Becky Crook

In this interview, artist Barry Moser discusses racism, religion, and working amidst mystery.

A review of Death’s & Transfigurations by Paul Mariani.

In this interview, Gertrud Nelson discusses the relationship between stories and our faith as she explains the value of Godly Play in education.

In this interview, musician and artist Tracy Howe shares her experience of music, community, hope, and restoration.

In this essay, Becky Crook reflects on the experience of reading The Master and Margarita while dating an atheist.

BECKY: Shane, I’m interested in what you had to say in your book about the difference between normal and ordinary. It seems as though you make a distinction between the two, identifying normalcy as something that is not revolutionary, and ordinary as actually being something extraordinary. Can you explain this? SHANE: Well, the subtitle to my book […]

The Storyteller sat at the stern, usurped the silent figurehead, addressed expectant oarsmen, spoke words that dropped like cascades through a canyon, like light across a ledge, like the silent sinking of skipping stones; told honest tales of half-deceptions— the easy-forwards, the frictive backstrokes of the drifting way; told of the flowing ebb of changing […]

After 12+ years of Sunday school lessons, wondering what this “good news” stuff is all about, in June, I walked into a concert at the Showbox and witnessed what the kingdom of God really looks like. It’s colorful. Surprising. And musically delightful. The soul-piercing message was delivered from the pulpit by unlikely prophets: a Persian-American […]

TOJ: Could you describe what the process of writing a poem is for you? PW: The process feels like a necessary release. Wordsworth’s way of describing a poem as a “spontaneous overflow” gets it right. Of course, revision must follow—and often, lots of it. Then comes the determination of whether the poem is any good, […]