A time to read

If you’re not attuned to the rhythms of the Christian Century, let me tell you that twice each year we have a books issue. Our May issue was one of them, and it is chock-full of (fifteen!) book reviews, plus some bonus articles about literature and reading. (If this is right up your alley, make sure to sign up for the free weekly Books Worth Reading newsletter from our books editor Elizabeth Palmer.)

I’m excited to share some of those with you today, along with my colleague Jessica Mesman’s excellent cover story about tarot cards, which are becoming increasingly popular among Christians and seekers. As for the reviewed books, I am intrigued by David Peters’s exploration of Jesus and trauma (reviewed by Devon Spencer) and Jon Fosse’s Norwegian novel about melancholic faith (reviewed by Mac Loftin).

A very exciting video this week: I chat with CC poetry editor Jill Peláez Baumgaertner about the brand new book Taking Root in the Heart. It’s a collection of poetry from the pages of CC, featuring 34 of our best and most prolific poets!

Email me: What have you read recently that has changed your life?

Jon Mathieu
[email protected]

The woman behind tarot’s strange beauty

“When I consider how little money and credit Pamela Colman Smith got for her most influential work of art—still widely known as the Rider-Waite deck, though she is now listed as illustrator on the back of the box—it is apparent that the gender dynamics of occult England were no less fraught than those of Roman Catholicism.”

Jesus is traumatized

“Each succinct chapter presents both a trauma in the life of Jesus and a similar experience of contemporary readers. David W. Peters deals unflinchingly with topics such as God’s silence, trans-generational trauma, abuse, and resurrecting faith after trauma.”

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner on a new collection of Christian Century poetry

Jon chats with CC poetry editor Jill Peláez Baumgaertner about Taking Root in the Heart, the book launch party event, and the future of Christian poetry.

In the Lectionary for May 7 (Easter 5A)

Jesus is the dam that holds us when the levee breaks.

Prayer as mourning, mourning as prayer

“This is a vision of faith as mourning, or what we might call a melancholic faith, in which the death of Jesus is the loss that forever shapes us, an absence that promises by the very longing it provokes that love will escape abolition.”

The Word became relationship

“Communication—the desire to share and relate, the urge to engage and listen and receive and open up—is at the very core of all things, indeed the reason for the creation of all things.”