An excerpt from the Editor’s Note:

… A Game for Good Christians put out a call for “honest spiritual literature” grounded in the totality of the human experience: the good, the bad, the salvific, and the sinister. Through drama, fiction, memoir, and poetry, the authors in this collection answered that call and the myriad questions strewn at the feet of our crumbling realities. They engage in the timeless, needed arts of holy doubt and righteous blasphemy. They deftly give voice to multiple facets of humanity’s struggle with the Numinous. They pray, lift praise, accuse, redeem, and accept nothing less than truth. Herein you will see Moses, Sampson, and Jonah alongside Eve, Bathsheba, and multiple Marys. Ancient saints, good Samaritans, and Greta Thunberg share conversational space with slave holders, shit-talkers, and Joel Olsteen. And, of course, Mary Oliver makes an appearance.

This anthology is organized in three sections, with an eye to Walter Brueggemann’s contention that the Book of Psalms captures the emotional ebb and flow of our lives: “orientation,” “disorientation,” and “reorientation.”1 While there are times we live in joy—our equilibrium secure—, our peace can shatter like a fine plate at any moment, and we are forced to construct a new normal if we have any hope of survival.

The Word of the LORD that Haggai received ends with a promise: in a place dedicated to peace, a future glory will outshine the past. But Temples—like communities, like social constructs, like systems— are built by human hands. Any glorious future of peace begins by a person taking a step, saying a word, lifting a pen, and calling others to join in the work. We dare to believe a collection such as this helps usher in the Judaic hope of tikkun olam—the repair of the world, the building of peace…

Until that day, we are here, in the present, trying to capture something old, something beautiful in its purity, something that can propel us into a greater glory…

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