Poets and Poems: Ali Nuri and “Rain and Embers”

You begin your life in a provincial capital. When you’re three years old, the country’s leader attacks your city, which is the “wrong” variation of your region’s and family’s faith. The family debates – leave or stay? The brutality of the ruling regime makes the decision: leave. The next four years of your life are spent in a refugee camp, until the family is granted asylum in a new country. The family is safe; it’s survived. But you’re now a stranger in a strange land, with a new language, a new culture, and a new society. It’s a land where even the predominate skin color is not the same as yours.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Saturday Good Reads

The disaster refugee crisis still unfolding in Europe has all the world’s attention, but there is another, related refugee crisis that hasn’t – and that’s the one of Christians displaced by ISIS, the Syrian civil war, and related crises in the Mideast. My friend David Rupert is in Jordan, interviewing Christian families who escaped ISIS and civil war to find themselves in oblicion. His reports are sobering.

Photographer Tom Hussey has created a photo essay on elderly people – looking at younger images of themselves. It’s wonderful. Andrew Sullivan at The Dish has a column on America’s most important Christian writer, and it’s not who you think it might be. It’s a story that resists classification – I could have placed it here under faith, poetry, or writing. Or all three.

Doug Spurling changes a flat tire, Monica Sharman writes a letter, Seth Haines has a confession, and Maureen Doallas writes a breathtakingly beautiful anniversary poem. And more.

David Rupert’s Reports on the Christian Refugee Crisis

This Syrian family is looking for a home.

Nowhere to Go: Refugee families escaped ISIS, but cannot escape captivity.

Ancient Christian city, silenced for 14 centuries, comes alive with refugee church.

Family of five: We pray for ISIS.

Poetry

Blow a Kiss – Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

Rotary Guillotine and The Box – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

Gerard Manley Hopkins – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Anniversary – A Cento – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Graffiti Guy – John Grey at Curator Magazine. 

Faith

Fragrance – Jeanne Damoff at The View From Here.

Her Heart’s Desire – Lynn Mosher.

How to change a flat tire…and a life – Doug Spurling at Spurling Silver.

Why We Walk Six Blocks Through the Cold – Shawn Smucker.

Christians Have One Job – And It’s Not Reading the Bible – Ed Cyzewski.

A Confession, a Liturgy, and a New Ancient Way – Seth Haines.

Open Letter to the Generations Before Me – Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God.

Work

How Do I Know When I Should Switch Jobs? – Single Roots.

Der Champion Tabelle Des Aufbaus Teil 2: Rand – Jack Baumgartner at the School of the Transfer of Energy.

Photography

Elderly People Look at Their Younger Reflections – Tom Hussey at Digital Synopsis.

Vanishing Land – Cate Colvin Sampson at Oxford American.

Party Clothes – Tim Good at Pixels.

Writing

How I Learned to be Human – Mick Silva.

Are Your Book Sales Discouraging? – Sarah Bolme at Marketing Christian Books.

Finding the Words for Faith: Meet America’s Most Important Christian Writer – Andrew Sullivan at The Dish.

Life and Culture

The “Amazing” – What Our Ranking Adjective says About Us – Virginia Hefferman at The Message.

The Shroud of London – a review of London Fog: The Biography – Amy Henderson at The Weekly Standard.

Photograph by Christine Owens via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.