Spring 2025
Death holds a fascinating, central place in Christian theology. The tortuous death of a human believed to be God incarnate is understood as uniquely salvific. Indeed, the heart of the Christian narrative depends on Jesus’ humility and obedience “to the point of death—even death on a cross.” The liturgical remembrance of that day marks one of the most crucial feasts in the church’s liturgical calendar: Good Friday.
The Christian tradition is similarly riddled with fascinating stories of death. Lazarus dies and is resurrected by Jesus, but he presumably dies another natural death some years later. Most of Jesus’ closest disciples were brutally killed for their faith before Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion. Perpetua sought after martyrdom, and Julian of Norwich’s mystical experiences begin with her sudden recovery, having been at death’s door steps. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed for participating in an assassination attempt to prevent further death of Jews in the Holocaust. Jürgen Moltmann has infamously said that Jesus suffered the death penalty in order to end the death penalty, all of which led to his own protest of the State of Georgia’s practice of
execution.
Our deaths are not things that can be staved off, hard as the medical industry might try. We are mortal creatures, which is to say—following Heidegger—that we are on a timeline toward death. Barring the possibility of Christ’s imminent return, we know how the story ends for each writer in this issue (readers too, I am afraid): it ends with you in the ground. You are closer to death than you were yesterday, and we do not really know what lies on the other side of life’s doorway.
Christians also believe that death can, under certain circumstances, be a holy event if the person has the resources to receive it as such. Death, after all, is not the last word; resurrection awaits. And so it’s possible, with the right resources and circumstances, to die a holy death—in hope of entering into the bliss that is life before God.
And yet death does not necessarily mark the end of our lives with people; we have peculiar and holy relationships to bodily remains. Indeed, various cultures react differently to bodily remains in the wake of death: some burn corpses into ashes, some place people in the ground, and others want to sit with the body for a time of grief prior to any lasting resting place.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Saint John the Baptist was the last portrait he created. Stylistically, it fits well within the canon of his work. John’s mysterious smile pairs seamlessly with that of the Mona Lisa. His oval-eyed gaze matches that of the Lady with an Ermine. But just as Leonardo kept a similar process and […]
“Love ya, Dad!” These were the last words I spoke to my father as I gave him a side hug inside my mother’s car. He was fiddling with his oxygen tanks, and we didn’t get an opportunity to have a full embrace. His anxiety was spiking as he prepared to head home. I wonder if […]
Everything encounters death. There’s no way around that: every life, be it human or flora or fauna, will perish. Every culture crumbles; every sensation fades; every memory is at some point forgotten. In the same vein every teleology, every philosophy, ends in death—or at least must pass through death. It is the inescapable, that which […]
The night Yitzhak flew out the window, Dalia had been having a beautiful dream. In the dream, she was in the home of her mother and father, in Haifa, looking out the window at the perfect Mediterranean blue of the sky. That was it—the whole dream. And yet while Dalia was dreaming it, she was […]
The first time I touched a dead man, my hands shook. On an otherwise ordinary day in the hospital, his heart had stopped. Despite the best efforts of the nurses surrounding him, his body wouldn’t take its cues from the hands pressing on his chest and pushing air from a bottle down his throat. When […]
Several years ago, my closest friend took her own life. Her death catapulted me into an abyss of unanswerable questions. Especially: Does suicide destroy or illuminate soul friendship? Our relationship as poets, soul friends and sister elders was grounded in deep and daring contemplation of matters of ultimate meaning. At the heart of our contemplation […]
The human instinct to make lessons out of living is built around one constant: our bodies cling to life, even when that life is being lived by others. The need to live tears muscle from bone as certainly as it rips a metaphoric heart in two. Sometimes I wonder if it’s our wounds that bind […]
Over and over. I don’t need a map anymore, haven’t for years. My body knows the way, like an experienced lover’s hand becomes accustomed to the curve of a hip or the sweep of a thigh around torso. But not in a good way, the anticipation flows in the wrong direction. Its the dead opposite […]
July 19th, 2018 was a Thursday. That morning at work, I settled into the week’s downhill slide with a warm mug of coffee and a covert scroll through Facebook. The blow fell with a whisper, as I almost scrolled past an old picture of Libby wearing her newborn baby in a sling, dressed for winter, […]
Raindrops flecked the windows beside my booth at Nighthawks Diner and Bar. I ordered the walleye and an old-fashioned. Petunias, purple and blousy, bloomed in flower boxes on the windowsills. I wrote a few lines in my journal and relished the spice and citrus of the cocktail, the Midwestern savor of my dinner. Minneapolis was […]
The light was golden, and the blood was red. It had spilled like milk across a waxed checkered tablecloth, or at least that’s how Janey had seen it. The groundhog, the same one as always, had been standing upright on the curb of their street, small dark paws to its unseen mouth. It hadn’t been […]
One day the last F-150 will sputter to a stop. The last fluorescent tube light in the last Wal-Mart will flicker off, casting the last aisle of spark plugs into darkness, and that will be that for trucks. The last gas pump will then sit idle, the pavement will turn to weeds and moss, and […]
My wife comes home, cold, slides into bed to warm against my sleepiness, and sighs. That snow. I drove through everything. To the toddler who’d never walked, every Friday for eighteen months beyond predictions, his slack presence swaddled on the living room couch. Encephalitis— nothing wrong with that little heart. Though the tiny mother’s had […]
We blamed ourselves, of course, the other eleven. Wasn’t it our fault? Matthew should have been the keeper of the purse, but no one liked Matthew, so they made Judas do it because he was the new guy. And soon no one liked him either. We never seemed to have enough money, and who else […]
The first death was a hawk dive— a fever dream. The second is biding its time like a retired general fishing. This time I am wide awake. I hear the chief priests have hired someone. I know I should be more grateful. But when the stench finally cleared and my eyes could bear the searing […]
“No, not that button. You gotta click the one that says, ‘Stop video.’ Bottom left.” “Yours says ‘Stop’ because your video’s on. He needs to push ‘Start video,’ and it’ll turn on.” You say nothing. You scan the other boxes on the video call, trying to match the names and unfamiliar faces to what you […]
Midway in the journey of our lifeI came to myself in a dark wood,for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tellthe nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh —the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so.But to set forth the […]
People often assume that theology is only for true believers: those who want to defend the existence of God against the skepticism of secular outsiders. But there’s an old open secret in the field: theologians often have a complicated relationship with belief, and some theologians are even non-believers. I’ve always been a secular—or non-religious—person. That’s […]
Freshly out of college, I began my adventure to Sonoma, California. I was on a quest to nurture my new infatuation with winemaking. After a formative year of studying food and wine in Europe, I signed up to be a seasonal cellar worker at a winery in Sonoma. A ripe twenty-two-year-old, my heart was fluttering […]
