The need for human stories

If you’ve been around the Century for a while, you probably know that several times per year we host an essay contest (with support from the Frederick Buechner Center). If you’re not familiar, now is a great time to jump in as we’ve just published one of my all-time favorite batches of winning essays. Each contest is based on a one-word writing prompt, and this time the word was Gravity. If you’re a writer, you still have time to enter our next contest (Twilight, due Nov. 1) or the one after that (Fall, due Feb. 1). For information on how to participate, click here for instructions.

We publish real, important stories outside of our essay contests too. Rachel Mann offers a moving essay about her life with Crohn’s disease—and with a God who has been silent recently. In a new reflection on Pentecostalism and prayer, Colton Bernasol remembers his grandfather’s voice, through his mother’s memories: “Gracias a Dios.”

Scroll down for even more great content. Our video of the week is a follow-up to one of our most popular (and polarizing) articles of the year—Brandon Ambrosino’s confession that he doesn’t want Trump to go to heaven. We also have for you an essay about Charlie Kirk’s place in a grim and complicated history of mission work, a book review about the lif-saving work of Frances Perkins (FDR’s labor secretary), and more.

Jon Mathieu
Email me: Whose story has made a big difference for you?
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Essays by readers: Gravity

“The pull has come upon them. They have entered a new orbit. Will it outlast a galaxy or be over in the instant it takes for eyes to meet and unmeet?”
– Thomas Stubbs, one of the winners in our Readers Write contest

by CC readers

The silent, suffering God

“Perhaps the sheer difficulty of silence indicates it is one of our deepest vocations. For it is not just stillness, nor is it the mere absence of sound. For me, it is simply being in the presence of God, stripped of illusion and distraction.”

by Rachel Mann

Pentecostalism for the people

“At a recent action in front of the Philippine consulate calling for the release of a migrant, theologian Primo Racimo declared that raising one’s fists and stomping one’s feet is as much prayer as the prayer often hidden away from public places.”

by Colton Bernasol

In the Lectionary for October 12 (Ordinary 28C)

Jeremiah isn’t panicking. He’s incandescent with holy resolve.

VIDEO: Are we supposed to want Trump to go to heaven when he dies?

Brandon Ambrosino chats with Jon about Donald Trump and the difficulty of loving our “enemies.”

Yes, Charlie Kirk was a missionary

“Cardinal Dolan and President Trump are right about this. Kirk was indeed a missionary—and that’s precisely the problem.”

by David Congdon

When Frances Perkins took on the bigots

“Perkins was a champion for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in Europe in the late 1930s. She fought against restrictive immigration policies and practices promoted by many in Congress and the State Department.”

Charles Hoffacker reviews Rebecca Brenner Graham