Everybody knows Christmas
is good for business.
To attract the tourist trade,
our town council cheerfully
promotes an annual
“Festival of Lights,”
the lurid illumination
of a normally pastoral park.
Neighborhoods take up
the gauntlet, festoon
with energy-guzzling lights.
In a bid to replace outdated
plaster of Paris crèches,
immense inflatables,
snowmen, cartoon characters,
claim center stage on lawns.
I write liturgical songs, both music and words, and a few years ago I did a project centered on the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany cycle. There were many classic themes to explore—hope, waiting, incarnation, joy, gift. There was also one in particular that I soon realized would require some careful consideration: the play of darkness and light.
Jan Richardson explores a question many of us carry without knowing how to articulate it: How does joy work?
Colors hide within the green
Thrown off by chlorophyll and light.
They dwell, unseen within the seen,
But cannot win, in June, our sight
’Til summer bates its photic breath.
Gravely, then, the growing cold
Will broach for us from such a death
Yellow, red, vermillion, gold.
I can’t write this poem
I can’t take my fear of what hasn’t happened
And name it.
I can’t even say the word for that
Because there is no word
Or maybe the word is Ramah
Oh the weeping in Ramah if that were to happen
Heaven would hear me
I would then be Ramah
They would say look there is Ramah
Comfort her, where there is no comfort
Comfort her for she is Ramah
Tishani Doshi’s poetic voice dwells between the scriptural and the cultural, between lesson and observation.
Like Memphis, Memphis is gritty—filled with danger, tragedy, and humor.
Shelterbelts is a quiet ode to rural life that honors what is good and confronts what is not.
Antonio McAfee’s art addresses the complexity of representation, especially of African Americans, through restless formal experimentation. His previous projects have explored subjects including 19th-century labor movements and the history of R & B music, using techniques ranging from complex collages to anaglyphic 3D images.
Akram al-Waara sits in a refugee camp and makes art—out of tear gas canisters.