EDITORIAL: Love Notes from the Edge

Love notes from the edge. That’s what I see in the writings of this Autumn 2009 issue of DreamSeeker Magazine.

Oh, there is anger mixed in, maybe especially in Mark Wenger’s passionate plea for a better health care system just as the latest effort to reform the U.S. system seems to be unraveling. Prophetic anger here and elsewhere is appropriate. 

But I see these writings as being primarily love notes. Because each is ultimately, I believe, motivated by love, including Wenger, whose love is for those our system destroys.

The love in Ray Fisher’s article on homosexuality seems to me unmistakable. In the midst of reporting his hard-won insights for how we might more fruitfully talk about one of the most divisive issues of the day, Fisher radiates love. For his LGBTQ community. For the church. For those with whom he disagrees.

Then come intertwining articles on God. They are quite different. Mary Alice Hostetter writes of finding God in one type of journey. My column, basically by “Anonymous”  arguing against the viability of faith in God, offers a conversation on God. Next Alan Soffin’s article explores the nature of not believing in God.

Yet somehow in Hostetter’s quest for a God beyond the one she starts with, in the inability of Anonymous to believe in the God of his youth (even as the old gospel songs haunt him), and in Soffin’s belief in “God who is not God,” I find love for God radiating. I end up feeling more passion for God after experiencing these love notes from the edge of faith than I often do when encountering pieties emanating from the center of faith. 

The topics shift as Deborah Good writes of flat stomachs—but the theme persists, because Deborah is angry at how our culture treats bodies precisely as she writes a love note to and for them. Renee Gehman ponders the connections and similarities of love notes written to those who leave us through marriage or even death. David Greiser lets us see his love for finding that point where film-making edges into theology is what drives his movie reviewing. Daniel Hertzler’s book reviews help us disentangle love of bad food from love for truly nurturing food. 

Finally, the poets take us from autumn to Christmas, when God puts skin (Alderfer). As for Gibble, now there is a love note from the edge. Ponder it; I still am.
—Michael A. King