Dear Friend of Weavings:

Weavings will be moving from a bi-monthly to a quarterly journal beginning with the Winter 2009-2010 issue. In the midst of this transition, our original 2009 themes offer a source of continuity and stability. So we are posting four of them again for the upcoming year. Please take a look at them once more; this time they will be developed with more attention to the liturgical calendar. We are asking for shorter articles (now 2000 words or less), which in turn means we will need more articles and poems for each issue. If you submitted a piece last year that was not accepted, we encourage you to rework it in light of this new framework and resubmit it by the indicated deadline. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at weavings@gbod.org.

Thanks so much for your interest in Weavings.

Pam, Rebecca, and John

2010 Themes

Editor's Introduction: "Jesus came into the world to re-create it," writes Jean Vanier, "to give it back its full meaning, to take away our limited vision of life, a vision which prevents the birth of hope and which paralyses us in front of all that seems impossible." This limited vision imprisons us in a vast range of narrow and lonely domains of experience inhospitable to hope and ripe for the cultivation of despair. In the coming year we want to look for traces of God in the "limited sight distance" spiritual geography of the twenty-first.

Where Is Your God?

Vol. XXV, No. 1 (Winter)

Assignments for Winter 2009 Have Already Been Made

Copy due: 6/17/09

"My eyes fail from watching for your salvation" (Ps. 119:123). Darfur. Kenya. Iraq. Tibet. Haiti. New Orleans. O wretched people that we are. We see what we do not want to see, and do not see what we long to see. The reach and wretchedness of suffering is too much with us late and soon. Even so, most of us are aware of only the tiniest fraction of the world's tears and terrors. As a culture, we are entering the season of gratitude and gift-giving, a time of vacations, good cheer, and New Year resolutions. In counterpoint, the church is approaching a period of waiting and watching for God to draw near, a time of endings and radically new beginnings when we shall see "the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living" (Ps. 27:13), a time when tears and terror and death shall be no more, a time when God among us is revealed to all nations. The Gospels describe how God enters and is present in history. But how is God present and active in our history? Where is God for all those who cannot help but cry out: "Do not hide your face from me" (Ps. 27:9)? How are we to understand and live according to the faith that through the agency of divine providence, "all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28)?

Turning the World Upside Down

Vol. XXV, No. 2 (Spring)

All Proposals Due 6/02/09

All Assignments made: 6/10/09

Copy due: 8/1/09

"The Resurrection means trouble for us who are comfortable with being only half alive." In these words Alan Jones signals the radically disruptive grace that spread across the land when the tomb burst open on Easter and when the Spirit ignited fire on the earth at Pentecost. This is the kindling of holy unrest Jesus hoped for when, bristling, he asked his disciples: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?" (Luke 12:51). When Jesus turned upside down the tables of the moneychangers, his action announced that the unruffled complacency of convention would be disturbed by Kingdom truths. And so it was. When Paul and Silas preached in Thessalonica, inhabitants of that city complained to the authorities that, "These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also" (Acts 17:6). Their unwitting witness to the power of the Spirit to reframe the world in light of the risen Christ also hints at the readiness of the world to push back. To be among those who turn the world upside down can be a lonely and hazardous occupation. To examine facets of this calling, and to portray for our time the freedom and joy of being fully alive in Christ, is the invitation of the Lenten season and the purpose of this issue.

Show Me Your Ways, O Lord

Vol. XXV, No. 3 (Summer)

All Proposals Due: 7/01/09

All Assignments made: 8/03/09

Copy due: 10/07/09

"Indeed, you are my lamp, O LORD, the LORD lightens my darkness" (2 Sam. 22:29). During these months of summer in the northern hemisphere, a curious paradox blossoms. The sun's light fills earth and sky, permitting us to see from early morning until late evening. Yet the radiance and warmth of the sun also draws forth a profusion of leaves that obstruct the long view with overlapping walls of green. Seeing, but not seeing enough, we may miss the correct turnoff or misjudge the road's angle of descent. Just as in Eden's abundance the foliage of self-deception separated Adam and Eve from God, so now our own plentiful assumptions and cultural convictions may obscure the path to fullness of life on which God wants to walk with us. Dimly or with shattering clarity, we realize that we have lost contact with deep meaning and enduring purpose. The light of worldly wisdom cannot penetrate the darkness of spiritual disorientation. And so the soul, trusting that God is light and life, calls out for guidance: "Show me your ways, O LORD, and teach me your paths (Ps. 25:4)." How does God respond to this prayer? Which Scripture passages give insight into how God's guidance comes to us? What practices, ancient and contemporary, prepare us to receive the guidance God offers?

Do Not Be Anxious About Tomorrow

Vol. XXV, No. 4 (Fall)

All Proposals Due: 8/03/09

All Assignments made: 10/01/09

Copy due: 1/20/10

"From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work" (Ps. 104:13). Trust in God's attentiveness to creaturely needs leads Jesus to assure us that God knows even the number of hairs on our head (Matt. 10:30). Yet we desire something more, some tangible assurance as a hedge against the fearfully precarious circumstances of human life. This desire may manifest itself as greed. Major investment houses in the United States are now seriously compromised as a result of lending practices driven by pursuit of massive profits. Our need for assurance may become visible in how anxiety about the future constricts our freedom to embrace new relationships, choose new work, move to new parts of the country or world. In an interview about his remarkable documentary film on the Carthusian monks of La Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble, France, Philip Groening observes: "We think that we are able to fashion our lives ourselves, or even that we should be fashioning our lives ourselves and that this is the only way to attain happiness. This is why so many people today are afraid of life. The monastery is a place that is free of fear. One has the age-old trust that God will provide." We invite submissions that examine the impact of anxiety on our lives and the spiritual disciplines that help us live creatively with it.

Please see our Writers' Guidelines for the mailing address and for more details.

"All Assignments Made" identifies the date by which we review and select for the issue all proposals or finished manuscripts sent by interested authors.

"Copy Due" indicates the date by which all contracted manuscripts for the issue are due. If authors have already sent full manuscripts, and these have been accepted in the "Assignments Made" meeting, then those authors have no more to do until they receive edited copies of their manuscript for review and approval.