My first reading of Shusako Endo’s novel, Silence, defeated me. The book was a part of a contemporary literature class that I took my senior year of high school, in which I encountered the likes of C. S. Lewis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marilynne Robinson, Walker Percy, Chaim Potok, and Flannery O’Connor. Perhaps needless to say, the class was a weird mix of Christianity, existentialism, and often … Continue reading Breaking Bread and Breaking Ties: Silence, Pearl, and Learning How to Read Again

  Every time I go home, my parents ask me the same question: “Have your grades dropped yet because you swing dance too much?” In their eyes, I wasted much of my college time at swing club. They see my Facebook page filled swing photos, and I spend many weekends away at swing exchanges. So as I finish my last semester, I think it is … Continue reading I Danced My Dance: Finding the Balance between Work and Play

                                                   Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.                                                                    … Continue reading Struggling Toward A Good Humor (Why It’s Worth Our While to See the Funny Side)

1. Off of the kitchen of my upstairs apartment is an unheated hallway and at the end of it is a carpeted staircase leading down to the driveway. The space is both an entrance and a smoking lounge. The screen door at the bottom of the staircase has been broken for years. It was left open one night last November, and in the morning the … Continue reading Snow on the Inside

“O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer Our spirits by Thine advent here Disperse the gloomy clouds of night And death’s dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.”     Shortly after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph brought him to Jerusalem where they encountered a man named Simeon. The Holy Spirit had promised Simeon that he would not die … Continue reading In Praise of Joy

It was the beginning of Junior year, and my friend Tara was helping me unpack my junk into our off-campus house. Like the good, patient individual that she is, she did not question how I had remembered to bring 27 different notebooks and forgotten my toothbrush, but all the same, there was something in my collection even she could not overlook. “What is this?” I … Continue reading Make Your Choice: Finding the Human Element Behind Technology

Three Reflections on Weezer’s Blue Album 1 By Noah Weinrich Weezer’s “Blue Album” is stuck in my CD player. Over the last ten months, the album has spun in my car’s stereo over a hundred times. No matter where I’m driving, what I’m doing, or who I’m with, the Blue Album is there. This album is remarkable for seamless synthesis of music with lyrics and … Continue reading Stuck in the Tape Deck

“Don’t scorn your life just because it’s not dramatic, or it’s impoverished, or it looks dull, or it’s workaday. Don’t scorn it. It is where poetry is taking place if you’ve got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open.” ― Philip Levine 1. The first poem I remember hearing was Seamus Heaney’s “Digging.” I was seventeen and flush with testosterone and pride … Continue reading Dirty Miracles: An Excavation of Southeast Michigan

by Katie Davenport Ralph Waldo Emerson and I don’t get along. At least, I’m assuming we wouldn’t have, had we both lived in the same century. His belief in the divinity of man and his failure to account for evil compel me to agree with Herman Melville’s assessment of his philosophy: “God help the poor fellow who squares his life according to this.”[1] And yet, … Continue reading A Time to Listen, and a Time to Ignore: Finding Your Voice in a Sea of Criticism