, “I noticed the Christmas tree lot at the edge of town just opened for business. Shall we go take a look and maybe pick one out?”

Josie nodded. “Just let me grab a jacket. I’ll meet you by the front door in two minutes.”

As the door closed behind them Rachel smiled and typed “Reconciliation . . . God’s Reason for the Season.”

Karen Lynn Woo is a regular contributor to Purpled Nail and a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Review: Black Works

Reviewed by Kevin Torrey

It takes a great deal of skill to tell a story without excess verbiage. Some authors spend 20 pages detailing a scene down to the last missing eyelash without advancing the story. Others use action as a substitute for plot.

But sometimes a writer comes along who uses dialogue so well that he can carry the story and still save the rain forest. Eric Luthi uses conversation the way a good artist uses color – it fills the emptiness between the lines with emotion and meaning. And often, the reader can picture the scene through the dialogue alone, which is where the real story lies. After all, this is not an action novel. It is a story about human connection. The characters have real depth, as if they are people the author actually knows. The reader would recognize them, were they to pass them on the street. The story has a genuine, gritty quality, yet lacks the jaded, reality television feel so often displayed by contemporary writers.

It is a quick read, but the characters will stay with you, making you sometimes wonder what they have been up to since you finished reading the story. Maybe Eric will tell us some day.

It would be nice to catch up.

A Chorus

August 1, 2020                                            Volume 5: Issue 2


The Sacred in the Ordinary. That is our mission. That is what we seek to identify and to publish when we do find it. That is the path we set out upon and have tried to follow wherever it may lead.

Sometimes, the path surprises us. But we still follow it.

I do not always agree with everything that is written by our authors. I believe in the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth and hold firmly to the belief that He is the one and only Way to restore ourselves to a relationship with God the Father.

Still, when I first came up with the idea of this journal, I spoke with a colleague. She said, “You’re not going to limit it to Christians only, are you?”

I said, “No.” I would open the journal to other viewpoints as well as long as they held to the mission: to show the Sacred in the Ordinary.

One voice can be simple and pure. Many voices screaming at each other is a cacophony, an ugly torrent of sound. We’ve seen enough of that lately. But many voices singing together make a sound like no other. That is so even when not every voice is powerful. Together, they become a triumphal chorus.

One of the rejection letters we use most states that the writing was fine but we are unable to identify what part of the submission reflects the Sacred in the Ordinary.

Give us the Sacred. Show us how it is embodied in the Ordinary.

That’s a simple as it gets, folks.

Hallelujah

by William Carter


Hallelujah is word that has become so overused it is almost meaningless.

We say it when something unexpected comes our way, like when dinner plans cancel at the last moment, “Hallelujah!”

 Yeah, you really just wanted to eat ice-cream on the couch and fall asleep to Netflix anyway.

Or, we say it sarcastically, like when we come back to our car from the concert and see a parking ticket on our windshield, and sigh, “Hallelujah.”

Today, I was writing about waking up from my coma and the mix CD a mentor in my life made me that included Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

Truly, there was not a more perfect song for that moment in my life.  Because, importantly, Hallelujah does not mean “great day” or “thank god,” regardless of how absentmindedly we’ve used it. Hallelujah is a Hebrew word that means, “Praise Yah,” Yah being the Hebrew name for God. Essentially, Hallelujah means, “Praise God.”

And as such, it is a word I need to use more frequently and more genuinely.

Hallelujah means “Praise God” without any stipulations, any qualifiers, not because of this thing or that thing because those tings can go; those things can be lost. People, jobs, homes, children, everything can go. Hallelujah has a deeper, better, more consistent praise to it.

Hallelujah is a praise for today and for all of the moments that brought you, bruised, scarred, missing teeth and hair, to today.

I don’t remember my coma; I don’t really remember being in the hospital. My memory of the first two years after my accident is like looking through a camera lens covered in Vaseline. Weird as it may sound, I remember feelings, and I know my coma, my accident, my injury were hard. I know that  my parents and family were stretched almost to the point of breaking, but I also know that, when my eyes fluttered and then opened, when the sounds of Sufjan welcomed me back to life, the only word on their lips was “Hallelujah.”

Buckley’s version of Cohen’s song is hauntingly beautiful, and it brought me to something that has been on my mind as I write this memoir.

We think of our life as a collection of separate moments, disconnected from the others. We experience regret, because we think about changing one moment, one instance, one circumstance, if we could just one single solitary dot on our scatter plot of life, everything would make sense.

See, I’ve been listening to Buckley but reading the Apostle Paul, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Phillipians 5:3-5). Through reading Paul, writing my story, and listening to Buckley, I am trying to take each of the disparate points of my life and string them into a straight line.

Now, it is easy to see that the sufferings of the past have brought me to the joy of today. That every decision of the past has brought me, blindfolded, to right now. As humans, we are story-tellers by nature, so finding the string of the past to the positives of today is easy. For me, if I did not move to Georgia, I would not have met my wife. Therefore, all of the disappointments that moved me back to Georgia are worth it.

The Apostle Paul can rejoice in his present sufferings, in the soars, blisters, and hunger pains of today, because he knows that his current sufferings will lead him somewhere great. He is beaten and rejoices, jailed and knows he will be free. He rejoices in his sufferings, because he knows the pains he suffers are dots, pointing the arrow of his life upward. He has joy because every day is part of his story. He knows that, no matter how many bruises, no matter how much his stomach claws and growls, that pain will be part of the glory of tomorrow.

This is easy to do for the past. True faith is to do it for today.

Right now, many people are struggling. Frankly, most of us are just tired of wiping down groceries, tired of not seeing friends, and would you look at that, they’ve run out of shows. And for me, my complaining is in a similar key.

But, some of have real cuts, real bruises.

Some of us have lost loved ones. Many have lost jobs.

That’s hard, and I won’t say that going through it is easy. I will not dismiss or undercut that pain. If that’s you, that sucks, and I’m sorry.
Yet, truly, the hardest part of it all is to believe that not only will this dot, the point of current suffering, pass but that it will lead you to place of greater joy.

Recently, my pastor preached on Psalm 23 and how God leads us from pasture to pasture though a valley, and many times, we wish there was another way. We scream at our Apple maps, “Siri, you idiot, why did you take me on this road? There is a valley here!”

And, we wonder if the pasture on the other side is worth the valley. The water is filling our shoes; we’re cold, and we can barely see. Sometimes, the pasture sounds good, but it’s not worth the pain of the moment. We hate the valley.

Or, we’ve just stepped out of the valley, and we snarl in bitterness, “Why did you send me there?”
We can’t see pasture yet, so it’s easy to complain.

But, think if we could only see the pasture before we got there. Not a picture on a travel website, but if we could know the experience of that next place we will be, we could just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I know. Trust me, I get it. It sounds crazy. It’s nuts to be beaten, battered, bruised, scraped, past the point of exhaustion, and not complain.

Trust me, I understand.

But, what if, instead of bitterness and resentment, instead of screaming, complaining, and balling our fists into the sky, throwing middle-fingers to God and everyone around us, what if we stopped, uncurled our fingers, closed our eyes, and sang, “Hallelujah”?

Praise Ya.

Praise God.

It’s crazy. It sounds stupid. And yeah, it’s one of the most insane things you could ever do.

But in this time of Corona, when you’re stuck at home, when you’re getting in fights with your spouse, when you’re looking at a dwindling bank account, when you wake up hurt, tired, and anxious, what if you just said, maybe even sang, “Hallelujah”?

John Piper writes about sin, saying the best way to stop a bad habit is not by trying with all of your might to quit that habit but by replacing it with a positive action.

What if our action was Hallelujah?

We can sing it because we’ve all had hard times before. We’ve all suffered. We’ve all felt the hopeless, desperate, and alone.

And sure, yeah, the mountainside is hard, and your hands are cut; they’re black, bleeding, calloused; with one, you can’t even move all of your fingers. But, look, you’ve found a crevice, and you’ve rested, and you’re sitting on the edge, legs dangling, looking out at the most beautiful sunrises from the place you only got to from a hard climb, and, breathless, you see the most glorious view of a luscious life you could only find by living it.

Hallelujah. Praise God for the treacherous climb.

Hallelujah. I will be a better me for going through this.

Hallelujah. My life is a line, and this point looks low from right here, but later, I will see that this point, these tears, this moment has taken my line higher than it has ever been before.

Hallelujah. Praise God.


Will Carter is a writer from Roswell, Georgia; he suffered a brain injury in 2007. Now, he teaches composition courses at Kennesaw State University. He writes about his disability and encourages others to live life to the fullest.

My Guardian Angel

by Ashley Marek


Smoky incense fills my nostrils as the
priest saunters down the aisle passing our
pew we sit in Sunday after Sunday.
We go through the readings and sing the hymns
as a middle-aged woman stares at my
bare legs and I cannot remember what
comes after the Nicene Creed. He will come
again in glory to judge the living
and the dead. I am transformed into Eve,
a shameful woman. I look down at my
exposed bare legs, my wisdom is unleashed.
My pops squeezes my hand while reciting
verbatim the old prayer his dad taught him.
All I want is to hide behind him now,
like I did as a kid, my guardian angel.


Ashley Marek is a winner of the 2020 Manitou Fellowship sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute of the College of Saint Benedict. She is currently working on an essay collection about her experience with self-induced anxiety. She is obsessed with cats and has a large, orange tabby nicknamed Pat the Fat Cat.

The Other Side

by Martha Kahane


Down here on earth we
have grocery stores and love
affairs, garden plots and snowstorms,
toilets and telephones. Conversations
there don’t need words at all and colors
come alive, way beyond azur, crimson
and celadon.
And the love.
Even the maddest, deepest love down here is
cardboard by comparison.


Martha Kahane is a psychologist and an avid choral singer. She misses choral singing terribly since singing in groups has become lethal. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband of forty years.

Among the Bed of Flowers

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by Caroline Harris


She rose as a sproutling in the garden bed. Birthed from the dirt, and rain and sun—or so the believed. The baby’s screams rang inside the small house and a woman, now a mother, rushed from inside to stand before her newly sprouted flowers, surprised at the sight of a dirt-covered baby with a small bloom of white babies breath tucked behind her little ear.

The mother scooped the child up into her arms, cradling the baby girl’s soft head that smelled like violets. Screams diminished to whimpers and morphed into coos as the child snuggled into the mother’s arms. She figured someone must have dropped her off, given her up, for there was no logic behind the growth of a child in her garden bed. She’d planted those spring buds a few days ago, and there was nothing unusual about the seeds. So, she brought the child inside and named her Flora.

Day by day Flora grew and with her longer legs and her thicker hair there came more and more flowers. The puff of baby’s breath was still tucked behind her ear, but next came the roses, then the daisies, the lavender, the peonies, and violets. The petals cascaded down and around the child’s shoulders and grew atop her head like a crown.

The mother had tried to snip off the overgrowth, the new buds still forming, but Flora would scream in so loud an octave she would put the scissors away and primp the flowers decorating her daughter instead.

After a month, Flora had grown so tall she reached her mother’s waist. Her hair was a shade of auburn orange, long and twisted, and freckles dashed across her rosy cheeks. To no surprise, more blooms continued to grow, cascading down her child’s arms and legs. Twisting vines of ivy, bluebells scattered between Flora’s fingers. There were bleeding hearts wrapped up around her legs and poppies littering the locks of her hair.

The mother had grown unabashed at her daughter’s unique traits. The townspeople had more than enough to say on the matter, but in her own opinion, Flora was the most beautiful child there ever was. It was only ever her solemn thought at how fast Flora continued to grow. In just over two months, Flora was the same heights as the mother, her youthful cheeks and still rose red and her hair longer than ever. But the mother wondered how long this would last.

Spring slowly settled into summer. Days stretched long and the sunshine filled their days with laughter and love. Flora’s mother would braid her hair with the flowers that continued to grow. Flora would sing familiar melodies as they trudged up the flower beds in front of the house. The mother couldn’t believe that Flora had sprouted here only a few months ago.

But the happiness only lasted until the trees began to change color. Green leaves shifted to yellow, red, orange, and Flora began to feel awfully tired. Her mother no longer heard her tinkling laughter inside the house, and the woven flowers grown along Flora’s body ceased to grow. Instead, the lavender lost its smell, the roses began to wilt, and the ivy slowly uncurled from Flora’s legs.

Cool winds swept into the small house and the mother wept as she watched the color drain from Flora’s cheeks. There was so little time left and the mother didn’t know what to say. But Flora took her mother’s hand. Her skin was cold to the touch. She whispered to her mother to bury her in her birthplace and all will grow a new. Flora’s chest ceased to move. Her hand fell limp, and the mother screamed at the loss of her daughter, taken from her too fast.

Days filled the mother’s aching heart and tears stained her cheeks as blush used to stain Flora’s. A cavity had formed in her heart for Flora was there one minute and gone the next. And Despite her sorrow, she had heard her daughter’s final wish.

The mother spent her morning digging. Dirt piled high, dead flowers pulled from the bed where Flora had been brought to her. The sun arched high in the blue sky only to fall hours later, and finally, the mother carried out her daughter, weightless in death. She rested her porcelain skin against the soft darkness of the dirt.

The flowers that once radiated with life now hung brown and crisp, petals drooping in colorless absence. The mother took one last look at her daughter, peaceful in rest, for that is what the mother wished for her. She primped Flora’s flowers in a way in which she knew she would like. Her daughter always giggled when her mother touched the blooms that had sprouted from her body.

The mother packed the garden bed, covering Flora from head to toe. She bent her head and said a few words only she would know and embrace the short memories she had had with the daughter she’d never expected.

With the loss of Flora, winter arrived in a full flesh of white powdered snow. It covered everything it touched with an added chill, and the mother began to gaze from her window, down at the covered flowerbed where her daughter laid. She wondered if she was cold, or lonely, or if she could feel anything at all. Flurried rained down in slanted lines for months on end. The mother began to free the flowerbed of snow after each night, for she didn’t want Flora to feel trapped or numb beneath the blanket of white.

There were moments, when time pushed towards the end of the snow, the end of the cold, when the greens of grass would peak up from dreariness. When the bushes and trees would begin to sprout small bits of hope from beneath the ground, as if this winter they were only sleeping. It was in those little moments of hope the mother found herself watering the bed where her daughter rested, for she was sure her daughter would return to her come springtime.


Caroline Harris is from Powell, Ohio, and is currently living in Chicago. She is working as a writing instructor and full-time graduate student in Fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago and is a lover of all things books and writing. She tends to get lost within the stacks and spends hours wandering the aisles of her local bookstore. She has been previously published in ioLiterary, Sondor Midwest, and The Helix Magazine.

Angels for a Spelunker

by Victoria Bastedo 


I just thought you might like to know that I’ve arrived. I’m a Spelunker. I should know better than this, but when eleven of us campers went to the Ape Caves, near Mount St. Helens in Washington State, I chose to go with the chirpy crowd of gung-ho’s, rather than with the cautious crowd of ‘I’d-rather-survive’ types. That sedate group had a nice and interesting tour where they learned things about lava caves and boy’s and girl’s clubs.

I had a journey that still replays itself when I lay down to sleep at night. I remember it well as we waved ‘bye, bye,’ to the happy foursome going on the other tour. There was one sign that said; “Upper cave ½ mile”, as you entered the tube we were destined for, and another small sign that said; “Difficult Walking”.

A slender type of ‘let’s-jog-up-Mt-Si-for-a-refreshing-morning-jaunt-and-then-climb-an-ice-wall-with-a-pick-axe-later-this-afternoon,’ person wrote this sign. This super-fit, lean and spider-like spelunker conceded some might consider the terrain inside the ape cave to be ‘difficult walking’. Now that, as far as warning signs go, is just not nice. ‘Terrifying-Example-of-Many-Ways-to-Break-Your-Limbs-Deep-Within-a-Lava-Tube-Where-No-Rescue-Party-Could-Possibly-Reach-You,’ would be closer to the mark. But there I was.

Following my sister Alisa and our skinny friend Karyn, yet again. The fact that Karyn’s mom, a woman in her seventies, came with us too doesn’t change things. Karyn’s mother is a small woman. Friendly passerby, not to mention Karyn, could pick her up and pull her places.

I tried not to complain as I traversed and crawled on toe-tip and flat-hands like Gollum up and over, near the ceiling, or sliding off edges of boulders on my backside while my shorts rode up. Small comments like, “You know, Karyn, there’s a miniscule part of me that’s enjoying this,” was all I said.

After an hour and a half, I knew that ‘1/2 mile’ sign was a lie. (It was too. 1 ½ was what it was supposed to say. A cruel hand had blackened out the ‘1’ sometime past.)

When we reached the eight-foot wall I knew that here was an obstacle I couldn’t traverse, and not just because I was terrified. I really couldn’t. My arms aren’t strong enough to lift my weight. There was some kind of foothold five-feet-up, about the size of a pimple, but I knew that even if I got my foot up that high, I couldn’t haul myself up from it. Wiry, 115 lb. Karyn was at the top willing to pull me, but that was laughable.

My friendly comments changed. A nice man was stood there, offering to help me also. According to Karyn, here are a few of my verbal highlights. “I weigh more than that man!” “If I try to climb that wall, everyone will get a smell of my armpits!”

While the other members of my party figured out how to climb the sheer wall, I tucked away into a corner. I told God, “I can’t.” I told Him this in a very whiny tone. “You know I’d be willing to try something, Lord,” I said. “I’d take my courage in hand! But I really can’t! I don’t have the strength or the ability! You’ll have to get me out of this one! I don’t know what to do!”

After I prayed, I had the inner strength to walk up to the wall and try. And that’s when the miracle happened. Two new men appeared. They were lean, and spider-like. They had on sporty clothes of black spandex, and on their upper arms were bold, white crosses. They said they were guides. One of the men showed me where to put my feet and my hands and I vaulted and huffed and those three men and Karyn got me up that thing.

I said, first, “I hate this whole experience.” And then, feeling impolite and grateful, “But I love all you people.” The two guides disappeared in the other direction. Please note, this is a lava tube. When passerby go off in the opposite direction, you can’t encounter them again without notice.

After the 8-foot-wall, I was reassured by the “that’s-the-hardest-part” messages I kept hearing. We went on. But to my dismay we eventually reached a second, impossible hurdle. This involved launching up over your head while making your body into an L-shaped, bent straw. I was far too rounded to achieve anything like the shape of a pencil, which bent pliably in the center. I knew I couldn’t climb this either. I stood there and wondered when the end of this hell-of-a-cave would be arrived at. I tried not to whine. I thought for one moment of turning back and going down the eight-foot wall.

That determined me. No way was I returning to that joyride. But I still couldn’t get over this new hurdle. I reached up my hand and my prayers to the One who listens. And guess what? From out of nowhere appeared those same two men, the ones who said they were guides. How did they get there when they had gone the opposite direction before? In all of this trip we’d been taking in the dark of these tubes, we hadn’t run into a single other person twice. But all I knew was that these two guides came both times only at the exact second that I needed them. They showed me how to do maneuver the L-bend, and they pushed me up that one too. Once I clung, up high near the ceiling and looking down, those guides disappeared, again in the opposite direction.

I praised God a lot in those ape caves. (And, especially when we got out.) I was an overweight, out-of-shape Grandma, wandering into a bad dream of an experience like a child. So, I knew God had my back, and I believe those two guys, if I have to spell it out, were angels. It took us nearly four hours to go that 1 and a 1/2 miles of ‘Difficult Walking’. I think I slowed the others in my party down. But I’d accomplished, with some special help, a physical exercise I didn’t know I was still capable of. I had an adventure I wasn’t looking for. And, I knew I had arrived. No longer was I a shy unathletic person reading about super-fit rock-climbers but never being one myself. I’ve graduated. I’m an official Spelunker!

Victoria Bastedo is a grandparent and a Christian. She works at her local library shelving books. She lives in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys the incredible beauty that surrounds her. Living in a land of ‘gentle rivers’, makes her feel like a hobbit. (She says she has other similarities to hobbits, too.)

Winter Praise

by Juleigh Howard-Hobson


Praise winter skies for winter snows,
For clouds and cold,
For frost and freeze,
For summer’s close,
For autumn’s end,
For spring to come
Revowed.
Praise winter skies for winter snows,
For clouds and storms
For hail that falls
For ground that holds
The ice that will
Melt into spring’s
Green rows.
Praise winter skies for winter snows,
For clouds and cold,
For frost and freeze,
For summers close.


Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Noir Nation, L’Éphémère, Able Muse, The Lyric, Weaving The Terrain (Dos Gatos), Poem Revised (Marion Street), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (Great Weather for Media), Lift Every Voice (Kissing Dynamite), and other venues. A Million Writers Award “Notable Story” writer, nominations include “Best of the Net”, The Pushcart Prize and The Rhysling Award. She lives off grid in the Pacific Northwest next to a huge woods filled with shadows and ghosts.