Plague is both metaphor and physical presence. The poems in this volume, written between January and June of 2020, address the plagues of COVID-19; racism, police brutality; and political indifference, ineptness, and malfeasance. The poems offer the hope that the first plague has taught us about the good fruits of compassion and community and that the continuing nonviolent protests in the United States over the second plague, racism, will help birth a resurrection in the hearts, minds, and souls of all Americans, a new Easter. The twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth astutely said, ‘The pastor and his congregation should not imagine that they are a religious society that is fixated [only] on certain themes, but that they live in this world. We do indeed need, according to my old formulation, the Bible and the newspaper.’ With the poems in this volume, the author, newspaper in hand, reflects on events from January to early June 2020 and does so by integrating reflections on Scripture with current events.
About the author
Tim Vivian is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at California State University Bakersfield and a retired Episcopal priest. He received three degrees in literature before an interdisciplinary Ph D from UC Santa Barbara and an MDiv from Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Episcopal), and was a post-doctoral fellow at Yale Divinity School. In 2018 he received an honorary DD degree from Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He has published numerous books, articles, and book reviews on early Christian monasticism.
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