I hadn’t read Boethius or Petrarch in 1967. If I had, I may not have been so taken, when one late spring afternoon, I read Wendell Berry’s two-sentence poem “To Think of the Life of a Man.” I read it standing alongside the shelf of literary journals in the Johns Hopkins bookstore. I had come to be there by a circuitous route. I had dropped out of college, been rejected by the draft, returned to college, married and with my wife risked all we had to attend the Hopkins Writing Seminars on the chance that I might become a poet and novelist. Each morning my wife went to her job and I went to my desk. Afternoons I went to the library or the bookstore where I read but rarely bought. In nearby Washington, the first protests against the Vietnam … Read More »

The now disbanded songwriting duo Harrod & Funck played in a now defunct coffee shop called The One Way Café in Morgantown, West Virginia.

These days I would avoid an establishment called the One Way Café, preferring the Everyway Café or Leave My Theology Out of It And Just Make Me Some Damn Coffee Café.

I’d heard of Harrod & Funck from my friend Jessie, who’d heard about them from her sister, Michaelanne. Jessie also turned me on to Radiohead. She got me to read The Brothers K and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Jessie and I lived with two other girls in an old, carved-up house on Willey Street. Yellow-orange carpet covered the wall by the stairs, as though it had crossed the floor with such gusto that it just couldn’t stop.

It was 1997, the year that Joshua Harris published his crazy popular … Read More »

In my previous post I talked about the importance of silent waiting. While I hold that adding regular intervals of waiting worship to one’s religious life is optimal, I realize not everyone will go that route. So in terms of practical application I’d like to focus on a method that combines verbal queries with intervals of expectant silence.  One such method is Rex Ambler’s Experiments in the Light, which has proved a powerful method for many people. As it is most commonly practiced, an individual—alone or in a group—reads the following prompts aloud with five to six minutes of silence between each prompt.

1. Relax body and mind. Make yourself comfortable….Be relaxed, but alert. Let yourself become wholly receptive.

2. In this receptive state of mind, let the real concerns of your life emerge. Ask yourself, ‘What is really going on in … Read More »

I became a perfectionist sometime in middle school.  This was when I started to read the Bible on my own, and discovered the verse “Whatsoever you do, do it wholeheartedly unto The Lord.” Until then, I only tried when I felt like it; when the task seemed fun or interesting.  After reading this verse, however, I felt compelled to vacuum under every piece of furniture, be sure every dish I washed was spotless, and never say anything mean to anyone.  I became a much better worker, but work also became weighty.  For one thing, vacuuming thoroughly took a lot more time and effort, and for another, it mattered.  If I didn’t do well, I was failing God.  I didn’t believe God would reject me if I didn’t do things perfectly, but I believed He’d be disappointed, which would be almost … Read More »

{Tania Runyan reflects on the problems of gossip}

Diane is a stay-at-home mom. Every afternoon, her toddler naps for two hours, during which time Diane texts the twenty-something server she met at Red Lobster:

How r u

Same old

Get em nice & steamy for me

U know i will

;)

One day, he stops by on break, just to say hello in person. She puts Chloe in her crib, turns on the white noise machine in the nursery, and unfastens the top two buttons on her blouse as she heads downstairs.

Did you feel your pulse quicken? What did you want to happen next? For Diane to come to her senses and kick the punk to the curb?

Sin is fun. We like to enter into its colorful mysteries, especially when someone else is doing it.

Thomas à Kempis writes in Book 1, Chapter 4, in The Imitation of … Read More »

Whenever I find myself in any kind of slump — whether it be in writing, exercising, or praying — I try to resist my first natural inclination toward giving up entirely.  One of the best remedies I’ve found to combat my defeatist tendencies has been to gain a new perspective, and I suppose that’s what I was searching for when I found myself signing up for meditation classes at the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center a couple months ago.   I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I know I couldn’t have been the only one in my class who had scenes from Eat, Pray, Love flash to mind.  In search of a renewed perspective and needing to find balance amidst demands from work and school, I thought that this might bring a sense of serenity and calm to my … Read More »

I’m a young writer in my first year of college at Asbury University. As with most college level courses, the classes I’m taking are very writing intensive. Between my regular classes, my creative writing fiction class, writing for antler, and occasionally writing for my college newspaper, I’m writing a story, sketch, article, or essay of 500 words or more pretty much every other day.

I love to write—I’m absolutely passionate about it. But because I have so many prescribed and predetermined pieces, I often forget the real reason that I should write: to glorify God.

Usually I write with the following goals in mind: to get the assignment completed as quickly as possible, to earn a good grade, or to intrigue or help others. These are not necessarily ignoble ambitions—they have their time and place. However, this should not be the outcome … Read More »

{in this post, blogger jeremy statton reflects on how writing has changed his life.}

The last time I was given a writing assignment was my freshman year in college for a history class. And that moment almost became the last time I expressed myself through the written word.

I was headed to medical school, a life dedicated to science. My goal was to solve the world’s problems through surgeries and medicines. To me writing was a nuisance. An undesired chore.

Fourteen years later, however, I finally put pen to paper again, and it changed my life.

The Plan

As a senior in high school I decided to become an orthopedic surgeon. The course of my life was set. College. Medical school. Marriage crammed into the empty space somewhere. Maybe kids. Then Residency.

My plan was like the life of science I pursued. Precise. Without error.

For the … Read More »

“Be still and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

Multi-tasker. If I had to pick one catch phrase for the average 21st century citizen, that would be it. I read an article online that described how world-renowned concert violinist Joshua Bell went incognito and gave an impromptu concert in a Washington, D.C. metro station. He was dressed as a man down on his luck, and he had his violin case opened and set on the floor in front of him. (Ironically, tickets to his concerts apparently average $100!) The sad part of the social experiment was that people hardly took note of him, due to the environment. The metro station was simply a place they were passing through, so the thought of focusing long enough to hear a single song was not on the commuters’ … Read More »

In an earlier essay, featured here on Antler, I attempted to establish the legitimacy and shape of a modern poetic-prophetic ministry. One of the claims of that piece was that a prophet does not choose their call to speak, but are themselves chosen by the Other. True as that may be it doesn’t follow that individuals can’t makes themselves more open to just such a call—or to any other form of Spirit-led service for that matter—and prepare themselves to carry it out. One of the most fundamental of these methods is the use of silent waiting.

While periods of silence may have some physiological and emotional benefits in and of themselves that isn’t our concern here. We are interested in silence as a tool—a method by which an individual may wait on the Lord, and through which the Word may come … Read More »