Tuesday, February 18, 2014

A Sense of the Midlands

Photo of the A Sense of the Midlands cover 
and the launch invite from jaspercolumbia.net

I am excited to be a small part of this anthology, A Sense of the Midlands, and am very proud of the arts in my hometown, Columbia, South Carolina! The folks over at Muddy Ford Press and Jasper Magazine - The Word on Columbia Arts, are doing some great work promoting the arts and local artists in South Carolina!

My poem that is included in this work is What the Moon Say. This is an older poem, which I wrote from the rooftop of the old, and then abandoned, Olympia Mill back in 2001. I was bored one afternoon and was doing some “urban hiking,” when I found myself staring at a full moon in the evening hue from the roof of the old mill. The cityscape was before me and it was strikingly beautiful.

I thought about the moon that night and all that it has witnessed over the course of time and how it seemed to look down on the world with unspoken wisdom. Time sort of stood still and I thought, “This moon was here when we were born, it watches us live and it will be here when we die.” My next thought was getting off the roof of the mill before it was pitch-black dark.

Here is part of the press release and the invitation for the launch of A Sense of the Midlands:

The public is invited to celebrate the launch of A Sense of the Midlands on Saturday February 22nd from 5 – 7 pm at the Columbia Music Festival Association Art Space at 914 Pulaski Street in Columbia’s historic Vista. Admission is $15 which includes a copy of A Sense of the Midlands, admission to the reception from 5 – 6 during which authors will be available for signing, and admission to a reading from the book from 6 – 7. (Two attendees sharing a book will be admitted for $20.)

Read the entire press release for A Sense of the Midlands on Jasper Magazine’s website here.

Read about A Sense of the Midlands on Muddy Ford Press’s website here.

Buy your own copy of A Sense of the Midlands from Amazon.com here.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Jonah: The Man Who Ran

Jonah and the Whale, by Alma Sheppard-Matsuo
Photo provided courtesy of the artist.

We have had a wonderful chapel week this week at Quisqueya Christian School! We had fantastic times of worship and some amazing teaching from four different speakers, covering the entire book of Jonah.

At the beginning of the week, each student received a student-created fact sheet on the book of Jonah and were given the opportunity to Tweet or text their comments or questions for a special Q and A session that summed up the week in our final chapel on Friday.

Each chapel message began with a reading from the chapter of Jonah for that day and a corresponding poem for that chapter. This was a thought provoking and transformational week of learning and growing as we follow Jesus together.

If you are interested in the Jonah Fact Sheet, the poems (Jonah: Out of the Depths—Resurrection), or the Power Points from the talks, please see the links below.