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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we want to thank God for giving us life and blessing us with minds to create.
A special thanks to Professor La Motte, our fearless leader, for her guidance and unwavering support.
To our Synecdoche Editorial Team, thank you for all your hard work.
Thank you to the brilliant English Department professors, for their endless inspiration, and to Hilary Flook, for making things easier.
To our families and friends, we thank you for shaping us into who we are.
Thank you to Amber Bozman, our Editor-in-Chief, for keeping us in line, and Devinn Abts, our Production Editor, for assembling the journal.
And finally, to the Vanguard community, thank you for entrusting us with your work. This journal would not have been possible without you.
Letter from the Editor
synecdoche (noun): a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole
Stories exist everywhere, all around us, all of the time.
Sometimes, they can be found in unexpected places: in the elderly woman at the bus stop, carrying flowers in her tattered grocery bag, in the window display of a shop downtown, in the color scheme of a Trader Joe’s aisle.
Most of the time though, stories are in plain sight: the latest movie to shock critics and audiences alike, the newest book on the shelf in the local bookstore, from the mouth of a parent or grandparent, told across the table of a bustling coffee shop.
Stories are omnipresent, formative in shaping our lives, but not everyone chooses to tap into their frequency, to take what they have seen in the world around them and make it their own. The artists published in this journal do exactly that: take ownership of their stories.
It would be remiss to say that this journal tells every story one could possibly imagine. Frankly, that is impossible. Synecdoche, as an idea, exists to showcase the work and stories of the community at Vanguard University, to elevate students, faculty, staff, and alumni from this one specific demographic. Everyone in this journal has at least one thing in common: Vanguard.
But the most beautiful thing about art is its universality. In a soft, gentle voice, art takes our hand and says to us, “You are not alone.” It gives us comfort in our darkest times, another expression of our Father God’s love. The ability to create is one of the greatest blessings ever given to humanity. God could have easily hoarded it for himself, but He didn’t. He knew humans could use it to better their own lives, as well as the lives of those around them. We must never forget that our talents did not come from us; we are all a credit to our Maker.
Synecdoche is our way of blessing the Vanguard community. Like its namesake, this journal serves as a representation of the university and its students. It is my belief, though, that art should never be contained. It demands to be shared with everyone who could possibly see it. So, not only is it a synecdoche of Vanguard, but it is a synecdoche for humanity, for its highs, lows, and everything in between. It represents the pain and triumph of living, as well as the beauty all around us. Finally, it represents the stories of and in our lives, the ones we can see if we only dare to look.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Austrian Alps, View from the Valley
Elisha Ilinčev
Spirit of the Woods
Amanda Fagan
Preface: This is a conversation poem, a style of poem invented by one of the fathers of Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The goal of a conversation poem is to address a close relation informally, reflect, and tie in key themes of Romanticism such as nature, personal feeling, and the spiritual in iambic pentameter.
It seems we traversed the same path in life
Almost within your reach, a year behind I stood on mountains, grieved beneath pine trees You grieved a year before on the same peak Your path was rugged, dangerous terrain I heard the tales of you, knew not your name My climb back down to earth was a descent But at the bends, I found you, heaven sent Not ominous and dark like they had said To think, the years I believed tales of dread You paved the roads, took on the arrow shafts I wove you into my lyrical drafts You were a figure I had yet to meet I knew you as the sparrow knows deep sea But then I saw you, spirit of the woods Turns out you were a human, full of good
Fragrant Prayers
Olivia Gonzalez with Excerpts by Laura Gonzalez
“Dear Jesus, plain and simply—I love you.”
My mom prays.
If you know Laura, you know the secret whisper of prayer over your life—a sweet fragrance or a smoldering, smoky fume. As her daughter, I feel her prayers lifted unto our sweet Lord like morning mist hovering over an icy, cold lake. Each silent thought—the flutter of her eyelashes as they close in a moment. But what is prayer? Motivational, affirming statements spoken into the ethos? A sappy list of pitiful requests? A heated, thrashy vent session? Prayer can often feel like these things. In Philippians 4:67, Paul shares with us that we are to pray in every circumstance, and as a result, an undeniable, tangible peace will guard our mind and heart in Jesus Christ. Prayer is not transactional in nature; despite the blessings it may yield, it is conversational and deeply intimate. 1 John 5:14-15 claims that God hears our prayers, every word, every moan, or cry. His close ear should bring confidence. Prayer is quintessential to the health of the Christian. James 5:16 states, "The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is
working."
My mom prays.
These are the great lessons she has taught me. “Father, you are beautiful! You are such a faithful, tender, loving God. I pray Olivia would never be afraid to call on you. May Olivia also see you as the most beautiful Rabbi—as the disciples asked, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ They saw you, Jesus, praying to the Father. Lord, we ask the same—teach us to pray.”
A Christian may pray out loud in a congregational setting, intercede on behalf of a downcast heart, or pray for miraculous healing over physical or emotional brokenness. But a healthy prayer life springs forth from a freshly gardened, frequently visited, secret place. The Psalms, authored mainly by King David and other poetic worshippers, describe the secret place. It is not a physical location but a metaphorical closeness with God in prayer and worship. Psalm 91:1 says, "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." The secret place belongs to the Lord, and we are to enter into it with gladness and vulnerability. Nothing hides from God, especially in prayer. The vulnerable nature of the secret place
shouldn't deter us because the God who hears and listens is good and worthy to be praised. Our heart's barest concealments are safe with the Lord. The secret place protects the Christian. Psalm 27:5 expresses, "For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock." In Matthew 6:6, Jesus, the chief example of prayer and devotion, encourages Christians to pray this way: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." In this scripture, Jesus gives the believer a practical example of how to pray in the secret place. Close your bedroom door, quiet your heart, and take comfort in the privilege of personal conversation. In this verse, Jesus says to pray to your Father. Some earthly fathers may have failed, but our Father in Heaven died for your sake—for your love and adoration. Jesus prayed to the Father in the secret place. In Matthew 26:36, hours before His imminent death, Jesus retreated to a lush garden to be with His Abba, "Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, 'Sit here, while I go over there and pray’.”
The sizzle of eggs on the stove; quiet chirps of finches outside a glass-planed window. You sit so quiet and sweet with coffee at your fingertips. It doesn't matter how your hair sits
messily across your face or the recently bruised purple skin at your knee; your Father knows and cares not for your morning attire. Talk with Him there. Talk with your Father in the secret place.
“Lord, please allow your daughter Olivia to be a fervent, ardent worshipper—holding back nothing… but giving you everything. May she yield to you and worship you with her mind; may she worship you in spirit and through the Word too → singing Psalms of thanksgiving back to you!”
But what should we pray? For healing? For blessings? For the next paycheck to cover rent? What about our rambly feelings? Maybe our teary insecurities? How about gratitude and praise? Where does it all fit? We should pray for all of these things because God wants all of who you are: your worries, your fears, your future, and your ardent praise like oil at His feet. But, crowned the highest and most of all, we should pray in agreement with God's character and will. But how can we pray God's will if we can't shake a crystal ball and know if we'll survive tomorrow? How do we do this? By praying the scriptures back to the Author. In Acts 4:24-26, the early Church banded together by praying a stanza in Psalm 2, back to God. In Psalm 2, the psalmist sings about
the Lord protecting His anointed people, laughing at their foes. Praying scripture affirms what the Lord decrees about any given situation, temperament, or anxiety. I often wish I could hug my Abba Father and sigh in the safety of His arms. His words are the closest I can get to physical intimacy with Him. Praying scripture requires knowledge obtained by reading and absorbing His words in the Bible. Your voice is hoarse and deathly quiet. Only whispers and solemn cries escape your parched mouth. Your knees are bent, and your arms are raised at your sides in desperation. All you can offer is this prayer, "Abba Father, I'm bitter and tired and terrified. All I can do is cast my anxiety onto you because you care for me. All I can do is take every thought captive at your feet because you know my heart and love my soul. I feel like giving up; it's all too much to bear. But your plans for me are good and not evil. My soul thirsts for you, living God, who guides my steps. You feel so far, but I know you're close to the brokenhearted. My brokenness feels like it cannot be overcome, but you've overcome the grave. Thank you for the cross, for despising the shame, becoming a curse, and taking on my sin. You have lifted my head and interceded in my prayers through my moans and cries. God, I know you'll bring me through this because you will never forsake me. Father, I
praise you forever because you have done it. Amen." You take a breath and thank Him again because the Holy Spirit interceded, completely adjusting the trajectory of your prayer.
Without scripture, your prayer was simply, “Abba Father, I'm bitter and tired and terrified. I feel like giving up; it's all too much to bear. You feel so far... my brokenness feels like it cannot be overcome. Amen." Prayers like these are still honest, productive, and valid, but allow the Holy Spirit to bring scriptures to your mind as you pray. The Bible is the sweetest gift of intimacy. Use it.
“Dear Father, please forgive me for not being there for Olivia as much as I desired. My heart is always watching her, looking out for her best, even when my eyes, mind, or hands are tending to Isaac. Please, Lord, help Olivia understand the love of CHRIST, which surpasses any and all earthly loves. In Jesus name, Amen!”
Prayer heals. It's hard to believe that uttered words can heal a tattered soul, but they can. Prayer is not so much about informing God of your everyday troubles as it is healing for the supplicant. God does not need your prayers; He wants them because He knows a connection with the Creator can heal what seems hopeless. It
didn't used to be so simple—reconciliation with God. In Jewish tradition, a priest would slaughter a young, clean animal on your behalf, atoning for your sins on the sacred ground of the temple. A thick veil separated the layers of the temple as a priest would descend towards the back, each room holier and holier, until you reached the holy of holies. This room, sheathed by a veil, was said to have housed God's spirit Himself in the Ark of the Covenant and could only be entered by the chief priest. Other lowly priests would tie a rope to the chief priest's waist because, oftentimes, the man would drop dead in the presence of Yahweh. When Jesus died on the cross, that very veil tore in two—from top to bottom, like a piece of paper. There needn't be an intimidatory anymore. No more animal sacrifices on our behalf, no more priestly prayers on our behalf either. On the cross, Jesus became enough—He became what we were unworthy to accomplish. And because of His sacrifice, we have the privilege to enter into a holy communion that, in its purest form, instantly extinguished the holiest men. And that very communion, that relationship with Jesus Christ, heals. Your absent-minded prayers, your weepy prayers, your written prayers, and your violent, wrathful prayers bring you closer and closer to the Father's heart, like two mathematical lines that will one day meet in eternity.
“Our Father, all of heaven roars your Name. The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it, and they are safe. There is no other name that has the power to save. Jesus, you are Immanuel. Yeshua-Jesus, we love you. My heartfelt prayer is that Olivia would wholeheartedly and unreservedly TRUST in your Name ALWAYS! Not just on Sundays but every single day—on the mundane days, on the fantastic days. Jesus, you are sufficient. Jesus, keep Olivia close to you, and may she magnify your HOLY name and shout it from the rooftops.”
water, flour, and yeast create the dough mixed and added as needed with much care love and nurturing are vital to grow wrapped in a swaddle tucked with a prayer
pushed, pulled, stretched, and folded with tender touch left to rest and swell under watchful eye moving and growing leaving cradle’s clutch a firm, but soft hand teaches when to cry
cuts made on purpose, required to bloom placed under pressure, maturing in strength able to journey, far off from the womb raised up in courage, but kept at arms’ length
shared with the hungry, put out in purpose made to be broken, this was Your service
Six Months Gone
Grace Florey
Coordinates: 48.1806° N, 122.1251° W
It’s quiet. Not just in the world outside, but within me. Stepping out of the airport, the cool, clean Pacific Northwest breeze greets me. Gone is the clinging humidity of the past six months. I load my bags into the back of my parents’ minivan. My sister and I assume our familiar seats, unchanged over the past decade, as we embark on our long drive home. We drive in silence, mostly. I gaze out the window as we wind past Everett, then Marysville. The gray clouds hang low, almost protectively, as if the sky itself is cushioning the shock of reentry. The signs for Lake Stevens blur past: Wendy’s, Safeway, the little coffee stands on every corner. Everything looks the same. Yet everything has changed. Especially me.
It’s quiet. Everything is green and still. We pass the road signs I used to see every day, drawing closer to home. The air carries the scent of fresh-cut grass and gasoline, with a faint hint of distant barbecue—an Arlington summer encapsulated in a single breath. We navigate the roundabouts, cross the Stillaguamish
River, its slow-moving waters mirroring the unhurried pace of this place. This is home. And yet, I feel like an alien arriving on Earth. As we continue along Jordan Road, passing farms and houses nestled among the evergreen trees, the silence stretches. I reflect on how I left.
January 2023. Gray skies. Luggage packed with sunscreen, brand-new swimsuits, and a fresh notebook. I remember the tearful goodbyes with friends, the heartache of leaving my mom and sister for so long. I had no idea how different I’d feel six months later. First came Hawaii, the sundrenched days on the Big Island, the air thick with humidity. I quickly adapted to the rhythm of island life, watching the sun melt into the Pacific like gold poured from heaven. I met people from all over the world, learning to breathe deeper, laugh easier, and forge lifelong friendships. Then came Thailand. Thailand was color. Motion. Chaos. Tuk-tuks weaving through traffic like dancers. The aroma of street food, temples steeped in history, and conversation with strangers that lasted for hours. I lived deeply, richly, uncovering parts of myself I hadn’t yet discovered. And now, I return to stillness.
I finally see the sign for Russian Road, and shortly after, there it is: 134th St. We turn left, driving half a mile down the
partially paved, then gravel road until we pull into our driveway. Back in Arlington, everything waits in place. The goats across the road still bleat at sunrise. The same potholes in the road. The world didn’t pause because I left. And my friends, the ones I used to share everything with? They’re still here. Still working, still frequenting the same coffee shop. Still making weekend plans, but seemingly without purpose or direction. I try to share my stories–Bangkok’s night markets, walking the streets of the Red Light District, the kindness of the Thai people, but they only seem to land with a thud. I’m met with half-hearted smiles and “Wow, that’s cool.” It’s as if the weight of my words didn’t make it with me through customs. Did they not board the plane? I carry my words, their meaning, and all these memories alone.
These memories and moments hold too many emotions. I sit in my old room with the same worn carpet, the chalkboard wall adorned with notes from my friends, written before I left. But I’m not the same. I write a poem to try to express how I feel in the weeks following my return: It’s quiet.
The silence and I, we form an alliance. It’s quiet.
We drive in the car.
I have nothing to say.
These words cling to me now as I take the backroads— Jordan Road, winding like a memory. The trees lean over the road as if eavesdropping, moss dangling like sleepy curtains. I know these turns better than I know myself. I count them, thinking: the sharp ones past the pasture, the long stretch where the deer always cross, the dip where the fog collects thick in the mornings. I come to the one-lane bridge, the one that rattles just slightly as you drive over it. As a kid, I used to imagine it might collapse as we crossed. Now it just feels narrow, like everything here. Narrow lanes, narrow thinking. Narrow chances to say what I really feel. I drive through town. Moe’s Coffee still stands on the corner, its old sign hanging. I used to meet friends there after church or before youth group. That place carries the warmth of so many long talks over hot drinks. But when I walk in now, the barista greets me like a stranger. Maybe I am one. Legion Park stretches out; I remember walking those paths in conversation with friends, seeking out strangers to share the gospel with. I recall buying water for a homeless man near the benches. His name escapes me now, but I remember praying with him, feeling how close God was in that moment.
I walk a few blocks down to the ice cream shop, passing antique stores run by cranky old proprietors, the co-op supply store where we bought feed and hay, Lifeway Church in the old theater where we held youth group events. At the end of town, the ice cream shop awaits. The flavors are written out on a chalkboard. Kids run around outside. The smell of waffle cones transports me back to rainy afternoons after church when my friends and I sat inside, laughing. I don’t understand how I changed so much, yet everything around me seems to have remained the same. Living in unincorporated Arlington adds another layer to this feeling. Our community is one city, yet we’re not officially a part of the city–neither fully urban nor entirely rural. This area has always been a tapestry of independent spirits, those who preferred the outskirts to the structured grid of city life.
Historically, Arlington began as two separate towns: Arlington and Haller City, divided by the Stillaguamish River. They merged in 1903, but the echoes of the division linger, much like my own divide in growing up between the incorporated city and its unincorporated surroundings. The unincorporated areas have their own rhythm, shaped by the land and its history. The Stillguamish River, once a vital artery for the Coast Salish people, continues to be a lifeblood for the community. The river’s forks
were traditional camping grounds, a place of convergence and passage. Now, it’s a backdrop to my drives, a constant yet everchanging presence.
Reflecting on this, I realize that my sense of alienation upon returning isn’t just about my personal growth versus the town’s seeming stasis. It’s about the layers of history, the merging of past and present, the incorporated and unincorporated. My journey mirrors this pace more than I thought. I’ve been stitched together by vastly different places. Hawaii’s softness, Thailand’s chaos, and yet I’ve returned to this quiet patch of forest and field, unincorporated, unpolished, and somehow unchanged. But maybe that’s where the resonance is. Maybe my heart feels most like this land now: somewhat off-grid, in-between, a little wild.
Living in unincorporated Arlington means there’s no sidewalk outside my house. No city streetlights. Just gravel crackling under tires, frogs singing in the ditches, and the occasional neighbor riding a horse down the shoulder of the road like it’s perfectly normal. It’s the kind of place where people leave gates open, dogs roam free, and where you can’t always get a cell signal, but you can see the stars clearly in the night sky. There’s a kind of raw, unfiltered honesty to it. I think I’ve learned to appreciate that.
I walk out to my mom’s garden, her tomatoes and dahlias are flourishing in the raised beds. I loom up across our pasture to where Deer Mountain rises in the distance, steady and unmoved. It’s not a particularly grand peak compared to others in the Cascades, but it watched over our house like a quiet guardian. Deer Mountain is different in every season. In spring, it’s dusted in green like fresh velvet. Summer brings a deep richness to it, the evergreens glowing under long days of light. In fall, fog curls around its middle like a belt of mist, and in winter, snow coats it like a blanket covering it from the cold. It’s always changing, yet always the same.
That mountain has seen every version of me—the barefoot farm kid that rode on the backs of the neighbor’s goats, the restless teenager, and now the young woman who just came back from halfway across the world. It didn’t move while I was gone. But it changed, just a little. And maybe that’s all any of us do. We remain rooted, but we shift. Grow. Turn slowly toward the sun, season by season. Something about Deer Mountain feels sacred. It hasn’t been anywhere, yet it carries the whole story of this place on its back. It doesn’t question its place in the world. It simply is. Steady. Quiet. Steady. Watching. And I realize, maybe I don’t have to choose between who I was and who I’ve become. Maybe all of
it belongs. Maybe the silence that met me wasn’t emptiness, but invitation. Sometimes I feel the weight of all those memories that no one here shared. Sometimes I wish I could fold up Bangkok’s colors and lay them across these backroads, or bring the sound of the ocean waves into the hush of our gravel driveway. But I can’t. So instead, I carry them quietly. Stories waiting to be told.
Jordan Johnston
Community
Homesickness’ Half-told Sonnet
Olivia Gonzalez
The winter-yielding bloom, her petals stretch Like milky pink and yellow swirls of tea
My father’s crease-ed chair, his pen, and etch
A sight my wilting heart just yearns to see I doze to sounds of wind in salty air
The ocean wets my eyes at silky dusk
My mother’s arms wrung tight, I long to wear And press my nose upon the flower’s musk
*The flower alluded to in Homesickness’ Half-told Sonnet is the variegated pink and white Camelia. My dad raises them in our backyard. The barren trees come alive not in spring, but in winter.*
A Psalm and a Cross: An Examination of Jesus’ Last Words
Zachary Hall
Jesus cried out in anguish as he hung dying on his cross. His lament echoed the first verse of Psalm 22 as he called out to his Father, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” Matthew translated his cry into Greek for the readers of his Gospel, which reads: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46b ESV). Some Christian apologists have suggested that Jesus was intentionally quoting this verse to bring its context into the minds of his audience because Psalm 22 seems to closely depict the experience of Roman crucifixion.1 This claim brings the nature of Psalm 22 into question. If their apologetic argument is correct, then Jesus has fundamentally changed the nature of the psalm so that its primary meaning is to point to his suffering and death. Rather, if it was Matthew who was looking to the psalm to understand the Passion, then it will be possible to see how the content of the psalm inspired the evangelist’s representation of Jesus’s crucifixion. Being a religious Jew, Jesus was richly familiar with the Hebrew Bible and its content. In the narrative context of the passage, it is clear that Jesus expressed his suffering in the most vivid language he could. Therefore, offering a lament to God in the midst of
immense suffering with the words of a psalm should come as no surprise. Later on, Matthew likely took inspiration from the content of the psalm in his presentation of the Passion narrative because of the echoes he saw in the events he witnessed, but it is unlikely that the psalm itself spoke prophetically about the cross. The content of Matthew’s description of the Passion is rich with these connections, pointing to Old Testament text’s inspiration of the evangelist.
Matthew 27:46b and the Passion Narrative
Matthew’s account of the Passion bears some features that influence the interpretive method brought to this text. Primarily, Matthew simply presented the events that took place as a matter of fact. Matthew 27 is written as part of a historical narrative with a series of events listed in roughly chronological order.2 After the temple authorities condemned Jesus and Peter denied him, the Sanhedrin handed Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified
1 Mike Winger, Really Specific Prophecy Jesus Fulfilled on the Cross! Amazing! (10 September 2019), YouTube, 10 September 2019, 6:29, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eq8oaOix3rs.
2 Each event in the chain has a different subject. Throughout the chapter, the description of each event begins with a logical connective conjunction (“καὶ,” “δὲ ,” or “τότε”). Transitional conjunctions, typically translated “now” or “then,” indicate a change in topic of discussion and temporal conjunctions identify the time of the action. Both kinds of conjunctions were common throughout Greek narrative and history and were used by authors in the Hellenistic period for these purposes. They are used abundantly in the GNT in the same ways, as discussed in Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 666-677.
(Matthew 26:57-27:2). Upon the realization of his sin, Judas hung himself in the potter’s field to fulfill Zechariah’s prophecy (Matthew 27:3-10).3 Jesus stood before Pilate who became convinced of his innocence after questioning Jesus, but the crowds demanded that Jesus be crucified in spite of Pilate’s belief in His innocence (Matthew 27:11-26). Once Jesus was handed over to the Roman guard by Pilate, the soldiers scourged and reviled Jesus, took him to Golgotha, and crucified him (Matthew 27:27-37).
The Passion closes the last narrative section of Matthew’s Gospel, giving an eyewitness depiction of the brutal death of an innocent man.4
The author of the Gospel of Matthew gave a vivid account of what he saw and heard while he watched Jesus suffer and die on his cross. Matthew intentionally made Old Testament allusions in the narrative that point to his theological understanding. Immediately before his death, Jesus was mocked by nearly everyone who saw him hanging there, following a pattern that was
3 Though Matthew 27:9a cites Jeremiah, the quotation in verses 9b-10 seems more similar to Zechariah 11:13. While their conclusions seem speculative scholars debate whether Matthew also had a text such as Jeremiah 19:1-13 in mind as he wrote this etiology based on Judas’s suicide, as in Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (NAC 22; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 408-409. The motif of “innocent blood” is present in Jeremiah and there is some connection between Matthew 27 and the Jere miah-authored Lamentations, but the prophecy is almost certainly from Zechariah 11 and the larger context of the prophecy there, as Martin C. Spadaro, Reading (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 666677. Matthew as the Climactic Fulfillment of the Hebrew Story (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 266-271.
4 Blomberg, Matthew, 381-382.
experienced by many righteous men who suffered throughout the Hebrew Bible (Matthew 27:39-44).
5 This passage’s expression of the crowd’s hatred towards Jesus shows that he did not only suffer physically as he died. Jesus was being taunted by his opponents, which casts a greater sense of hopelessness over this scene.6 No one cared about an innocent man’s execution.7 The expectation was that Jesus would rescue himself if he truly was who he claimed to be, but he did not take it upon himself to violate his Father’s will (Matthew 27:40).
Just before Jesus died, there was a “nature miracle” as darkness covered “over all the land” (Matthew 27:45).8 Some interpret the darkness as a sign of God’s displeasure and judgment as his Son died.9 However, Matthew was primarily interested in the theological implications of a possible allusion to Amos 8:9-10. God promised to make the sun go dark at mid-day as a sign that a feast of celebration had become a day of mourning for one’s only son, which is certainly the fate of the Son of God.10
5 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21-28, trans. James E. Crouch, ed. Helmut Koester (Hermeneia 25c; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 537.
6 Luz, Matthew 21-28, 539-540.
7 John 19:25-27 says that John the Apostle, Mary the mother of Jesus, and two other Marys were within speaking distance of Jesus as he died. However, Matthew 27:55-56 shows that Mary was among a group of women who tended to Jesus’s body in preparation for his burial, but does not say that she was nearby as he was dying. 8 Blomberg, Matthew, 418-419.
9 John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 1203.
10 D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Matthew-Mark (REBC 9; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 646.
This aligns with how Jesus understood his own experience of his crucifixion according to Matthew. As Jesus will cry out, he is in a state of “God-forsakenness” just as the psalmist was when he wrote the prayer recorded in Psalm 22.11 But the outcome of that is incredible. Jesus, being the Son of God, cried out even while abandoned by his Father so that no child of God would ever have to be abandoned by their Father again.12
As he died, Jesus lamented with the words of a psalmist’s prayer. The dramatic climax of the Passion narrative is not explained, but its weight is obvious with the broader context in view. Matthew did not qualify this statement in the narrative, merely including it as part of the dialogue leading to Jesus’s final shout as he died (Matthew 27:45-50). It cannot be determined from the immediate context alone why Jesus would say what he did. However, Matthew’s Jesus was obviously and completely devoted to the Hebrew Bible throughout his life. Matthew showed throughout his Gospel that Jesus’s life was filled with allusions to the stories and teachings of the Hebrew Bible.13 Jesus said plainly that he did not intend to abolish the scriptures and their
11 Nolland, Matthew, 1207.
12 Carson, Matthew, 648.
13 Richard B. Hays, “The Gospel of Matthew: Reconfigured Torah,” HTS Theological Studies 61 (2005): 169.
teachings, but to show that both the Law and the Prophets had found their full meaning in the gospel of the Kingdom (Matthew 5:17-20). Chrysostom considered Jesus’s use of the psalm as a sign of Jesus’s character, seeing his final lament as an example of his commitment to honor his Father, even in a moment of deep despair and abandonment.14 On this basis, Geerhardus Vos suggested that Jesus consciously quoted the prayer for God’s help because of his strict devotion to the Hebrew Bible as God’s word.15 Jesus was deeply familiar with the Hebrew Bible, so he was certainly capable of bringing to mind this kind of prayer in a moment where it was relevant. In any case, Jesus likely thought of this particular psalm because he felt truly separated from his deep intimacy with his Father that characterized his life.16 Jesus simply cried out his experience in the way that the Psalter encourages one to do so. In his experience of complete desperation, Jesus used the words of the psalmist who felt his own distance from God because Jesus was uniquely aware that he had in fact been abandoned by his Father.17
Immediately after Jesus’s death, Matthew included a series of dramatic “proto-eschatological” events that anticipated the coming
14 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 88 (NPNF1 10:521).
15 Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 384.
16 Carson, Matthew, 647.
17 Carson, Matthew, 647.
18 Nolland, Matthew, 1203
end of human history and the realization of God’s judgment.18 The curtain hiding the most holy place in the temple is torn from top to bottom, there is a great earthquake, and “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Matthew 27:51-52). These events are Old Testament images of how God’s presence broke out of his dwelling place in the middle of the temple complex into the world at large, with the earth trembling in metaphorical fear as God’s approaches in judgment.19
Psalm 22: Trusting YHWH in the Midst of Suffering
The Book of Psalms has always been a central part of the life and worship of God’s people. The Psalter contains the full range of human experience within it, from the hymns of high praise where the psalmist shouts for joy before God who has displayed how great he is, to the prayers from the psalmist’s depths of suffering where he cries out for help to the God who he trusts and yet cannot find.20 The Psalms are unique in their focus on calling out to YHWH for mercy and vindication rather than merely appeasing his anger as other cultic songs in the ancient
19 Nolland, Matthew, 1213.
20 Nancy deClaisse-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms (NICOT 15; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 1.
21 Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 491-492.
Near East sought to do.21 The Book of Psalms was a significant part of Israel’s history, but scholars are not certain on the process of its composition. The Talmud claims that “David wrote the Book of Psalms, including in it the work of the elders, namely, Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Hemen, Yeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah.”22 The tradition that considers David to be the primary author or editor of the Book of Psalms takes the frequently attested superscriptions including “לדוד” as an attestation of Davidic authorship. This kind of title precedes 73 of the 150 psalms in the Hebrew Bible.23 This interpretation takes the superscription to be the key marker of the psalm’s author, which may not be a correct way of understanding the prepositional phrase used.24 The preposition “ל” has a range of meaning, but this range includes various ways of indicating the direction towards which a subject is acting, whether literally or metaphorically.25 Therefore, the prepositional phrase means “to David.” Translated literally, this phrase indicates that David was not the author but rather some kind of recipient of the psalms that had been written “towards” him.
22 b. Bava Batra 14b-15a, quoted in deClaisse-Walford, Psalms, 9.
23 deClaisse-Walford, Psalms, 9-12.
24 deClaisse-Walford, Psalms, 9-10. This interpretation leads to lists categorizing the psalms by their supposed authors such as the one found in Peter C. Craigie and Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 1-50 (WBC 19; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 28-29. 2:507-510. HALOT”
25” ְל
Authorship of the psalms, whether individually or as a collective whole, should be held with less than absolute certainty. However, this should not diminish the important place held by the Book of Psalms in both Judaism and Christianity. The Book of Psalms was an essential foundation to Christian theology and is quoted more than any other Old Testament book by the authors of the New Testament.26 Understanding the Psalter as a whole does not provide information on how any particular psalm came to prominence, but it helps develop a background for understanding why it held its place of honor in Judaism and early Christianity.
Within the Psalter, Psalm 22 is a unique composition. Within one psalm, it contains lament, prayer, praise and thanksgiving. These four types of literature are common to the psalms though rarely found together in one unit.27 Taken as a whole, the psalm moves from a vivid description of the author’s individual suffering to praise and thanksgiving and may have been written as a liturgical movement to invite participation from the speaker and the congregation.28 This psalm has the term מזמור
26 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 45.
27 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 197-198.
28 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 198.
29 Charles Augustus Briggs, The Book of Psalms (ICC 15a; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), lxviii.
in its title, which denotes its membership in a category among the psalms used “for public worship in song in the synagogue.”29
Psalm 22 was likely used in a context where someone was sick and dying, given the relatability of the experience described in the first portion of the psalm to someone who feels their life escaping from them.30 The person who read the liturgy of the sufferer would hope for a priestly oracle that promised hope and healing, which would enable them to make the declaration of faith, trust, and praise that is present at the end of the psalm.31
The structure of this psalm is not clear, though the division between the prayers for deliverance and the song of praise is stark.32 This division is so distinct that some have thought that Psalm 22 was created by the combination of two other psalms: one lament psalm to account for the distinctly downtrodden attitude of the first section, and another praise psalm to contribute the lofty praises found in the second section.33 The prayers of thanksgiving and praise that end the psalm, which may have been liturgical in nature, may be later additions made by an editor who wanted
30 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 198.
31 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 198.
32 None of the commentaries on the Psalms that I have referenced in this work agree with any other on the structure of the psalm as a whole, though they all mark the sharp division between the lamentation (Psalm 22:1-18), and the praise (Psalm 22:22-31) with a transitional prayer (Psalm 22:19-21). The various arguments for dividing Psalm 22 with any more precision than these three large sections are beyond the scope of this work.
33 Willem A. VanGemeren, Psalms (REBC 5; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 235.
to make it more clear that God delivered the one who prayed in desperation.34 The structure of the psalm shows the intensity of the psalmist’s prayer increasing as he carries on, as his three laments express worse suffering paired with a greater form of doubt that calls the character of God further into question.35
The psalm opens with the words that Jesus would later say on the cross, though they could be used by any person in the midst of suffering to call out to God. The psalmist feels as though God is distant, and though he cries out for salvation day and night, God does not answer (Psalm 22:1-2). Even still, he understands the covenant faithfulness of God, knowing that redemption history proves God’s loyalty and power to save, even though his experience is the opposite of that of his ancestors (Psalm 22:3-5).36 This statement shows not only the psalmist’s faith, but his hope for redemption amid his suffering.37 In spite of his knowledge of who God is, the psalmist felt as though he were less than human because God had seemingly abandoned him and the witnesses of his suffering mocked him (Psalm 22:6-8).38 The mockers thought
34 Briggs, Psalms, 188.
35 John H. Reumann, “Psalm 22 at the Cross: Lament and Thanksgiving for Jesus Christ,” Interpretation 28, no. 1 (1974): 44-45.
36 Briggs, Psalms, 192; Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 198-199.
38 Briggs, Psalms, 194; Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 199.
that God would not allow a person who pleased him to suffer, so they simultaneously mocked the psalmist, his faith, and God by this action.39 Though he feels this abandonment, the psalmist cries out to God on the basis of his covenantal relationship because he trusts that God will care for his people through his sovereign power because the psalmist is a member of the covenant by birth (Psalm 22:9-11).40 While he prays for restoration and healing while leaning on his own experiential knowledge of God’s character, the psalmist clearly desires even more to simply know the intimate presence of God again so that he would not feel abandoned by him (Psalm 22:11).41 The psalmist then describes the danger surrounding him, the enemies who destroy his body and threaten his life are described as strong animals who destroy his life to the point of annihilating his humanity (Psalm 22:12-18).42 He has been made brittle and weak like wax and dried pottery, easily destroyed by the enemies who surround him.43 His oppressors have even begun to divide up his belongings as if he is already dead (Psalm 22:1418).44 The psalmist cries out for help one final time, reaching out to God by his covenant name YHWH, asking God to come close and
39 VanGemeren, Psalms, 239.
40 VanGemeren, Psalms, 240; Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 199.
41 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 199; deClaisse-Walford, Psalms, 234.
42 VanGemeren, Psalms, 241-245.
43 Briggs, Psalms, 195-197.
44 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 200.
deliver him from certain death by the hands of his enemies (Psalm 22:19-21).45
The transition from lament to praise is sudden and unexpected, moving from imperative verbs to perfect-tense verbs, signifying the movement from the psalmist’s cries of despair to the realization of his deliverance.46 Apparently, God’s help arrived while the person was still crying out.47 The psalmist suddenly says that he will proclaim the name of God in the congregation, giving several imperative commands to them, calling them to praise God for what he has done (Psalm 22:22-24).48 Finally, the psalmist ends with a declaration of the faithfulness of God, suggesting that God will be given worship by all who live and all who are yet to be born because of what he has done, including people from every group in the congregation who worships YHWH forever (Psalm 22:25-31).49 The lamentation in this psalm echoes the feelings of desolation experienced by the other great sufferers of the Old Testament, including Job and Jeremiah.50 However, the ending of the psalm makes it very different from the other laments in the Old
45 VanGemeren, Psalms, 245-246; Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 200.
46 Daniel Lee, “A Suffering Righteous One: An Exploration of Psalm 22,” Cataclesia Forum, 5 February 2024, https://cateclesia.com/2024/02/05/a-suffering-righteous-one-anexploration-of-psalm-22/.47 deClaisse-Walford, Psalms, 236.
48 VanGemeren, Psalms, 246-247.
49 VanGemeren, Psalms, 247-249.
50 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 202.
Testament because its liturgical character brings the congregation into the experience of worship alongside the one who had suffered so deeply.51
Typological Connections in Matthew 27
Much of what Matthew used to narrate the life, teachings, and ministry of Jesus came from the Psalms. Several examples are present in the text to show that this is the case.52 The devil tempted Jesus with a pair of verses torn from their context in Psalm 91 (Matthew 4:6). The third beatitude promised an inheritance to the meek in an echo to Psalm 37:11 (Matthew 5:5). Jesus directly quoted from Psalm 118:22-23 at the end of the parable of the tenants (Matthew 21:42). Even the great commission was a claim to the power vested in Zion’s king according to Psalm 2:8 (Matthew 28:18-20). In each of these cases, if the words of the Psalms didn’t come out of the mouth of Jesus himself, Matthew explained his surroundings using the language and content of the Psalms. Across the New Testament, the Book of Psalms is the most quoted book of the Old Testament.53 Moreover, it is the book that
51 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 202.
52 The following examples are drawn from those noted by L. Michael Morales, “Jesus and the Psalms,” The Gospel Coalition, 11 April 2011, https://www.thegospelcoalition. org/article/jesus-and-the-psalms/.
53 Esther M. Menn, “Sweet Singer of Israel: David and the Psalms in Early Judaism,” in Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler (Leiden: SBL, 2003), 70-71.
54 Briggs, Psalms, ci-cii.
Jesus quoted most.54
Matthew’s depiction of the crucifixion event features a handful of details that show that it is anchored in the images of Psalm 22. Further allusions to the Psalms ought to be expected from Matthew, given his repeated use of images and quotations from that literature throughout his Gospel. A criterion of recurrence argues in favor of this connection because Matthew is an author who repeatedly refers to the same material throughout his Gospel. First, when Jesus had just been crucified, his executioners “divided his garments among them by casting lots” (Matthew 27:35). This is an allusion to Psalm 22:18: “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Matthew is clearly and intentionally echoing the language of the psalm, using the wording of the Septuagint to illuminate these details.55 Next, Matthew shows the bystanders who passed by the crucified Christ “wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39a). This phrase echoes the language of Psalm 22:7, which reads, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads.”56 Finally, part of the crowd’s blasphemy will seem familiar: “He trusts in God; let God
55 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1067. The Septuagint verse is Psalm 21:19. 56 France, Matthew, 1070.
deliver him now, if he desires him” (Matthew 27:43a). Again, this draws directly from the language of Psalm 22:8, which reads, “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” Matthew clearly echoes the psalm here, both showing the same idea and using the same vocabulary found in the Septuagint in this verse.57 Though the psalm itself is not messianic in its original sense or context, Matthew clearly interpreted the loneliness and suffering of Jesus in the hours before his death through the imagery and words of Psalm 22.58 The connection is fitting because Jesus cries out as one devoted to YHWH “who is afflicted and shamed and surrounded by enemies, is still heard by God, and God’s act of deliverance of this one has world-wide, earth-shattering consequences.”59 God hears the desperate prayers of those who are devoted to him. Though they suffer, they will be redeemed.
Does Psalm 22 Have Explanatory Power?
The typological connections between the images in Psalm 22 and the depiction of the Passion in Matthew’s Gospel bear significant weight in explaining the kind of suffering that Jesus
57 France, Matthew, 1071. The Septuagint verse in Psalm 21:9.
58 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 202.
59 deClaisse-Walford, Psalms, 237.
experienced. Given the several lexical parallels between the two passages, it’s clear that Matthew was using the images and words from the larger context of Psalm 22 to understand the events that took place. It’s more than simply lifting the words of the psalm out of their original context as if David was only prophesying about Jesus.60 Matthew indicates that the disciples of Jesus learned to understand what they saw through the lens of the Old Testament, so in writing his Gospel, “Matthew presents Jesus suffering in accordance with the pattern of David’s suffering.”61 In the suffering of Jesus, by self-identifying with the suffering psalmist, “we perceive God, in Jesus, entering into and participating in the terror of mortality.”62 Even still, God’s abandonment of Jesus was only temporary, which Matthew anticipated in this chapter by framing the suffering of Jesus as a unique instance of the patterned experience presented by the psalmist.63
While Matthew intentionally sought to make this connection clear, Jesus was not specifically trying to invoke the
60 Against this point, significant voices such as Justin Martyr suggest that in writing Psalm 22 the psalmist “announced from the beginning that which was to be said in the time of Christ.” In this sense, Justin presents the psalm as something prepared for the purpose of Jesus’s use of it, and little else. In spite of Justin’s suggestion, the psalm exists because the psalmist lamented, and Jesus took up his words later for his own reasons. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 99 (ANF 1).
61 James M. Hamilton, Jr. Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022), 194.
62 Craigie and Tate, Psalms, 202-203.
63 Nolland, Matthew, 1207.
rest of the psalm as he spoke.64 Interpreters who try to assume that Jesus was arguing on behalf of the victorious ending of the psalm ask too much of his state of mind, his consciousness, and his intentions while he is moments from death.65 The positive ending of the psalm is not used at all by Jesus or Matthew, which suggests that it was not in their frame of reference here.66 Jesus was likely speaking from the heart of his experience of immense despair and utter loneliness. On the other hand, Matthew later saw the connections between the lament section of the psalm and Jesus’s Passion, writing them into the narrative so that they would clarify the scene for his audience. Psalm 22 has significant explanatory power in Matthew’s depiction of the Passion because of how he explained Jesus’s experienced suffering according to the pattern of what the psalmist experienced. He noticed the parallels between the description of suffering present in the psalm, identified them, and intentionally used language that would draw his audience back to the psalm’s imagery.
64 Sjef van Tilborg, “Language, Meaning, Sense and Reference: Matthew’s Passion Narrative and Psalm 22,” HTS Theological Studies 44 (1988): 887.
65 For example: Craig Keener, Matthew (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 390; David Hill, The Gospel of Matthew (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1972), 354-355.
66 van Tilborg, “Language, Meaning, Sense and Reference,” 897.
Bibliography
Blomberg, Craig. Matthew. Vol. 22 of The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992.
Briggs, Charles Augustus. The Book of Psalms. Vol. 15a of The International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960.
Carson, D. A., “Matthew.” Pages 23-670 in Matthew & Mark. Vol. 9 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.
Chrysostom, John. Homilies on Matthew 88. In vol. 10 of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1. Edited by Philip Schaff. 1886-1889. 14 vols. Repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.
deClaissé-Walford, Nancy, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner. The Book of Psalms. Vol. 15 of The New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.
Craigie, Peter C. and Marvin E. Tate. Psalms 1-50. Vol. 19 of Word Biblical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.
France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew. Vol. 1 of The New
International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007.
Hamilton, James M. Jr. Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022. Hays, Richard B. “The Gospel of Matthew: Reconfigured Torah.” HTS Theological Studies 61 (2005): 165-190. Hill, David. The Gospel of Matthew. London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1972
Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho 99. In vol. 1 of The AnteNicene Fathers. Edited by Alexander Robertson and James Donaldson. 1867-1873. 10 vols. Repr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
Koehler, Ludwig and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Translated by M. E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994-1999.
Lee, Daniel. “A Suffering Righteous One: An Exploration of Psalm 22.” Cataclesia Forum. 5 February 2024. https://cateclesia. com/2024/02/05/a-suffering-righteous-one-an-explorationof-psalm-22/.
Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 21-28. Translated by James E. Crouch. Vol.
25c of Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.
Matthews, Victor Harold, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Menn, Esther M. “Sweet Singer of Israel: David and the Psalms in Early Judaism.” Pages 61-74 in Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Lirurgical, and Artistic Traditions. Edited by Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler. Leiden: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
Morales, L. Michael. “Jesus and the Psalms.” The Gospel Coalition. 11 April 2011. https://www.thegospelcoalition. org/article/jesus-and-the-psalms/.
Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew. Vol. 1 of The New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.
van Tilborg, Sjef. “Language, Meaning, Sense and Reference: Matthew’s Passion Narrative and Psalm 22.” HTS
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Reumann, John H. “Psalm 22 at the Cross: Lament and Thanksgiving for Jesus Christ.” Interpretation 28, no. 1 (1974): 39-58.
Spadaro, Martin C. Reading Matthew as the Climactic Fulfillment of the Hebrew Story. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015.
VanGemeren, Willem A. Psalms. Vol. 5 of The Expositor’s Bible
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Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948.
Wallace, Daniel B. Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.
Winger, Mike. “Really Specific Prophecy Jesus Fulfilled on the Cross! Amazing!”. YouTube, video, 10 September 2019, 6:29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq8oaOix3rs.
Fourth on Main Hailey Quiroz
Newport Beach Lack of Parking
Izabella Martin
I’m driving down these busy streets, In search of parking free of charge. And every chance I think I see, Is taken by a car at large.
I circle streets with longing sighs, Far from grasp, the beloved beach. My heart still searching through the lies, As waves grow further from my reach.
If fate be real then so be it, Each vacant spot, a siren’s tune. My yearning wish to wade and sit, Grow less as my heart seems to wound.
But through the crowded streets I hear, The sound of crashing waves so loud. I fear that the end is near, And it is best to turn around.
High-tide, Low-tide
Grace Florey
On a Friday night, I sat with my friends on a sand cliff overlooking the beach, and we tore into 69-cent tacos from Primo Foods like they were the greatest meal ever created. For that price, as college students, they pretty much were. The greasy foil wrappers crinkled under our hands as we drank from glass bottles of Jarritos and Coca-Cola, the carbonation fizzing against our lips. The salt in the air mixed with the scent of carne asada, warm tortillas, and a hint of lime. And for a moment, everything was exactly as it should be.
We tried to make the drive to San Clemente at least once a week– same routine, and same debate of how many tacos we were going to eat. Someone always said four, maybe five. Someone always insisted on more. The number never really mattered. What mattered was the ritual, the way in which we piled into the car, music loud, and drove somewhere that was removed from campus life.
Some days we made the drive just past noon, the sun high and golden, stretching shadows along the road, and other days it was overcast and cloudy, the sun just barely peeking through. Tacos first, always, then coffee. We rotated through the coffee
shops in town, hopping between overpriced artsy cafes with oat milk lattes. We never really had a plan, just a deck of cards and the promise of good company and conversation. We played for hours, shuffling and dealing between sips, letting the rhythm of the game mirror the rhythm of our friendship: easy, familiar, unspoken.
When we got restless, we wandered the pier. The wooden planks creaked under our steps, weathered by salt and time. The air was thick with the scent of the ocean, the waves below crashing in steady, endless motion. Someone always leaned over the railing, daring someone else to jump in. No one ever did. Instead, we stood there, staring out at the water, waiting for the flicker of a sea creature in the depths of the sea. Sometimes we’d walk the shoreline, the sand beneath our feet, leaving behind uneven trails of footprints that the tide would soon erase. Other days, sitting in a lazy circle, the warmth of the day lingered while the crisp coastal breeze wrapped around us. The distant rumble of a train passing through town would cut through the silence, a reminder of a world still moving, even if, in that moment, we weren’t.
San Clemente, I hold a special place for you in my heart. This little beach town feels like home. It feels like college.
Mornings at the Bagel Shack, flipping through the records at the vinyl store, meeting locals who always seemed to have a story
to tell. Watching surfers cut through the waves, their silhouettes small against the endless blue. In between towns and semesters, we’d reunite here, catch up on life, on breaks, on changes too big to fit into text messages.
It’s a place of joy, of simplicity, of laughter that echoes off the cliffs. But it’s also a place of nostalgia, of memories that sometimes feel like they belong to another version of myself. Some friendships fade, some routines break, and time moves forward, whether I’m ready or not. Still, San Clemente remains. The tides will always come in, the waves will always roll, and on a Tuesday or a Friday, we’ll find our way back, with 69-cent tacos in hand, watching the water, talking about life. And San Clemente will be there, unchanged, waiting for us to return.
Corona Del Mar
Olivia Gonzalez
His Majesty Reflected in the Deep
Ester Marisa Ramirez
Swimming
Devin Patterson
To swim you must put faith in Your fingers, your palms, your arms, Biceps and shoulders. Trust In your legs, however you move them: Together, like a frog or a whale or individually With feet, knees, thighs and hips all working In moving each of these pieces, Having faith and trust in your own Limbs you must keep your Head above the water, at least breathing Occasionally
For what good is faith and trust, Arms and legs, if you’ve already decided to drown.
Before The Wedding
Amber Bozman
The white door is pristine. Its indentations, rectangle on top, smaller square below, contain no traces of dust or grime, as if they have been thoroughly scrubbed for this occasion. The golden door handle seems to sparkle in the sunlight. Nancy is studying it, taking deep breaths: in, out, in, out. She raises her right arm, hand in a fist, and moves to knock on the door. She hesitates, nervous about what will happen if she steps beyond the threshold into the room and greets the woman inside it. She lets her arm fall and instead, opens her silver clutch to remove a compact mirror and lipstick tube, a practice she picked up from her mother in childhood.
“Always make sure to reapply before you enter any room. Keep the compact mirror on you.”
Nancy has worn the same shade of pale-pink lipstick since she was twelve, a lifelong insecurity disguised as a birthday present: purple polka-dots and a bright blue bow. Your lips are too pale, Nanny. You look like a corpse! The other girls around the table had laughed when her mother said it, oblivious as Nancy’s heart sank to her stomach. Forty years later, it was a habit she still
hadn’t been able to kick. Nancy stares at herself in the small mirror and sighs. Just do it. Just knock.
After putting the compact and lipstick back into her bag, she does. Through the door, she hears a soft voice.
“Come in.” In, out, in, out. Nancy turns the handle and enters the room.
If there was a god, it would be raining. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but this is what Nora is thinking as she stares at her reflection, bathed in sunlight from the window behind the large, full-body mirror. She is alone in the bridal suite, which is an unexpected relief. She previously figured that if she kept herself surrounded, she could avoid the worst possible scenario: being alone with her thoughts. But now, after a whole weekend of festivities, all she wants to do is think. About everything.
An outdoor wedding had been her future mother-in-law’s idea. When they had toured the garden venue, Nancy had looked around, her face cloaked in mystery and smugness all at once. “This place reminds me of our wedding, doesn’t it, Nelson?” she had said, snuggling into her husband’s side. Nelson’s arm had wrapped around her shoulders, almost robotically, but he had ignored his wife’s question. Nancy hadn’t seemed to notice. “It’s
perfect.” She had directed this comment toward the wedding planner, who immediately began taking notes on her yellow pad and calling an assistant to book the garden.
Nora had always wanted an indoor wedding, a secret fear of weather being responsible for a cancellation. She pictured a decadent church or an old hotel, somewhere where the outside world couldn’t stop her from making one of the most important decisions of her life. But she also didn’t want any problems with Nancy.
After Nancy had practically picked the venue, Nora had shared a look with Nick, her husband-to-be. His eyes said “whatever she wants. Let’s give my mother whatever she wants.” Noticeably, he had not said whatever you want, Nora. He never did.
Nora, this isn’t about you.
But Nick, it’s our wedding! It’s supposed to be about us. I just thought-
Nick had run his hands through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead, a habit that signaled his exasperation. You know how my mother is. It’s better if we make it about her instead of letting her beat us to it.
Nora conceded to Nick. She knew what it was to have a
difficult parent, one filled with anger and selfishness that made every step around them feel like an earthquake. Nancy could have the wedding, but she would get everything else: Nick. That was all that mattered. Once he was away from his mother, it would get better. She knew it would.
Nora’s reflection is not what she thought it would be. She always imagined her eyes would be bright, full of love, hope, and excitement for the future. Instead, the usual sparkling green seems dull, lifeless. Even the sunlight isn’t helping.
She smooths her hands down the front of her dress and sighs, missing her mother. Her advocate. The only person who had ever put Nora first. But she’s gone, and has been for eight years. She left when Nora went to college, having stuck it out with her dad for long enough to know Nora had gotten away too. Nora was angry for a long time, but she understood now. Time brings perspective.
Nora had invited her to the wedding, but she knew her mother wouldn’t come. Not if her father was there. If she had been there, Nora knows she wouldn’t be alone right now. Her mother’s reflection would be standing beside hers in the mirror. There would be laughter instead of silence, peace instead of anxiety. Or, maybe Nora wouldn’t even be getting married today. She can’t ever know.
She moves the ring on her pointer finger in three circles, the only gift her father ever gave her. Over the years, twisting it has become a nervous habit, an attempt to calm down.
There is a soft knock at the door. Nora feels a tear slip down her cheek and reaches us to swipe it away with the back of her hand. She sniffles, hoping to hide the congestion of her sadness.
“Come in,” she says, her voice quivering. Nancy steps into the room. When the two make eye contact, Nancy’s face is similar to Nora’s: worry, pain, a hint of regret. Nora has never seen her this way. It is alarming and slightly scary. This is the wrong day for her future mother-in-law to finally drop the facade. Why, God? Why today? Nancy is struggling to breathe as she sets her eyes on Nora. The same blonde hair, green eyes, the dress, the look of nervousness. The resemblance is uncanny. She is a time capsule of Nancy’s wedding day, the last day before Nancy ruined her life permanently. She can still hear her mother’s voice: “This is what I’ve always wanted for you, Nanny. Nelson Newton is the most sought-after man around here, and he chose you. Don’t make him regret it. You will be a good wife. You will give him a son to leave
his fortune to, and you will be happy.” Nancy’s eyes had welled with tears for the first time in her life. Her mother had laughed and wiped them away with her thumbs as she gripped Nancy’s face.
“Don’t cry, Nanny. This is what you were made for.” Nelson, a man ten years her senior, still felt like a stranger to Nancy. At nineteen, she had quit school when he proposed. Gave up everything to follow her mother’s orders. But it had not been what she wanted, and she regretted it every day.
Nora, an accomplished woman at twenty-six, is everything Nancy imagines for her son. She radiates kindness, empathy, and intelligence. She is everything Nancy would have been if she hadn’t given up on her life to marry Nelson. If she had had a different mother.
“Nora, you are beautiful,” Nancy says, hearing the monotone of her own voice. “Just like me.”
Nora’s face doesn’t move as she says it. She is so selfish, Nora thinks. I knew she would make today about her.
Nancy doesn’t know why she does that, hearkens the comparison between the two of them when she knows today is about Nora.
“Keep yourself at the center, Nanny. It is all about you.” Nancy, similar to Nora, is the only child her parents ever had. She
was her mother’s doll, always dressed up in frilly clothes, shown off to friends at dinner parties, and raised, from day one, to be an ideal wife. She never cared about anyone, never loved anyone. Not even Nelson. Not even Nick. Especially not her mother. But how could she love the people who took everything from her?
Nancy believes Nora loves Nick. She has seen the two of them together, laughing, kissing. She has seen the look in Nora’s eyes whenever Nick walks into the room. She has tunnel vision. All of her attention is locked on him. Nelson never looked at Nancy like that. Since the first days of their marriage, she felt Nelson look away from her wherever she entered his orbit. But now, Nick and Nora do it, too. All of them are so afraid to look at her, afraid to cause the crack that will finally make her crumble. And they are not far off from her complete breakdown.
Today is especially hard. Nancy doesn’t know if she can handle watching Nora throw her life away for Nick. Her son is so much like his father: stoic, compromising, gentle. But he is also selfish in many ways. And, like his father, he is good at hiding it.
Nancy does not believe Nick will put Nora first. Already she sees Nick put her, his mother, above his fiancée, the supposed “love of his life.” She knows this practice won’t change when they get married. If Nora is not the center now, someone or something else
always will be. When Nick realizes this problem, he won’t talk to Nora. He will start to pull away. His hours at the office will become longer. Nora will find herself sliding her arm across the bed in the middle of the night, feeling for her husband, only to find his side cold and empty.
Nancy wants to believe Nora and Nick will have a different marriage, that they will be happier than she and Nelson are. But Nancy lives in reality. She knows people don’t really change, that they don’t keep their promises, that they let each other down time and time again. She doesn’t want this for Nora, this beautiful young woman with so much left to do in the world, a woman who will be weakened with Nick by her side, not built up. Nora will shrink herself to please Nick because that is what a woman is supposed to do when she loves someone. She does whatever it takes to make her husband happy.
Nora’s usual glow, the sparkle of life in her eyes, is dull, even in the sunshine. She does not look like a woman about to get married to the love of her life. There is no hint of the usual prewedding jitters on her face. She is shrouded in genuine anxiety, obsessively twisting the ring on her first finger. Nancy knows her presence is not helping the situation. She knows she has not been kind to Nora. It has all been attempted cordiality for the sake of
appearances, but secretly, Nancy hopes her behavior has driven Nora away, deterred her from making this colossal mistake that will alter her life forever. But obviously, it hasn’t worked, as Nora is wearing a wedding dress.
“Thank you, Nancy,” Nora says, softly and sweetly. Nancy offers a small smile, which is all she can manage.
“How are you feeling?” Nora turns around to face Nancy, no longer making eye contact through the mirror.
“I’m nervous. But I'm excited.” She drops her head, looking away from Nancy. This is her tell: avoiding eye contact. She hopes Nancy doesn’t notice and hasn't paid enough attention to her to be able to tell that she is lying. She is not excited to marry Nick and become a part of his family. But she can’t say this to Nick’s mother. She can’t tell anyone. All of her friends love him. Even her dad, who never likes anyone, thinks Nick is “sublime.” But none of them have met Nancy. Regardless, whatever regrets or worries she has don’t really matter. It is already too late. But she will be a good wife. She will be happy. She hopes. She can believe all of this as long as Nancy doesn’t dig too deeply into it. Please don’t ask any more questions, Nancy, she thinks. Please leave me alone.
“What are you nervous about?” Nancy asks, dipping
her head down to make eye contact once again with her future daughter-in-law. This is Nora’s worst nightmare. She has never been good at lying. She doesn’t have time to come up with something to say. “Tell me the truth. Don’t lie to me, Nora.” It is a threat, or at least that’s how Nora takes it. But frankly, this may be her only chance to talk to someone, even if it is her cold and distant mother-in-law.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” Nora begins. She looks into Nancy’s eyes, expecting to find them full of anger and hatred. Instead, she finds curiosity, maybe even something that resembles kindness or care.
“Go on, I’m listening.” Nancy’s voice is soft, almost compassionate. Nora takes a deep breath.
“I don’t think I want to marry Nick. I don’t think any of this is what I want.”
Nancy tilts her head. “Why is this not what you want? Don’t you want to get married, settle down?”
“Of course I do. I just don’t think I want to do it with Nick. I’m not sure I want to do it right now.”
“Why not now?”
Nora sighs. “I just feel like I’m on the cusp of something. Like, there is something big on the horizon.”
“What do you think that is?”
“A promotion at work. I’m up for a leadership position. It’s my dream, but it would also mean longer hours, more of a commitment. Is that the best thing for a newly married couple? Is that how I want to start out my life with Nick? Never seeing him, never being able to focus on us?”
“Do you think that is how a marriage should start out?” Nora turns back toward the mirror, clearly getting heated.
“Well, it’s how my parents’ marriage started.”
“And how did that work out for them?”
Nora laughs sarcastically. “Not great.”
She remembers the arguments. “You’re never home! We never see you!” her mother would yell.
“I’m trying to provide for this family!” her father always responded. “This is what you wanted! You wanted the white picket fence and the children. I never wanted that!” Nancy’s voice grounds her.
“Is theirs the kind of marriage you thought you would have?”
“No! Absolutely not!” Nancy has never heard Nora exclaim like this. “I always thought I would do things differently than them, that I would be successful as a wife and a partner.”
“So why are you headed down the same path now?” Nora walks away from the mirror and sits in a pearl empire chair to the right of it.
“Did I have a choice? I always thought this was the step I had to take to have a successful life: get married to a man who was nothing like my father and build a life with him, regardless of my own aspirations. This is the only way to break the cycle. I don’t want to end up my mother. I don’t want to leave my husband.”
Nancy moves toward her, squatting down in front of the chair to be at eye level with Nora, placing her hands on Nora’s knees.
“Listen to me: You don’t have to do this. There is more than one way to break a cycle. Maybe for you, not getting married is the way to do it. But you don’t have to make the same mistakes your mother did. You don’t have to give up your dreams for a man who will not put you first, who thinks of others above you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What?”
“Nick is the first man I have trusted, the first man who never reminded me of my father. There’s no guarantee I will ever find someone else like him. I’m not sure I can trust anyone else again.”
“Anger may not be the problem Nick has, but that isn’t the only quality that can ruin a marriage. Trust me, silence is worse.”
Nora frowns. “You and Nelson don’t talk?”
Nancy laughs out loud. “No, Nora. We don’t talk. We never have.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t love each other,” Nancy says flatly.
Nora’s jaw drops. “What do you mean you don’t love each other?”
“I don’t really know how else to say it.”
Nora considers this. She thinks about all of the times she has been around Nancy and Nelson, which honestly hasn’t been too many. She remembers how they always interrupt each other, how they rarely make eye contact, how they barely touch each other, with the exception of being around company. She has always interpreted this behavior as displaying their level of comfortability around each other. But upon examination, maybe it is simply an understanding between the two of them to present a united front to the world before disconnecting behind closed doors.
“I think I can see it, actually,” Nora says. “I always thought the distance between you two was just comfort, but it is actually just good, old-fashioned resentment.”
Nancy laughs. “Bingo.”
“Why did you marry him in the first place?” Nora asks.
“Because I felt like I had to.”
“Did you have to?”
Nancy takes a deep breath, in, out. “My mother made it seem like I had to. I was only nineteen, you know, when I got married. I was in my second year at college, studying art history.” She chuckles. “Back then, I didn’t even care about my major. I was just happy to live somewhere that wasn’t with my mother.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way about your mother,” Nora says, gently.
“No one does. I don’t talk about her. Besides, you never asked.”
“Well, I didn’t ever feel like I could talk to you. You’re always an arm’s length away.”
Nancy stands up and walks to the full-length mirror, removing her compact and a tube of lipstick from her clutch. “Then I’m exactly how my mother raised me.” She continues to speak as she applies it. “She taught me to put myself at the center of the world, to block out everyone else. I wasn’t supposed to get close to anyone. Except, of course, for my husband.
“When I first met Nelson, I was so excited about the
prospect of finding someone I could finally talk to, someone I could give myself to wholeheartedly. It also helped that he was older, a real man. Almost thirty at that time. And he was rich. He was perfect on paper and in the eyes of my mother. But he didn’t want to give himself to me. He wanted someone he could show off, smiling by his side at corporate parties. He wanted a child to leave his fortune to. We weren’t close then, and certainly not now.
“I talked to my mother about it, telling her how I felt he didn’t see me or love me, and how I probably didn’t love him. She just smiled and said, ‘Oh, sweetie, love is inconsequential. All that really matters is securing your future.’ So I married him despite all of my concerns. You know, the first time I ever cried was on my wedding day. I was so sure that I was doing the wrong thing, and yet, I didn’t try to stop it.”
“But could you have?” Nora wonders. “What could you really have done to stop it?”
“I could have left, run away. I could’ve re-enrolled in school and left it all behind. Nelson didn’t care. He would’ve had no problem finding some other pretty girl to be his bride. And she might not have cared about love. But I did. Back then, I really did. But not anymore.”
“Why are you telling me all of this? Why now, on my wedding day?”
Nancy walks back to Nora, still seated in the chair and holds her face. It is the most intimate thing Nancy has ever done. It reminds Nora of her mother.
“Because I wish someone had said these things to me before I made the biggest mistake of my life. I know you love Nick, but love fades. And believe me, for you two, it will fade. I don’t want you to end up like me, Nora, having given everything up for a man who doesn’t deserve it. I like to imagine that if I had run away from Nelson that day, I would’ve ended up like you.
Strong, smart, ambitious. You have a whole life ahead of you. Don’t waste it just because you’re scared you won’t ever be able to trust another man again. You will. I know you will. And he’ll find you when the time is right, not when you have to give up everything you want, everything you are destined for.”
Nora is crying now, tears coming quickly down her cheeks.
“I think if my mother were here,” she sniffles, “she would tell me the same thing.” Nancy lifts her lips in approval.
“Let’s get you out of here,” She extends her hand to help Nora out of the chair.
Nora looks at her hand, takes it, and smiles. “Okay.”
Interpretation
Elisha Ilinčev
The Hummingbird: A Conversation Poem
Amanda Fagan
Hummingbird, orange and green, sing to me a song
Stagnant there atop a reed, ‘fear I don’t have long
Could you beat your wings, funnel air into my lungs?
I’ve forgotten how to breathe, death has stained the young I could melt into the earth, dust to dust returned If you do not sing to me, oh sweet little bird! I am nothing but a profit here upon the earth I am copper in their pockets, ‘else I am but dirt
My heart does not want to beat, and they do not care Oh, I long to live for thee, but I don’t have air!
Hummingbird, answer me, have not I any worth?
The creator knew me well, long before my birth
All the lilies of the field here beside me cry
Of all creatures on the earth, mankind let me die
So I ask you, hummingbird, stir upon the brush
Could your little wings deliver my prayers up?
Antebellum Eyes: Narrative Perspective During the
Pre-Civil War Era
Olivia Gonzalez
Authors Fredrick Douglass, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Song of Myself during the pre-Civil War era, which challenged Southern ideology through unique narrative points of view. Through these points of view, Douglass liberates himself via literacy and rebels with evocative firsthand testimony, Twain conceptualizes Southern morality through a boy’s developing worldview, and Whitman unifies with a poetic, democratic voice. In these formative works of American Literature, Douglass, Twain, and Whitman employ point of view to critique Southern racial hierarchy, advocate for racial and moral nonconformity, and reimagine their divided world.
Frederick Douglass, born in Maryland, wrote The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass as an autobiographical account of enslavement sixteen years before the Civil War. Once the autodidactic Douglass acquires literacy, he emphasizes the tension between literacy’s power to liberate and the enslaved man’s helpless order in the racial hierarchy. This tension is amplified
by Douglass’s point of view as a man who experienced slavery. While reading emancipation speeches, Douglass writes, “These were choice documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder” (Douglass). Douglass is enthralled by the concept of emancipation, because it “gave tongue” or verbalized unintelligible feelings of racial inferiority and the potential for freedom. Through literacy, rebellion begins to stir within Douglass, “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers” (Douglass).
Despite Douglass’ newfound hatred toward his oppressors, his perspective exposes a growing tension within him: “I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy... I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!” (Douglass). Douglass’s internal monologue is evocatively insightful: literacy offers understanding, but no solution without autonomous action; ideological ignorance is bliss. Ultimately, freedom’s implantation in Douglass’s psyche
overpowers his lowly state: “The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever” (Douglass).
Douglass’s awakened soul, ignited by literacy, prompts a physical manifestation of rebellion through a physical altercation with Mr. Covey in chapter ten, “Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment— from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose.” (Douglass). Douglass’s internal spirit of freedom compels him to take control of the oppressive situation and fight against Mr. Covey’s abuse. Douglass’s rebellion with Mr. Covey is a pivotal moment for freedom and his inevitable escape, “This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free” (Douglass). By acting upon these liberating thoughts of freedom acquired through literacy, Douglass regains his “manhood” or autonomy. Through Douglass’s poignant point of view, he reimagines his place in the racial hierarchy, determined to be free. Douglass’s firsthand testimony
as an enslaved man in The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass empowered white abolitionists in the North during the Antebellum period, continues to challenge readers’ idea of racial conformity, and confronts the privileges of literacy.
Another narrative point of view worth analyzing is Huck Finn’s in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written after the Civil War, its fictional setting is the 1830s-40s in the Antebellum South. Therefore, Twain’s depiction of Huck’s youthful point of view applies to the pre-Civil War era, not the time of its publication. Unlike The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a fictional work, but like Douglass, Huck’s youthful perspective critiques racial hierarchy by exposing the hypocrisy of moral conformity during the Antebellum era.
Mark Twain, born in Missouri adjacent to the Mississippi River, wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of a young, southern white boy, Huck, whose journey along the Mississippi River and friendship with Jim, an enslaved man, confronts his learned morality. After Jim is sold and captured in Chapter 31, Huck is distraught with conflicting feelings about whether to help Jim escape or not. Twain describes Huck’s
inner monologue as initially driven by communal reputation and guilt, “And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his books for shame” (Twain 273). Huck is distraught, shameful and apprehensive of his community’s response to this “immorallity”, from their perspective. The phrase “lick his boots” is demeaning, and hopelessly desperate.
As Huck’s inner-conflict progresses, Twain reveals that Huck’s belief in helping Jim escape is immoral, deriving not only from his Southern community but also from his religious theology:
“And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t agoing to allow such miserable doings to go just so fur and no further, I almost dropped in my tracks
I was so scared.” (Twain 273)
Here, Huck is stricken with the fear of God, akin to a slap on the face, reminding Huck of His watchful eye on his sin. In this
moment, Huck’s fear of impending judgment brings him to his knees, but he cannot pray for forgiveness because Huck’s, “heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all” (Twain 273). Twain displays through Huck’s perspective that his conscience is warring with his perception of sin, and the religious conviction is damning to the boy’s evolving morality. Huck writes a letter confessing Jim’s location, but in a swell of devotion to his friend, Huck’s conscience triumphs, “’All right, then, I’ll go to hell'—and tore it up” (Twain 274). By tearing up the letter and damning himself to hell, Huck physically and ethically denies his Southern beliefs to help free Jim.
By portraying Huck’s tension between conscience and belief through his boyish point of view, Twain exposes the hypocrisy of Southern morality. Through Huck’s evolving worldview, the reader sees an innocent, logical response from a boy desiring to help his friend, regardless of Jim’s place in the racial hierarchy. If Twain depicted Huck as an adult man, his response to Jim would have been excessively prejudiced by time and community. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain juxtaposes learned beliefs and Huck’s boyish, empathetic
conscience, from his point of view, to expose the hypocrisy of the racial hierarchy within Southern morality.
An additional narrative point of view foundational to American Literature during the Antebellum era is Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman, written merely six years before the Civil War in 1855. Whitman, a free-soil journalist and working-class white man, wrote an elongated poem, entitled Song of Myself, as an introspective, spiritual manifesto. Whitman structures Song of Myself in free verse—a turning point in American poetics—and writes with a strong, democratic voice. In section 13, Whitman illustrates an enslaved man toiling midday and interjects stirring, compassionate commentary between the ordinary descriptions. Whitman writes, “The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags / undeneath on its tied over chain,” (Whitman 30). In these opening statements, Whitman sets the enslaved man and his tasks, and continues to specify his physical description:
“His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breath and loosens over his hip-band, His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.” (Whitman 30)
The enslaved man’s descriptions are visceral and objective, forcing the reader to imagine him. By doing so, the enslaved man is humanized; stripped of stereotypes—a man working in the sun. Whitman’s narrative perspective, manifested in his poetic voice, interposes itself into section 13, “I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there, / I go with the team also” (Whitman 30). The diction “love him” is compassionate and provokes an empathic response.
Whitman continues with further poetic discussion:
“In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.” (Whitman 30)
After observing the enslaved man and illustrating him, Whitman portrays an almost spiritual experience of oneness, inspired by the “caresser of life” or humanity, ebbing and flowing within him and the enslaved man. These feelings of
human community and relationship “absorb” into Whitman, and, metaphorically, add verses into Whitman’s “song” or Song of Myself. By including this enslaved man in the universal human experience, Whitman desecrates the Southern racial hierarchy. The desecration enlightens Whitman, “Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that / you express in your eyes? / It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life” (Whitman 30). After observation and spiritual introspection, Whitman expresses the knowledge the experience fosters, more than any book he has ever read. This knowledge can only be gleaned by deconstructing Southern ideology and uniting as Americans—Whitman’s authorial purpose.
Whitman’s poetic, democratic voice reflects on Southern life through the perspective of an ordinary man, and inspires unity. By objectively describing the enslaved man, Whitman humanizes his behavior, apart from his skin color. Whitman identifies with the enslaved man in his spiritual song, eliminating the racial hierarchy, and uniting both men, black and white, as Americans. Through this union, Whitman poetically advocates for saving democracy and bolsters the fight for freedom via abolition. Song of Myself is not just a turning point in free-verse American poetics, but a democratic call-to-action and artistic critique of Southern ideology.
American Literature functions as a living commentary of its historical period. Literature written during the pre-Civil War era is no exception. Fredrick Douglass, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Song of Myself through unique narrative points of view like Douglass’s autobiographical story of rebellion and liberation, Huck Finn’s boyish, hypocritical social and moral dilemma, and Whitman’s humanizing, poetic voice to critique racial hierarchy and reimagine the Antebellum era. Ultimately, the Civil War ensued, but resulted in the total abolition of slavery. Despite abolition, the United States still battles the remnants of racial hierarchy, rendering Douglass, Twain, and Whitman relevant American authors to the modern, twenty-firstcentury reader.
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Robert S. Levine, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., vol. A, W.W. Norton & Company, 2022. Kindle Edition.
Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Robert S. Levine, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., 1865–1914, W.W. Norton & Company, 2022.
Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Robert S. Levine, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th ed., 1865–1914, W.W. Norton & Company, 2022.
Guardian of the ʻĀina - Blind Cat on the Island Hawaiʻi
Ainsley Kudron
Wat Po
Grace Florey
Reflect Megan Erickson
The mirror is the place I feel most afraid, Every nook and cranny is on display. All my flaws I can overlook, Are at every angle I seem to look. I wish I could say I’m not so fearful; The reflection is the antithesis of how I feel. What I want to portray is radiant and bold, My tired eyes tell me I will eventually get old. To others, I can hide behind a mask, But I cannot disguise from myself. I strive for perfection when I wasn’t created so. I’m attempting to remember, accept, and grow. And yet, when I look deeper into my flaws, I count all the places my Creator saw— When He knit me in my mother’s womb, He saw the mistakes, from birth to tomb.
PAINTED DREAMS
A. Dreamer
The apprentice at the stationery shop was curious. Every day for the past week, a sharp man with a pointy mustache and a thin girl with grayish lips had come in and bought seven bundles of blank parchment paper. They would enter the shop and head straight over to where the paper was stored, but then they would hover there. They would put their heads together, peering at the paper, sometimes picking some up and putting it back down. The girl never handled anything; she only pointed with thickly gloved fingers, leaning close, never actually touching. Occasionally, she would reach for something - the calligraphy brushes, a jar, a bundle of paper - but the man would always appear and snatch her hand away. They would whisper together, sometimes angry, sometimes confused, then the girl would lower her head and take her place behind him. The apprentice thought she was like a shadow - a short, turquoise-robed one, but a shadow nevertheless. She was always a step behind the man, following closely, tucked next to him.
The strange pair would choose their paper, pick up a bottle of ink, and then come up to the counter to pay. The man would always pay, but one time - on a Thursday - the apprentice remembered that the girl had sidestepped the man. She had headed
to the counter first, reaching deep into her patterned pockets as she walked. The man’s mustache ticked down when he realized. The apprentice laughed to himself; the man’s severe countenance was ruined by the caricature-ness of his facial hair. The ends of his mustache had been like clock hands, dipping down to the seven and five. Surely he was flustered or unsettled as he snatched the girl’s hand from her pockets. They whispered furiously to each other, the man frowning severely as the girl wrenched her hand out of his grip and settled back to her usual position behind him.
That day, the apprentice was at the counter, transferring his personal inventory notes to the official ledger when they came up. He went to greet them, a rehearsed “Hello, is this all?” but the dark expression on the sharp man's face had the apprentice’s jaw closing with a snap. He meekly accepted the paper and ink bottle. The pair left quickly after they had paid, the sea of mist slowly swallowing up the ends of his dark suit and her bright robes. The apprentice watched them until he couldn’t see them anymore before going back to his ledger. He curled the thick paper around his fingers as he went back to his task of copying his notes. The apprentice glanced up ever so often, looking out the windows as if the heavy, perpetual mist would lift. As if the strange pair would re-emerge from its depths and open the doors again. He knew they would not.
They never visited more than once.
~ ∞ ~
The boy had a dream that night, one that disappeared like vapor when he opened his eyes, leaving only faint remnants behind. Something like salt. Like tear tracks.
Something like his father being home from the war on the continent.
Something like his mother holding him tight and not leaving him with his uncle. Something like a peaceful life without the fear of supernaturals hanging over them. Something like candles and laughter around the dinner table.
Something like a warm glow in his chest that left him hollow when it was gone. When he woke, he lay still, heart in his throat, beating a little too quickly. He sat up and flipped over his pillow, hiding the damp spots that had dripped on it in his sleep.
Briefly, for a moment, he wondered if that girl had dreams like this, too.
~ ∞ ~
The apprentice was sluggish in the morning. His mind felt like the constant fog outside, not fit to approach customers. He thought today was the day his father had left his family all those years ago. He missed his father so much that he had to pause in his restocking, sucking in a breath in hopes that his eyes would come
back into focus.
He had finished restocking the calligraphy brushes when the bell on the door chimed. The apprentice looked up and froze when he saw the girl walk in. Alone.
The sharp man with a pointy mustache and his striped suit was nowhere in sight. The apprentice looked about the shop for him, as if he would appear from the shelves and shadows.
“Excuse me?”
He startled at the girl’s voice. She had walked up to him while he wasn’t looking. She was handsome, carrying herself with confidence, eyes keen, her shoulders square, and her jaw set against the world. She was not handsome like his uncle, not like a bull with broad shoulders, but still, strangely, magnetically attractive. The apprentice jumped as the girl coughed politely. He realized he had been staring, frozen in place, and hurriedly spurred himself into action.
“Sorry, can I help you?” His voice cracked, and he hastily swallowed, hoping she wouldn’t notice. The girl’s shoulders tightened, the same turquoise robe she always wore, eating up her ears. But she straightened her back, clutching a thick portfolio to her chest.
“I plan to buy some things… but do you have an open space I could momentarily borrow? Somewhere- ah- inside?”
The apprentice blinked. “Umm… I- I would have to check with my uncle- I mean, my boss, to be sure, but there’s a mostly empty storage room upstairs.”
“Thank you!” she burst out.
The apprentice leaned back, bemused.
The girl quickly gathered herself, clearing her throat awkwardly. “My apologies, I’ll… ah…pick out a few things while you inquire of a space.”
The apprentice nodded slowly before turning around and heading for the back room. If he tripped over his own feet… well… there was no one else in the shop to see.
His uncle had said yes, slapping the apprentice on the back, mentioning something about boys and girls and the romantic chasing involved in relationships. The apprentice grimaced and burned red. He ignored his uncle and went back down to the girl to help her. She was waiting for him, paper and ink in thickly gloved hands.
Once the girl had paid for the same items she always bought, the apprentice led her around to a door and a flight of stairs that led up to the abandoned store room. Empty boxes stood in the center, and the apprentice rushed to move them out of the way. But the girl stopped him, gesturing over to the side with one hand while
reaching into her pockets with the other. “Could you put those…? There is fine.”
The apprentice frowned, but complied while the girl set about, laying down several large sheets of newspaper. When he looked back, his jaw fell as he looked at the many ink-splattered papers; pearlescent shimmers transformed splatters into a multitude of images. The girl brushed past him, her portfolio now empty, and flipped over the boxes to form a table. She spread out her earlier purchases along with a pair of paint brushes and a tinted jar. The apprentice looked at her, gazing between the sea of works and their artist. She was frowning.
“Could you… would you mind filling this jar with water?” Her brow was furrowed into a vaguely unpleasant expression. The apprentice, not knowing what else to do, nodded and reached for the jar next to her. The girl slapped his hand away, eyes wide and terrified. The apprentice looked up, startled. He pulled his hand back from the little jar. The girl opened her mouth a few times but closed it again, like one of the fish from the docks, gaping. The apprentice stared, waiting for an explanation.
Eventually, she croaked out, “Don’t… don’t take that one. Here, take this.” She rummaged in her pockets and pulled out another jar, this one made of clear glass. The apprentice took the jar and left to get her water, questions whirling in his mind.
When he returned, the girl already had a smear of ink on her cheek, and shimmering white paint from her little jar decorated the warm parchment surrounding her. He placed the jar of water by her side, and she looked up, smiling briefly in thanks. Leaving her, he hovered over the ink paintings, which glowed faintly in the morning light. One was a wash of alternatingly lighter shades from the bottom up, a dark sky interrupted by a shining white moon and a waterfall scattering into firefly lights. Another was a wild splatter of undiluted ink, stark against the browning parchment. White paint outlined a different scene in each splatter: a falling bridge, a reaching hand, a burning tree, a flying bird. A third was a mirrored face, a grinning double-headed mask, dark with glowing eyes and shining fangs. Other paintings were abstract, some had a few subjects, just one, or many, all squeezed into the parchment paper that he had sold to her and the sharp man downstairs.
“You can pick them up if you’d like.”
The apprentice glanced back to see the girl watching him. He blushed.
She hesitated before speaking again. “I mean, I don't mind if you want to just… hold on.” The girl dug into her pockets and pulled out a pair of gloves, the same thicker ones she had worn earlier. “Put these on.”
The apprentice frowned. “Why?”
The girl shrugged. “To keep your hands clean and the white I use is… beautiful but toxic?” Her voice tilted up, and she looked at him pleadingly.
The apprentice gave in and put the gloves on, questions still swirling in his mind. He wanted to ask all of them: Who was she? Where did she come from? Why wasn’t the man with her? What were these paintings? If the paint was dangerous, then why did she use it? He kept silent as he lifted each painting to the light. His hands felt too large and clumsy in the gloves, trembling and causing the parchment to flutter. It was too much, so he laid the painting down and stripped off the gloves, walking back to the girl to return them.
The apprentice hesitated. “…Why do you paint? Are they… special?” he asked as he placed the gloves by her side.
The girl didn’t look up for long. “I paint dreams.” She moved her brush violently across her paper. Black hands, reaching forward to a misty white form across a table; the new streak of light came faint from above the top of the canvas. It reminded the apprentice of something…
“Are they…your dreams?”
The girl shook her head. “None of these are mine. That one,” She pointed down with her brush to the one she was working on, “was a dream I found here.”
The apprentice looked at her, uncomprehending. The girl paused and, seeing his expression, gently set down her brush.
“This,” She tapped the paper with one hand, “is your dream. I saw you, I saw your dream, and now, I am painting it. That’s what I do.”
The apprentice watched her hands. They were slim, rough around the joints that held her brushes, and now they trembled next to her painting. She was supernatural, gifted with an ability that could easily help or harm. She had a gift, like the people who took his father from him, the ones who spun the ever-present fog around the Isles and who started a war that caused the streets to be deserted.
The apprentice said nothing. He turned, and he left the girl in the abandoned store room, left her there with all of her painted dreams, stolen from other people. He left her there with his dream and didn’t look back.
Those Who Have Gone Before Megan Erickson
Sainte - Chapelle
Olivia Gonzalez
There is a Child in the Tower
A. Dreamer
There is a child in the tower. He sits by the window alone. Once he tried to climb down But the cat slipped trying to follow.
There is a child in the tower. He doesn’t watch by the window anymore. But still, he longs to feel the meadows So he reads by candle and star
There is a child in the tower He’s never tasted wine. But he holds himself as tight as he can And wishes he’d just feel fine
There is a child in the tower. Sometimes the rain is cold. But he can only reach out a hand Sitting by the window.
There is a child in the tower. There are no steps to climb. The stones and grout are smooth like water Vines could never climb
There is a child in the tower. His company is a rose. And every day and every night
Next to it, he’ll write prose.
There is a child in the tower. Some days he’d dream he’s free. But the shadows pull him close to tell He’ll never get the key.
There is a child in the tower Some say it is a ghost. But the words fall flat and they’ll all ignore In favor of a toast.
The Idea of a Savior: Interpretations of Sacrifice and Salvation in China
Abigail
Schlipp Religion offers morality, and at times, identity, establishing it as either a mobilizer or a hindrance to ideology. Through stories and principles, religion introduces an explanation for what already is and an expectation for what is to come. Religion’s reach, as it begins to define humanity within the confines of its system, offers power to one who can harness its story.
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has captured the minds of billions, inspiring hope in life after death through the transfer of His power to those who follow suit–dying to their flesh and believing in Him as Lord and Savior. If such power can be grasped and applied, it becomes a useful tool for the one who wields the narrative.
In the nineteenth and turn of the twentieth century, China was struggling to find its place on the world stage. Coming out of the Opium Wars, it was clear that reform was needed to rival industrialized nations, but thinkers and leaders varied in the reach they saw fit. Looking for the necessary power, reformist writer Lu Xun turned to Christianity’s core. Decades later, and still without international power, communist leader Mao Zedong
distributed Lu Xun’s works to the Chinese people. The broad focus on sacrifice, martyrdom, and salvation used by Lu was continued in Mao’s structure. In literature and politics, the material is continually differentiated from the source, shifting with the ends they desire. The Passion's imagery of a martyr in opposition to the masses, whose death brings salvation, becomes a humanized and intellectualized focus of Lu Xun's "Medicine" and "Revenge II," and a politicized example in Mao Zedong's ideology. Thematic elements in the death of Jesus are applied to China's state in hopes that the same resurrecting power it inspired will bring strength and vitality to the nation. The distortion of the Gospel accounts is an attempt to empower a country that instead strips the story of power as its martyrdom yields submission, salvation goes without sacrifice, and sacrifice lies in the masses.
Strength, Reform, and National Identity
The mid-nineteenth century marked a turning point in China’s history, initiating greater international interaction and the start of what would be deemed the “Century of Humiliation.” In the preceding centuries, China was prosperous with desirable resources that brought favor to its singular port in Canton.1 That long-held trade balance would not persist beyond the 1840s,
1 Stephen R. Platt, “New Domestic and Global Challenges, 1792–1860,” in The Oxford History of Modern China, ed. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Oxford University Press, 2022), 53.
given Europe’s recent industrialization and its accompanying technological advancements. Through trade with Great Britain, opium had been introduced to the Chinese market, and in an attempt to remove the foothold it had gained, conflict broke out.2
Between the inadequate government and the decline in trade profit, the Qing dynasty could not produce a naval force to rival Western capabilities. There was a “grotesque discrepancy in military strength between the British and the Qing [that] would be replayed”3 throughout the war’s duration, proving it to be a “onesided war.” 4Margins would remain in the treaties that followed the First Opium War, where “all of the favorable terms… were on the British side, with no concessions to the Chinese” from any Western power.5 A similar pattern would follow in the Second Opium War, fourteen years later, in an “increasingly unequal relationship with the West.”6 The results of these wars, outside of the infringement on the nation’s workings, caused people “to ponder over China’s newly revealed impotence.”7
The decades between and after the wars were defined by 2 Ibid, 60–61.
3 Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of China (Picador, 2011), 111.
4 Platt, “New Domestic and Global Challenges,” 62.
5 Ibid, 63.
6 Orville Schell and John Delury, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century (Random House, 2014), 39.
7 Ibid, 43.
both the revelation that reform was necessary and the government’s incompetence to meet such demands. The Qing dynasty expressed a desire for change inconsistent with the actions taken, as there was continued uncertainty of “how to go about it” in a firm tenet of Confucianism.8 Outside of the Hundred Days Reform, headed by the Guangxu Emperor, and the too little that happened too late in the “New Policies,” China was bound by “traditions and customs [so] one can hardly do what one wants.”9 Discontent with the tardiness and inefficiency culminated in a revolution in 1911. A new form of government still failed to produce sufficient change and restored the dynasty.10 As time went on and systems shifted, perspectives did the same. Thinkers and leaders continued to theorize what would save the nation, looking not only to the practical Western developments, but also to the “core of what it meant to be Chinese.”11 Initial ideas of reform first pushed the idea of self-strengthening and then that of “ti-yong”–Western means to protect the Chinese essence.12 Reforms were limited by the search for techniques with varied perceptions of what the core
8 Schell and Delury, Wealth and Power, 79.
9 Ibid, 71.
10 Peter Zarrow, “Felling a Dynasty, Founding a Republic,” in The Oxford History of Modern China, ed. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Oxford University Press, 2022), 127–131.
11 Ibid, 100.
12 Schell and Delury, Wealth and Power, 70.
was. Failure amplified the call for greater, “radical reform.”13 Chen Duxiu saw the issue in the culture and the solution in the youth. Less affected by the grip of tradition, he hoped that through his journal, New Youth, there could be an openness of discussion. One writer he published, Lu Xun, found a similar need to target the core of Chinese culture and awaken the masses to the detrimental nature of stagnancy.14 Amidst the allegories employed by Lu was a connection between their reformist beliefs and Christ’s Passion.
Gospel Account
Nearly three years after His ministry’s start, the life of Jesus came to an end. The last week of His life had begun with His Sunday entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey.15 Before spending the Passover in Jerusalem, He had predicted His death to His followers at least three times, sharing that He, as the Son of Man, must suffer many things and be glorified.16 When the meal with His disciples came on Thursday night, the foretelling
13 Ibid, 95.
14 Ibid, 150–153.
15 Matthew 21:1–9; Mark 11:1–10; Luke 19:28–38; John 12:12–15 (New International Version). The included pronouns, and those to follow, referencing Christ throughout verses from the New Internation Version were capitalized for clarity, to provide continuous reverence, and to make clear the perspective of Christ as fully God.
began again through the bread and wine at the table. He described the bread as His body, broken for them, and the cup as the new covenant in His blood, shed for them.17 Together, the disciples partook in both the physical elements and the representation of Christ’s divine substitution. Later that night, after retreating in prayer, Jesus’ location was attained from a disciple for thirty pieces of silver, allowing temple guards to arrest Him. His trial would last through the night and into the next day as He went before the Jewish High Priest, Sanhedrin Court, tetrarch, and Roman governor.18 Amidst the questioning, Jesus was mocked by the temple and Roman guards before He was flogged by the latter, sustaining deep cuts into His back from the whip.19 The soldiers mocked Him and His divinity, placing a crown of thorns on His head and a wooden scepter in His hand as He was taken before the governor, chief priests, rulers, and people. Cheers of “Hosanna” for His arrival at the beginning of the week could not be further from the “crucify Him” that would come days later. 20 Despite
19 William D. Edwards et al., “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” JAMA 255, no. 11 (1986): 5–7, https://theapologiaproject.com/PDFs/ historical/ON%20THE%20PHYSICAL%20DEATH%20OF%20JESUS%20 CHRIST.pdf. The page numbers reference the cited PDF.
the governor’s insistence that Christ was not guilty, the people’s cries clearly indicated the outcome they sought. Jesus was then sent to be crucified and carried His cross, with the help of another man, to “the place of the Skull.”21 There, His hands and feet were nailed to a cross, and He hung with arms outstretched and His bare back against the wood until the afternoon. The Roman soldiers, while casting lots for His clothes, offered Him vinegar three times. The first time, mixed with myrrh, was an act of mercy to provide relief from the pain. The second taunted Him, questioning the truthfulness of His power and ability to save Himself. The third was the only offer that Jesus accepted, taking the vinegar from a sponge to quench His thirst.22 He spoke of two things while on the cross–a request for forgiveness from God for the incomprehension of the people and a statement that “it is finished.”23 Though the declaration marked His final breath, it did not equate to His life’s end. Three days later, on Sunday morning, the stone at the entrance of His tomb was moved, His body was missing, and He was seen alive with scars on His hands, feet, and sides.24
Rather than being fully God and fully man, the characters in Lu Xun’s prose fulfill the sole qualifications of the latter. The subject of “Revenge II” has no name throughout, referenced only by titles and the pronouns “he,” “him,” and “his.”25 The primary title used in the prose is “Son of God,” used nine times to “son of man’s” three times. In the first sentence, the former title is introduced with the phrase “he thinks himself the Son of God.”26
Even with an explicit deistic connection, the framing establishes that the position is the subject’s own design in contrast to a fact based in reality. The four uses to follow include “their” before the title, once again underscoring the validity of any true deity–attributing the subject more to his own people than to God, as “their” possession precedes His association.27 The connection to God is doubted after the subject parallels Jesus in quoting Psalm
25 Initially, the lack of capitalization for what could be divine pronouns (the subject of “Revenge II” is not clearly stated to be a deity) was noted as a potential example of Lu’s emphasis on humanity. Without capitalization in Chinese characters or an absolute standard for capitalization amongst Christian literature and translation, it is less likely that this was intentional. Since the translated work was published in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, there is a possibility that the lowercase pronouns bore relevance in the desire to further stress that the subject was not an example on the basis of religion, offering greater distance between the story’s subject and the allusion to Christ. There is no clear interpretation of what implications the lowercase pronouns offer.
26 Lu Xun, “Revenge II,” in Wild Grass, trans. Gladys Yang and Yan Xianyi (Foreign Language Press, 1974), 16, https://www.bannedthought. net/China/Individuals/LuXun/LuXun-1927-WildGrass-1974.pdf.
27 Lu Xun, “Revenge II,” 16–17.
22, “‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ (My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?).”28 Whereas the quotation asks a question, Lu goes on to make a definitive statement: “God had forsaken him, and so he is the son of man after all.”29 There was no longer a question from a man out of suffering or the progression of the psalm, which details the holiness of God, the praise He will receive, and the salvation He will bring for the psalmist.30 Instead, death rids the subject of any credited divinity. Lu continues his emphasis on Christ’s humanity in the final title used, “son of man,” which gains intensity in context and order. Concluding the prose, he writes, “Those that reek most of blood and filth are not those who crucify the Son of God, but those who crucify the son of man.”31 Greater blame is placed not on killing the Divine, but on killing one of their own, so that humanity trumps divinity in value. The finality of the phrase makes clear the last thought Lu wants the reader to have. Ending with “son of man” leaves the subject in his humanity. Similarly, “Medicine” closes with a somber situation. Two mothers stand before their sons’ graves, who, with their own deaths, seem to be “of man” as well. As one son is a martyr and the other seemed to be “holding his own life in his hands” as he “split”
28 Ibid, 17.
29 Ibid.
30 Psalm 22 (New International Version).
31 Lu Xun, “Revenge II,” 17.
the bread covered in blood, the two parallel the martyr Christ and His communion.32 Neither Xia Yu, a revolutionary, nor Little Shuan, a participant in the bread and blood, resurrects within the story’s confines.33 The crow in the cemetery flies off, not landing on Xia Yu’s grave as the sign his mother asked of him.34 Both stories end without hope, a “retelling of Jesus’ crucifixion deprived of the resurrection.”35 There is no promise of life or restoration within them, as a chance that there may be resurrection after the words on the page is not guaranteed. Without resurrection, it begs the question of what salvation is offered, or if any is offered at all.
As the characterization in Lu Xun’s works reflects mortality, the content exhibits his interest in the Passion as a concept. The subject’s treatment in “Revenge II” is repeatedly focused on the oneness held with those inflicting such pain. He takes in the experience, wanting to “remain sober to savour the
32 Lu Xun, “Medicine,” in Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, eds. and trans. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Foreign Languages Press, 1972), 28, https://www.bannedthought.net/China/Individuals/LuXun/ SelectedStoriesOfLuHsun-1972.pdf.
33 Mario De Grandis, "The Dialectics of Hope and Despair: Twisting the Biblical Message in Lu Xun’s ‘Medicine,’” Annali Di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Orientale 59, no. 1 (2023): 313, https://doi.org/10.30687/ annor/2385-3042/2023/01/012. The 1974 translation of “Medicine” as cited below uses Wade-Giles romanization; all names referencing characters in “Medicine” throughout the paper use Pinyin spellings from the cited paper.
34 Lu, “Medicine,” 33.
35 De Grandis, “The Dialectics,” 324.
Israelites’ treatment of their Son of God.”36 The line is repeated in the prose three times, as he rejects the “wine mixed with myrrh” and feels the “pain from his hands and feet.”37 His “sober” state displays an acute awareness of his situation and its cause, the “pitiable” and “execrable creatures.”38 The view of them in both descriptions is moved by “the agony of compassion and execration.”39 There is pain in his experience, while he feels both sadness and the weight of their wrongfulness. The desire to “savour” the sentiment differs from the rationale of Christ’s rejection of the myrrh, suggesting a contentment in the doom to come.40 On the cross, the subject takes the opportunity “to pity their future but hate their present.”41 While his outlook is not as optimistic as Christ’s, he is still aware of something to come. The future is unknown, but not one that he finds joy in, rather a sorrow in his “pity.” As the text ends with his crucifixion, the author presents no information on the future’s content. The bounds of the text bear an unlikely hope found only in the parallel to Christ.
The author’s approach had a “practical end in mind,”
36 Lu, “Revenge II,” 16–17.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 De Grandis, “The Dialectics of Hope and Despair,” 318.
41 Lu, “Revenge II,” 16–17.
seeking an application that would strengthen the nation.42 Just as the thinkers did both before and in his time, Lu searched with the sole intent of finding the solution for China’s apparent “dehumanization” at the hands of the West.43 The humanization of Christ reflects his attempt to pull apart the components of sacrifice as it relates to the revolutionaries, rejected by the Confucian thinkers. In doing so, Lu rids the Passion of its power. The death of Christ was a purposeful event that did not go without His resurrection. It is implied through the usage of “Son of Man” that Christ will claim victory over death. His foretelling did not end with His suffering, but stated that “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”44 Just as He must be crucified, He must rise again. The title is also a reference to a Messianic prophecy in which the “son of man” was given “dominion and glory and a kingdom.”45 Without the life and glory that would come out of His death, the Passion narrative lacks the power it offers to those who will join Christ as they take part in the breaking of His body and shedding of His blood. Though powerless, Lu Xun’s works exemplify a longing for hope, revealing more about the
42 De Grandis, "The Dialectics of Hope and Despair,” 313.
43 Schell and Delury, Wealth and Power, 152.
44 Lk 24:7 (NIV).
45 Daniel 7:13–14 (NIV).
revolutionaries than the means of salvation.
The Politicization of Christ and the Powerlessness of the Passion
Religion is defined by Karl Marx, the father of communism, as the “opium of the people.”46 Within the People’s Republic of China, religion is allowed as long as it does not interfere with the state. Despite limitations, religious concepts were integrated into Maoist China through the spread of Lu Xun’s works. The writer was called a “great thinker and revolutionary,” whose pieces were publicized to represent the Party’s goals.47 His expressions of firm individualism during his lifetime were reworked under Mao. History changed the intent, making his works show society “as the Party and Mao saw it.”48 Lu’s focus on sacrifice was highlighted in the chosen selections. Written words and revolutionary status frame an example of the “spirit of selfsacrifice.”49 Though Mao had a clear idea of sacrifice in mind for
46 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge University Press, 1970), 3, https://www.marxists. org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critique_of_Hegels_Philosophy_of_ Right.pdf. The page number notes the page on the PDF cited from Marxists Internet Archive.
47 Merle Goldman, “The Political Use of Lu Xun,” The China Quarterly no. 91 (1982), 447. https://www.jstor.org/stable/653366.
48 Ibid, 447.
49 Mabel Lee and 陳順妍, “On the Position of the Writer: Lu Xun and Gao Xingjian,” in Talking Literature: Essays on Chinese and Biblical Writings and Their Interaction, ed. Raoul David Findeisen and Martin Slobodník (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2013), 184. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc16rxs.17.
the people under the Party’s aim, the content of Lu’s sacrifice was neglected, along with his biblical basis for sacrificial concepts. Intentional disregard spread beyond the literature to the application of martyrdom, sacrifice, and the object of salvation.
Martyrdom Yields Submission
Through ideology and action, Mao Zedong revolved around the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Party was both an end and a means to the end of socialism. In hopes of encouraging exposure to the Party’s areas of growth, Mao began the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1956, through which intellectual review may be flowers blooming as “a hundred schools of thought contend.”50 The extremity of the criticisms was unexpected. Far harsher than the flowers Mao wanted, the statements were deemed “ poisonous weeds” and their speakers a threat to the Party whose every aim was the people’s benefit.51 The Anti-Rightist Campaign that materialized from the new rhetoric and lens worked to remove those within the Party, government, academia, and universities who were identified as “rightists” with imprisonment, internment, exile, and surveillance.52 Much of the campaign was characterized
50 Smith, S. A., “The Early Years of the People’s Republic,” in The Oxford History of Modern China, ed. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Oxford University Press, 2022), 226.
51 Ibid, 225.
52 Christine Vidal, “The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978-2014),” HAL Open Science 4 (2016): 3.
by “political labeling”53 that sought to meet “centrally determined quotas,”54 and effectively removed opposition to Mao as his ideology spread.55
The campaign foreshadowed the revolution to come in 1966. The Cultural Revolution is at the forefront of Mao’s memory. A return to the CCP’s “revolutionary roots,”56 it developed “the moral foundation of socialism” amongst the collective through ideology to move the nation closer to its socialist solution.57 Among the principles was the removal of class consciousness, an argument that could destroy any societal structure if its development and application propelled it. The idea was grasped by the youth who took to political concepts with fervor, believing them more stable than their uncertain futures.58 Charged with Mao’s support, they formed the Red Guards and became the face of the Cultural Revolution. Opposition only fueled the movement with the label of a “counterrevolutionary” and the potential for
53 Dayton Lekner, “Echolocating the Social: Silence, Voice, and Affect in China’s Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns, 1956–58,” The Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 4 (2021): 937, https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0021911821000668.
54 Smith, “The Early Years,” 226.
55 Vidal, “The 1957-1958 Anti-Rightist Campaign,” 6.
56 Richard Curt Kraus, “The Cultural Revolution Era, 1964–1976,” in The Oxford History of Modern China, ed. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Oxford University Press, 2022), 240.
57 Xing Li, “The Chinese Cultural Revolution Revisted,” China Review 1, no. 1 (2001): 144, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23461931.
58 Kraus, “The Cultural Revolution Era,” 244.
violent confrontation.59 Few challenged the authority of the Party amidst the ostracization of family and community members. The powerful frame under which the “struggle” fell interacted with national identity and self-sacrifice. Anyone against the revolution faced the “guilt, self-criticism, and sacrifice [that] were such powerful mitigating sentiments that even hatred and a sense of injustice were not allowed to surface.”60 The choice was either to move in support, change ways, or face the consequences. Ascribing someone a negative label would require proof of change that came in “the route of mortification…to prove their loyalty to Mao and the Party.”61 Anything less than total allegiance and its complete expression was unacceptable.
Jesus’ martyrdom results in an invitation to join Him and partake in communion, as seen through relations between the Jews and Gentiles of the time. He becomes the definition of peace and an example of self-sacrifice as He “made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting
59 Ibid, 245.
60 Tu Wei-ming, “Destructive Will and Ideological Holocaust: Maoism as a Source of Social Suffering in China,” Daedalus 125, no. 1 (1996): 162, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027358.
61 Lu, Xing, “Ideology and Discourse: Rhetorical Construction of Mao Zedong’s ‘New Communist Person’ (1949-1976).” In Words of Power, the Power of Words. The Twentieth-Century Communist Discourse in International Perspective, ed. Giulia Bassi (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2019), 414, http://hdl.handle.net/10077/29380.
aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.”62 The goal of Christ’s sacrifice was reconciliation between two groups, much like the peace and unity sought by Mao via selfcriticism in the Cultural Revolution. The two unities differ in their formation. Through Christ, unity is found “in Himself” and the reconciliation of “both of them.” Differences are set aside to come together in “one new humanity” through Christ. The Maoist idea of setting aside differences does not embrace those with differences, but rather produces the “new communist person” that only aligns with one viewpoint and set of values.63 It is not all differences set aside for the good of all, but some differences set aside for the definition of “all” that becomes a “new communist society.”64 There is a clear inclination towards the proletariat in the attack on the “liberal bourgeoisie” that is not seen in the language regarding Jews and Gentiles. Thus, Chinese sacrifice is the suppression of independent thought. Rather than martyrdom that speaks out for a cause, Mao’s results in submission. When a person engages in Maoist self-sacrifice, they cede all individuality that makes them a 62 Ephesians 2:14–16 (NIV).
63 Lu, “Ideology and Discourse,” 403.
64 Ibid.
person to align themselves with the national narrative. They are not martyrs for a cause, but to a cause.
Sacrifice Lies in the Masses
Despite the improper emphasis on Christ’s humanity, in doing so, Lu highlights a key aspect of the narrative that Mao seems to neglect–the masses wrongfully reject the sacrificial savior. Paralleling Jesus’ experience, the unnamed martyr in “Revenge II,” while sharing a general identity as an Israelite, is not accepted by the group.65 The clear rejection places the two parties in opposition to one another, an important position if Christ and the subject fulfill the claim of “Son of God.” Given the two sides, if the martyr is right in sacrifice, then the masses are wrong. It was, after all, the masses who killed both the subject of “Revenge II” and Christ, as the Israelites in both instances found reason for condemnation and shouted for crucifixion.
In contrast, Maoist campaigns favored the masses, finding them to be “the real heroes.”66 The validity of the Party was founded on its reflection of the masses.67 Their rightfulness made their support the strongest claim in favor of any leader or movement. Such a foundation put all the sacrifices that Mao
65 Lu, “Revenge II,” 16–17.
66 Mao Zedong, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, trans. David Quentin and Brian Baggins, (Marxists Internet Archive, 2019): 60.
67 Ibid, 10.
supported within the context of the masses’ consistently correct stance, so that sacrifices would be for them. Mao’s perspective on the masses established the “primacy of the ‘general will’ [that] demands that, at a critical juncture in China’s development, any vicious attacks on the Party, irresponsible criticisms of the government, subversive remarks about the leadership, or simply idle talk will be extremely harmful to the well-being of the people,”68 creating a need for self-sacrifice. To sacrifice oneself would be to support the nation. The basis of Maoist sacrifice is rooted in a keen understanding of the common desire to return the country to its former greatness. Since all Chinese were united in this heritage, they would once again be united in the pursuit of restoration. As an instrument in this aspiration, the Cultural Revolution was perceived as a “necessary sacrifice for maintaining the purity of the socialist spirit.”69
While Christ also sacrificed Himself for the good of the masses, it was not because their position was correct. His death would not serve to prove the masses right, but to take from the context of Lu, awaken them from “their slumber of centuries” to the truth.70 His final words express this as Christ said, “‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’” noting the 68 Tu, “Destructive Will,” 162.
69 Ibid, 167.
70 Schell and Delury, Wealth and Power, 152.
wrongfulness within their ignorance.71 His self-sacrifice, like the one that Mao sought from the Chinese people, would be for the betterment of the collective, but His message was not in alignment with their views. The basis of Christ’s sacrifice was salvation, contrary to Mao’s idea of sacrifice that works toward a political goal of national unity. The masses are a tool in his aspiration that, based on the foundation of the Party, provides validity to the incorporation of sacrifice.
Salvation Goes Without Sacrifice
Within the framework of the Passion, salvation is found in Christ’s sacrifice and death. In the context of Maoist China, the opposite is true–no sacrifice or humility is necessary for Mao to become China’s salvation. One of his strongest claims to power lies within the larger-than-life Long March narrative. Retellings portray Mao as a hero on the journey from Jiangxi province to Yan’an. His early exclusion from the CCP leadership is viewed critically, exemplified by the prosperity that accompanied his rise to power. The entirety of the march becomes a battle, a romantic fight against the Guomindang, the instigator of their trek and, in conflict, the cause of its difficulty.72 As it is militarized, Mao’s survival testifies to his heroic persona and strength in
71 Lk 23:34 (NIV).
72 John M. Nolan, “The Long March: Fact and Fancy,” Military Affairs 30, no. 2 (1966): 80, 88, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1983542.
survival. Through the tens of thousands that didn’t reach Yan’an, sacrifice remains in the story, but not on the part of Mao.73
The Passion’s biblical accounts make clear that its savior figure, Jesus, willingly gave of His own life. His humility in setting aside His deity was what ultimately led to redemption and His subsequent exaltation. As described in Philippians 2, the mindset of Christ Jesus was one that “did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”74 Unlike Christ, the mortal Mao deified himself in an attempt to attain the same status. The repetition of his image and the publication of his phrases equated him to an enlightened and irrefutable figure. His face filled billboards, his pins were worn, and his portrait went on display. Not only did his likeness fill Chinese daily life, but it became synonymous with revolution and stability. Its omission suggested a state of counterrevolution, requiring all to be involved in his cult and present explicit support.75 Despite the recognizable persona he
73 James Carter, “The Rise of Nationalism and Revolutionary Parties, 1919–1937,” in The Oxford History of Modern China, ed. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Oxford University Press, 2022), 169.
74 Philippians 2:5–7 (NIV).
75 Stefan R. Landsberger, “The Deification of Mao: Religious Imagery and Practices during the Cultural Revolution and Beyond,” in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives, ed. Woei Lien Chong (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
spread, the impact lacks the same weight as Christ. It was after “He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death– even death on a cross” that “therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name.”76 His exaltation was not of His own accord or preceding a posture of humility. His humility is all the more impactful given His innate status in His “equality with God.” Mao lacked divine status and attempted to achieve it through the spread of his thought and face instead of adopting a practice of humble servanthood. The root of Christ’s power could not be harnessed by Mao unless he died to himself.
Conclusion
Self-sacrifice in martyrdom bears great dedication to a cause. The whole of oneself is given to the benefit or detriment of oneself and others. While sacrifice for another embodies selflessness, a coercive recipient may taint the result and take advantage of the choice. The Passion presents one of, if not the most, powerful examples of sacrifice and martyrdom. Willingly giving His own life, Christ, in both humanity and divinity, conquered death and the grave. His actions were motivated by love and brought forth salvation. The application of key elements by reformist writer Lu Xun and leader Mao Zedong sought a similar 2002), 140, 153–154.
76 Phil 2:8–9 (NIV). Italicization was added for emphasis.
power for China. Without the center–Christ–the story becomes void, a powerless representation of how twisted sacrifice can bring a prideful figurehead control at the expense of those who gave their lives.
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First Welcome - Outreach in Mbale, Uganda
Ainsley Kudron
Summer in the City That Never Sleeps
Ellison Mortenson
Made for the One
Olivia Gonzalez
There’s a man who takes off his shoes when he climbs oak trees. And he wasn’t at all like my idea of the “one.” What I thought was created to complete me soon began to dim beneath oaken shadows. The created basking in the Creator.
There’s “One” who holds you both. Surely he’s out there for me, strapping and tall with curly dark brown hair and muddy green eyes. His sweet voice calls you silly names and admires how you aimlessly ramble with a dimpled smile. He’s bound to have rough hands—working hands—like a real man, burned and scarred by wood and metal, each a little picture of every project he’s procured. Surely he’s out there for me. Isn’t he? Let me hold your hands. Feel my palms, take a breath, and listen—the “one” is not out there. The “one,” soulmates, invisible red threads, and intimately known moles are but make-believe fairy tales. Dangerous, idyllic
entrapments. To think that one person was made for you, to fit you perfectly, is ridiculous. A crushing blow, I know, but hear my words and sigh. Despite an absent “one,” you’re bound to find a special guy. I’m sorry to break it to you.
Why can’t the “one” exist? Because the premise is flawed. A man cannot fit you perfectly, because sweetheart, you’re not spotless yourself. You weren’t created for anyone but your Creator. “My missing rib! My missing rib!” a mustache-garling, corduroyhat-wearing church-boy cries. You’re missing the point, churchboy, and also, get a haircut. Adam and Eve were not the “one” for each other; they were simply each other’s only choice. God knew, of course, in His perfect sovereignty, that they would fit together. Just because men and women complement each other doesn’t mean “one” man will complement you flawlessly. If you try, you’ll surely ruin each other.
How grossly unromantic of me.
The “one” is never satisfied. It always needs to know. It yearns for assurance that the man you’re with now is the “one.”
Sadly, you do not have the authority to ascertain your wedding day. Our two-dimensional lens can only see the present moment, and as scary as it is, it’s beautiful to breathe the air of now. Too much knowing is too much of a pain. Plus, the future is moldable. Stand up, applaud, and wipe your tears. Darling, you can change! It’s liberating, really, I promise.
Hear me now.
My love, he will always let you down, because he was not made for you. How hauntingly selfish! We are so deeply flawed by transgressions—sin’s water carves into your youthful riverbend. Can a man direct the flow or control the stream? Throw him a shovel, dig at the waterbed, and see his work wash away by morning. He is just like you, ruled by the same sin. He cannot heal, he cannot fix, and he cannot complete you.
But look up, daughter, because I know Someone who can.
A solution. Perhaps the “one” cannot literally exist, but the capital “O,” “One,” can. Christ. He’s knowable, He’s divine, and He desperately loves you beyond all measure. Our desire for the “one” to complete us derives from our lack of intimacy with
Christ. We’re all longing for oneness because we have forsaken the “One” who tore the veil. A relationship with the “One” will fulfill you in every way. He’s perfect, so you don’t have to be. His glorious magnificence completes your soul: the created aligned with the Creator. He is sovereign, planning a newly furnished future better than anything you could ever design for yourself. His sacrifice for you on the cross—holy blood covers your sins and fully restores your flesh. And sweeter still, when two individuals are securely endowed in their oneness with Him, they can come together to make something wonderful.
Consider these analogies.
On a dark oak coffee table, stained with water-mark rings and handmade coasters, lies a puzzle and a vase of flowers. Two puzzle pieces fit each other, made only for each other, with no other potential matches elsewhere. All other puzzle pieces will never fit, despite how hard the cardboard bends against unfamiliar ridges. Take a glance across the puzzle to the vase. Each flower is unique, with petals and stems never to be so fragrant and freshly folded together again. Still, what forces tears to pool into the corner of your eyes is how delicately each flower comes together into one bouquet. A rose could astonish, paired with some white
carnations, maybe a sunflower, or even alone. The “One” who gives her life is bound to make another more beautiful when arranged together and bound by twine.
Forgive me, I’ve been disingenuous.
The man described at the front of this piece is not a fantasy. He’s his own, as I am mine. As adventurous, charming, and genuine as he is, he could never compete with my Creator’s reverberating awe, the way His hand cradles my back in perfect, protective wholeness.
Perhaps, he’s pine needles in a winter-blooming and parchment-wrapped bouquet. . . .
“Let’s hang out here for a second,” he said from behind. Our muddied shoes crunched against the tan-drawn trail beneath our feet. A gorgeous oak stretched its arms over the path to the right, casting riveting light and dark shades below. On the other side, roots grew slanted into the dirt as it descended into a winding creek. I arched my neck to admire the dancing leaves—small and curled with pointy edges.
I could feel his smile.
“Let’s climb it!”
After slipping down the dead leaves with a thump, he finally straddled the thick branch over the trail as I watched from below. At some point, he took off both his socks and shoes to climb efficiently.
I focused on the tree stump and took that route instead. My fingers gripped at the first knuckle as I pulled up, my back muscles firing and shoulders tensing under the weight of my body. A triumphant shout signaled to him that I had made it up the tree. He was too far up to see me. I stood on my toes in the nook of the branches below, narrowing my eyes at him as he looked down. I laughed at the sudden point of his eyebrow and retreated backward. My toes crawled up again, and we met eyes with gentle laughter.
A thick branch below me fit the curve of my back like a hammock. What a lovely rest my Creator made, just for me. I lay quiet at the wind ruffling the leaves, and he slowly scooted towards me. Twaack, bark scratching against the fabric of his thick, dark khakis. Bark against my spine—alive, swelling with breath. It felt like everything. I described the view above to him, how the thin leaves above me curved like folded hands to make a circle like a skylight. He “mmmm” -ed along with my words. After a bit, I could see him from my perch, and I met his eyes before closing
mine again. “This is so much better than the movies,” I breathed.
“What—like what normal people do on dates?” He questioned.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Yeah.”
Beneath my God’s oaken hands, who fit my back, I realized. He wasn’t made for me, and I for him. And yet, here we were in this moment, two created beings whole with our Creator in His oak.
A handsome union of oak and life and lovely curved branches.
Pearl of Great Price
Grace Florey
Conversations with a Book
Amanda Fagan
Rose found me in a bookstore, on display in my shiny new sleeve. I used to think books were meant simply for reading, but she poured her soul into me. Her friends would give her stares as she scribbled notes along my margins, but she always replied the same. “I’m having a conversation with the book.” That stuck with me, not only on my pages, but her words were carved into my soul. It changed my perspective on what my worth was, what I could mean to someone.
That’s why I was confused when she handed me off to a boy in her class. She’d read me over and over, cover to cover. Why was she done? Her mind was imprinted on mine. My sleeve had been weathered with love from her fingerprints every morning, damp with the condensation from her iced coffee. How could she give me up after all of our late-night conversations under her bedside light?
I’ll admit, I was hard on the boy at first, unwilling to open up. But with time, he grew on me. He read me every day, thumbing through my pages with the utmost care, dwelling on every line of mine. But his eyes lingered longer on Rose’s remarks. He soaked
up our conversations in addition to the story. He started to add to the conversations, making his additions in the upper margins, and when he ran out of space, on sticky notes wedged between pages.
One day, he handed me back to Rose, my pages fuller than before, stuffed with conversations bursting to be read. She excitedly took me in her hands once more and stayed up every night for a week, quickly flipping through me, tracing her fingers along the margins. Our conversations had resumed.
Rose never stopped having conversations with books, but I should have known that I couldn’t be the only one she’d share them with. Eventually, I was tucked away onto her shelf, spine to spine with other books, conversations in their pages as well. On occasion, she’d take me out again, smiling at our lines, laughing at the boy’s sticky notes.
On a rainy night, after months of not flipping through me, she raided the shelf in rage. But it wasn’t pure anger. No. It was worse. It was grief. The tears staining her cheeks weren’t like the ones she shed pouring over me, soaking in my stories. They were tears of pain, of betrayal. Of loss. And she thought, for some reason, that she could no longer hang onto the conversations we shared.
She took me to a used bookstore the next morning, packed
tightly away with our conversations still stuffed in my pages. I sat in the dark for a day before being placed on a new shelf in a new place.
Then a new girl came, found me in the thrift store, on display in my weathered sleeve.
Telluride Frost Hailey Quiroz
Yesnaby Cliffs
Olivia Gonzalez
Lady Liberty Rises Above the Fog
Amanda Fagan
Healing in Heaven
Bouquet Vinyard
I remember the day my mom died like it was yesterday. My family packed into the small hospital room, squished onto the couch, shoulder to shoulder, and talking in hushed voices so as not to disturb my mom in her unconscious state. Nurses running in intermittently, checking tubes and gauges that I did not understand, and then running out without a word. Family taking turns standing over my mom, clasping her hands, whispering words into her ears, hoping that she could hear them and knowing that they could be our last. When she had decided only the day before that she was ready to let go, the nurses began to lower her oxygen, and we watched in desperation, itching to save her, yet knowing we could not. We tried to make light of a situation that was anything butsinging “Smokey the Bear” (an overdone family camping tradition) and speaking only positively in my mom’s presence. I remember as the night progressed, everyone left but my dad, sisters, and me. We knew the hours facing us were her last, and so we all sat, straining our eyelids back, fighting sleep, and counting the seconds between her ragged and inconsistent breaths, hoping by some miracle that she would open her eyes and ask us why we all looked so somber.
That miracle never came. I woke up a half hour past midnight to my dad’s sobbing and saying, “She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone,” and me asking the same question I’d asked myself for the past four years: Where is our miracle?
Growing up in a Pentecostal church, I was taught that God wanted to provide supernatural healing to the lives of all who called on him. That if two or more were gathered, the Lord would deliver. I definitely heard my fair share of healing testimonies. Casting out demons, laying hands on withered legs that supernaturally straighten out and become fully functioning, blind that can see, deaf that can hear, fatal diagnoses gone without a trace. Again and again, people called on God for help, putting their faith in him, and again and again, God followed through with miraculous healing.
My mom was the most Bible-believing, testifying, lively worshiping, healing-proclaiming woman there was. When the diagnosis came in 2020, none of that changed. Though the cancer had already spread from her breast to her shoulder, hip, and bones, she was still on her knees, praying and praising the Lord at any opportunity she got. She proclaimed in faith that cancer would be the last thing possible that she would die from. Her faith was so strong and her smile so wide that you would never be able to tell
the internal battle that she was facing--that her body was at war with itself.
When things went downhill, it happened quickly. After years of watching her lab results come back worse and worse, the hope in her eyes began to dim, and the fire in her spirit began to extinguish. I would come home from school to find her lying down and staring at the ceiling, never having gotten out of bed in the morning–depression spreading as quickly as the disease. In fear of knowing just how bad things had gotten, we chose to stop getting scans done. The loss of her personality in the final months of her life makes me think that the cancer reached her brain. A woman broken by misunderstood promises. A woman not ready to accept that the plan God had for her was not the plan that she had believed for. A woman who never got to see healing as a reality.
I don’t mean to say that my mom’s worship was in vain. Nor am I saying that the Lord is incapable of healing. But I won’t say that I didn’t struggle with the idea that my mom, who was the most God-fearing woman I’ve ever known, didn’t ever get to see the miracle of healing that she prayed for for so long. And I think that certain aspects of modern Christianity led me (and my mom) to believe that healing is a promised guarantee that comes with being a follower of God.
I think it’s important to recognize that God is not a genie and that we do not have control over Him. Contrary to some sermons I’ve heard, there is no amount of prayer, fasting, or believing that will force God’s hand to do what we want Him to do. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pray and ask God for our desires, but I think we should be more aware that our desires don’t always match up with God's will, and that can be hard to accept.
Following my mom’s death, my faith in God didn’t change, but some of my beliefs did. For a very long time, I struggled with the idea that God still does miracles or heals at all. When churches would give messages on healing, I would leave the room frustrated that pastors continued to give false hope about something I did not believe to be true. It wasn’t until recently that I heard someone say something that I’d been trying to grasp for so long- “Sometimes, healing happens in heaven.” When I heard these words, something clicked in my brain. An idea that I’ve known to be true for yearsthat in heaven we are gifted with new bodies, and yet I’d never applied that idea to what my family had suffered through my mom’s death. Not every follower of God who sees disease or disability will get to see healing in their lives, but this does not mean that they didn’t pray enough or believe hard enough. Even though my mom never got to see healing on earth, she gets to see
healing in Heaven, where she is rejoicing in eternal life with the Father. I have slowly come to realize that this is a testimony in itself, and I wish that more churches recognized that even when we pray for healing on earth, sometimes God has something different in store.
Though it is not the popular belief in Christianity that God does not always choose to heal, I want to call attention to this because I have learned that God even works when it seems like he hasn’t. I don’t think that we should stop teaching about God’s miraculous healing power. I still wholeheartedly believe that God is our sole deliverer. But I think that the idea of God sometimes choosing not to deliver and perform miraculous healing needs to be recognized. As much as we proclaim that God wants to heal, we should proclaim that God wants to heal only if it is His will.
This is not a pessimistic view of God’s miraculous power. This is not a claim that He no longer heals. It is a call to attention for all those who have been unwavering followers of God and the testimony of their faith, even when they didn’t get to see immediate results. My mom’s story, though very different, reminds me of the Hall of Faith in the Bible. Hebrews 11:13-16 says,
“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from
afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”
The whole chapter discusses people in the Bible, like Abraham and Moses, who did not get to see the promises of God in their lifetime, yet still believed that He would provide and still remained faithful to His word.
I like to see my mom this way. Though she did not get to see the promise of healing fulfilled in her lifetime, she died believing that God had not given up on her. She remained faithful to Him even in the end, and she desired heaven. She was merely a sojourner on earth, and now she is home and at eternal rest with the Father. And God did provide. She fought the good fight, and she has been rewarded with a new body in Heaven. Though she will not go down in history as an Abraham or a Moses, I know that God has seen her faith and recognizes her as his good and faithful servant.
“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” –Hebrews 11:39-40
