Faith in Literature and Art l Ruminate Magazine

Editor’s Note - Chewing on Life

Poetry
Hannah Faith Notess - La Gloria Taqueria; Omnipresence, Age 5
David Von Schlichten - Tao Te Ching Agape; Communion
Andy Patterson - Guessing at Ends
Laurie Klein - Armed with Stones, We’ve Forgotten; What’s Left Over; Intercession in Oils
Debra Rienstra - Take; Drink; Resilience
Alohi Ae’a - Tribute; Kuleana
Paul Willis - A Fish Story; Modern Languages; Sacrifice

Fiction
Leif Peterson - Angels Don’t Sleep 
Alexa Behmer - Black Leather Shoes

Nonfiction
Albert Haley - Jesus Took the Bus to Chicago: Going Down the Road with the Blues
Bethan Holland - Meditation on the Magi
Laura Peterson - Weight of Words: Autobiography of a Reading Life


Art
Nicholas Price - Rhino
Isaac Steiner - Embossment
Cole Thompson - Selections

    For us (young graduates, new mothers, a traveler, a veterinary technician, and a florist) the process of discovering this little magazine was a meal of gulping—with sips and nibbles in between—and chewing the cud we had created.  After many prayers and puzzling over ideas and proposals for weeks, we noticed that our ultimate aim was to reveal faith in art. We decided this was a good aim and kept going. Through this our magazine materialized, the title was chosen, and the topic for our first issue’s theme, “Chewing on Life,” surfaced.  Yet we found that creating and publishing a magazine, much like ruminating, isn’t done in one swallow. 

by Hannah Faith Notess

I hear: God is Everywhere.
And at once I learn
that first, that strangest
of truths the one I can come
only so close to touching

by Albert Haley

    I had my reasons.  Maybe it was the spirit of adventure creeping into middle age.  It could have been mostly that other thing:  I had reached a point where I needed to hear real music.  Loud, passionate tunes, something to shake away the cobwebs that covered me after living with daily doses of the ordinary.  In short, I had to find me some blues.

by Laurie Klein

the meaning of grain as each toss scatters
the carrion birds. Stranded,
a nestling, grayer than thinning
bone, mirrors the littlest
refugees: twig feet
traverse the earth, and opaque
as enamel, those eyes shine. In the rubble,