Spring 2025
Contents
Also available as an audio issue and by podcast
Editorial
Or Does It Explode? | Caroline Langston
Poetry
How you go on about the other woman | Linda Laderman
Atonia, Eve of St. Mark & Early Easter | Ryan Harper
The moor & Eating with the dead | Sue Proffitt
For What Do You Give Thanks? | Abigail Carroll
The Chapel Matron | Jan Wiezorek
Samsara Study & And Sanctify Us Also | Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo
peace (ii) | Jonathan Chan
Not Like Ordinary Horses | Alex Lee
The Valley of the Living | Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
Sunday at the SoCal winery | Elizabeth Hamilton
The Artist to Her Daughter | Judith Sornberger
Sunday Prayers & Intinction | Wayne R Bornholdt
Uncle Julius Gifts Me with Awe | Fran Markover
Uncertain Opposites | Maryella Desak Sirmon
The Pause | Christopher Honey
Fiction
Beulah Land | Corey Flintoff
Nonfiction
How to Buy a Rainbow | Alice Wyman
Water | Joyce H. Munro
The Sacrament of Silence | Layne Matthews Boles
Visual Arts
Three Days and Three Nights | Douglas Porter
God Is That You? | Tonia Martin
Reviews
When Silence Roars
A Review of Aflame by Pico Iyer
Cheryl Sadowski
“we sing into the shadows of too much sorrow”
A Review of Waiting for the Mercy Ship by Lois Roma-Deeley
Brandon James O’Neil
Contemplative Practices
The Art of Contemplative Photography | Jacqueline Wallen
Cover Art: From Three Days and Three Nights by Douglas Porter
Eating with the dead
by Sue Proffitt
We set places for them at the table—
white bowls, wicker mats , wine glasses
alternate living dead living dead—
take our seats without speaking,
The Chapel Matron
by Jan Wiezorek
Those flying over vistas hold onto whatever
wings they have—like a Reflection Chapel,
where I follow airport’s arrow down a hall.
The Valley of the Living
by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
Like a man tethered to the edge of a cliff,
I stumbled into the ragged end of a mountain,
where there were no roses and no daisies;
the wind was whipping at my back,
Beulah Land
by Corey Flintoff
The radio said it was going to be another beautiful day in Spartanburg County. Beulah Riley looked out her kitchen window and agreed that it was so.
When Silence Roars
A Review of Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer (Riverhead Books, 2025)
by Cheryl Sadowski
Pico Iyer’s memoir, Aflame: Learning from Silence, recounts the author’s experience residing at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a small Benedictine monastery located high above the sea in Big Sur, California… From this slim and unassuming book comes a journey of gradated insights and revelations attained through weeks spent in silence and relative isolation amid rugged cliffs, coastal redwoods, and the occasional mountain lion.
“we sing into the shadows of too much sorrow”
A Review of Waiting for the Mercy Shipby Lois Roma-Deeley (Broadstone Books, 2025)
by Brandon James O’Neil
Lois Roma-Deeley’s Waiting for the Mercy Ship documents the poet’s own purgatorial journey, which like Dante’s, coincides with personal loss and is urged forward by great love.
The Art of Contemplative Photography
by Jacqueline Wallen
In the quiet moments of everyday life, there exists an invitation to see the world more deeply—to move beyond the surface and engage with the essence of what is before us. Contemplative photography is a practice that invites us to do just that.