The Scars of the Crocodile Spirit Amelia Rasmusen Buzzard On Existence that Doesn’t Take an Eye for an Eye Following an accident in which an Amtrak train hit a small car at noon on a summer day, paramedics recovered two living bodies from the wreckage and transported them to Rockford Memorial Hospital, where one went into surgery for a splenectomy. That body, one of a 10-year-old girl, emerged breathing, with a line of staples down her belly. I was that girl. I remember absently running my fingers over the bumps of steel as I fell asleep at night. It’s strange to think that I know what it’s li ..read more

Between the Blood and Drought Elise Tegegne On Mothers Who Miscarry As far as anyone can remember, Addis Ababa shimmered in sunlight for nine months of the year. Besides the small rains (a short rainy season in February of the ferenge calendar) the capital of Ethiopia glinted dry under a taut dome of blue. Then from about June to August, rains drenched the mountainous capital. Jangling mini-buses, indigo jacaranda trees, wheelbarrows mounded in moons of orange— all baptized slick and shiny in sky water. Tiny cafe tables cluttered in cups of strong coffee darkened as the clouds tore in two. Som ..read more

The Poetry of a Pastor Doug Basler On Gerard Manley Hopkins & Gratitude for the Details   Glory be to God for dappled things –    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;    Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;       And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.   All things counter, original, spare, strange;    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)   &n ..read more

Are We Safe as the Fire Rages? Ashley Lande On Spiritual Safety & Martyrdom The first real pain comes in the night, a livid fist tightening in my gut. It scatters my dreams and snaps my eyes open, and I know—it’s here, finally, real labor, two weeks late. I sit up and a gush of warm waters corroborates: yes, soon. The contractions build and build, a fearful waxing, until finally they become a single unrelenting thrall. I cry, I whine, I complain, despite waiting for this, my third baby, for a decade: Dear God, not this again.  The ache becomes something cataclysmic, something beyond t ..read more

Are We Safe as the Fire Rages? Ashley Lande On Spiritual Safety & Martyrdom The first real pain comes in the night, a livid fist tightening in my gut. It scatters my dreams and snaps my eyes open, and I know—it’s here, finally, real labor, two weeks late. I sit up and a gush of warm waters corroborates: yes, soon. The contractions build and build, a fearful waxing, until finally they become a single unrelenting thrall. I cry, I whine, I complain, despite waiting for this, my third baby, for a decade: Dear God, not this again.  The ache becomes something cataclysmic, something beyond t ..read more

Standing Bare Before Infinity Josh Nadeau On an Experience of Various Cosmologies This essay is featured in Ekstasis Issue 10 Print Edition “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, only what it is made of.” — C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader I was generally unenthusiastic about outer space for the majority of my young life. My heart was interested in more terrestrial things: cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, Indiana Jones, and Batman. Aliens and foreign crafts could stay unidentified, as far as I was concerned. But, as happens with most things, something changed me ..read more

Multidimensional Feminism Ilana Reimer On a Path Toward New Conversations This essay is featured in Ekstasis Issue 10 Print Edition I imagine for the first time in my adult life not feeling the need to be smaller, to speak less, to walk on eggshells, to pretend to have no ambition or drive. —E This spring, I was with a group of friends in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and the lines outside bars had begun to form before noon. Crowds of students surged past us, decked in green and whooping with alcohol-fueled enthusiasm. I spotted a quiet restaurant, its entryway small in a way ..read more

Mauve Undertones in the Great Grey North Maya Clubine On the Atmospheric Elements of our Spiritual Season This essay is featured in Ekstasis Issue 10 Print Edition After an extended stay in the vibrant landscapes of Central America, I returned to Canada to find my country greyer than I recalled. The newly expanded Highway 401 stretched endlessly before me, lined on either side by bleak telephone poles and leafless trees. The muted tones of red-tailed hawks and white-tailed deer blended into their landscape, and the days seemed to slog away under a permanent overcast. Perhaps my mistake was fly ..read more

The Island with No Words Paul J. Pastor On Remembering Silence and the Creative Life This essay is featured in Ekstasis Issue 10 Print Edition “A time to rend, and a time to sew;  a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…”  Ecclesiastes 3:7, KJV I have, at various times in my life, found myself in conditions of what felt like considerable desolation; weighty periods of emptiness. During the formative years of high school, when “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” I found myself in the midst of such a time. I was uncommonly lonely, and routinely bored, living wi ..read more

In the Middle of Classrooms and Warzones Teresa Sfeir On the Power of Education Around the World This essay is featured in Ekstasis Issue 10 Print Edition Growing up, my parents drilled into me and my siblings that education is a sword and a shield, especially in the hands of a Middle Eastern woman. I took their words to heart. Education had not come easily to my parents during the Lebanese Civil War—the fear of shelling, kidnapping, and death was very real within the school buildings. Teenage students would join militias and arrive at class armed, so that uncalled-for skirmishes were inevitab ..read more