All around and above us were those towering walls of light, curving across building fronts, embedded in the sidewalks, custom-fitted to light poles: a cartoon lion eating a man in a suit; a rain of gold coins falling into the canoe of a naked rainforest family; a woman in lingerie running a bottle of Pepsi between her breasts; the Merrill Lynch talking fist asking, ‘Are you kicking ass or kissing it?’; a perfect human rear, dancing; a fake flock of geese turning into a field of Bebe logos; a dying grandmother’s room filled with roses by a FedEx man who then holds up a card saying ‘No Charge.’ And standing beneath all that bounty was our little Teddy, tiny and sad, whose grandfather could not even manage to get him into one crummy show.3
Aaron Collier
Aaron Collier lives in Chattavegas, TN, where he teaches English and plays music. He and his wife Laurie are expecting twin boys in May.
John Piper’s Bloodlines: Race, Cross and the Christian marks the entrance of a major American pastor into conversations about race and the church, but it also displays some problematic views of both race and Christ that ultimately work against Piper’s hopes for racial harmony.
Marilynne Robinson’s novels have become almost synonymous with loneliness, but solitude here remains entangled with a less acknowledged trope—an enveloping and dazzling darkness.
