EDITORIAL
Life
is Rich and Precious
Michael
A. King
Life is rich and precious. For me
the weather in the eastern U.S., which
turns often so beautiful in autumn you
can hardly stand it, just before the
death of the leaves, the grass, and the
sweet warm air, teaches this. So it seems
appropriate that the writings in this
autumn issue of DreamSeeker Magazine tell
us something similar.
Life is rich. Life
throbs with moments to be savored,
thoughts to be rolled carefully through
the mind, relationships to be treasured.
And the richness is so easy to miss, to
take for granted, to corrupt.
This is what Kirsten
Beachy shows as she reports on Amish
country and, though not quite ready to
live within this land of her ancestors,
longs for ways to bring parts of it into
her own current life. This is what Esther
Yoder Stenson, herself once Amish, shows
us as she allows herself to be the poetic
voice of her aunt, also formerly Amish,
and to portray that way of life in rich
detail.
Life’s richness is
what Lauren McKinney describes with a
grin. And what Mark Wenger and Renee
Gehman emphasize in their meditations on
paying attention to life and on planning
for spontaneity.
Then Laura Amstutz
invites us into the fantastic story of
Harry Potter as part of helping us see
how fantastically rich our own story is.
And Noël King explores what can be
learned from Jonny, who writes very short
stories lest the muse carry him into the
terror—but also richness—of
larger and more unpredictable stories.
The theme twists toward
the preciousness of life with Deborah
Good’s column. Having movingly
invited readers of earlier columns to
walk with her through the illness of her
father, here Deborah reports what life is
like on the other side of her
father’s death. What at least this
reader sees in her portrait is that life
after such great loss is painful
indeed—and precious, as we can see
all too clearly when the fact that life
is only ours on loan is underscored.
Next through the prism
of Batman Dave Greiser introduces the
complexities of defending this precious
life from evil when we ourselves are not
entirely good guys. In my own column I
wrestle with the related question of how
to think about absolute truth when our
particular “absolute” truth so
easily tempts us for its sake to take
another’s precious life. Then I turn
issues of war and peace over to Daniel
Hertzler, who capably explores the many
ways people of peace have sought to
treasure rather than take life as the
United States has gone to war.
Finally Darrin Belousek
both confronts the horrors of war and
juxtaposes them with the dream of the
kingdom of God, reminding us once more of
how fantastic life can be if we let it.
—Michael A. King
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