In the midst of a trying year (Add to being a middle school teacher in a global pandemic a house fire, then barely moved back in receiving the news your 17-year marriage might be over) Ekstasis has provided calm, art worthy of praise and multiple visits, theology to chew on, and beauty as a balm to the soul.
Issue 6 in particular travelled with me through 6 temporary residences while we were displaced due to a house fire. The foliage and those gothic arched windows reflecting modern ones beckoned me into double reflection time and again. The pages filled with Morgan Harper Nichols and Josh Garrels assured me that farther along I would understand why, and have eyes to see that all along we were blooming. And as we set up and tore down our makeshift home every few weeks, the journal was a totem that travelled with me reminding me of the solidity that we would eventually return to, and the solidity of God who kept (and keeps) going before us.
Ekstasis’ by-line “Reviving the Christian Imagination” is what originally caught my attention and following. I have long grown weary of prettily prepackaged answers from the church and stanchioned off sections dictating what and where believers are allowed to contribute. Imagination (a gift from God) is life-giving and needs more space within the American church. I love this mission. As a Christian educator, I constantly find myself striving to inspire students to wonder and imagine connections and possibilities and push them outside of collecting safe “correct” answers.
Ekstasis inspires me to keep my eyes open for signals of transcendence (to borrow a phrase from Peter Berger) and when glimpsed, to continue re-imaging those signals in a way that communicates Reality and the Reality-Maker to my own heart and others’.
