Scienda Quarterly

Meeting Meg Moseley

C.L. Dyck — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 06:00:35 +0000

It’s a skillful author who can package the deep themes of widowhood, spiritual abuse, and a community’s attempts to deal with personal shame into the digestible framework of a light suspense novel.

If you haven’t yet picked up SciendaQ Spring 2012, then please join me as I meet Meg Moseley to talk about her book, When Sparrows Fall, and the issues surrounding its inspiration and its themes of hope.

SciendaQ is available for e-readers, desktop and mobile for $0.99. (Goes great with your preferred cup of tea.) Thank you for supporting the hard work of our contributing writers.

Best to you,

C.L. Dyck
Managing Editor

Are You a Superhero? By P.A. Baines

C.L. Dyck — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:00:25 +0000

I was thinking about superheroes recently and it occurred to me that there are degrees of “superhero-ness”. We have Superman at the top, with his fairly comprehensive array of superpowers and virtual indestructibility. Moving down the list, we see various strengths and weaknesses until we come to Batman, who isn’t really a superhero at all, just a rich guy with some expensive toys and a thirst for revenge. It then struck me that we all fit onto the scale of superhero-ness.

If you have read SciendaQ Spring 2012, you will have encountered the extended and very specialized list of my own superpowers. What superpowers do you have?

Erased by Ashley Clark

C.L. Dyck — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:00:21 +0000

In Exodus 3:14, God says to Moses, “I AM who I AM.” This verse always puzzled me because I felt as if its meaning was hollow, as if God were refusing a substantive description or definition of Himself. But as I grew in my knowledge of literary theory as well as the Bible, I came to understand this verse as actually meaning the opposite. God, simply put, is.

He is pure presence, precisely what post-structuralists reject under the reasoning that it is entirely too substantial, that knowledge and being cannot exist outside of discourse. This difference is illustrated in the implications of the postmodern term “notion” versus its counterpart, “concept.” God is sure. He is eternally–past, present and future–existent.

God is not defined by our perception of Him or his difference in contrast to another social thought or religious tradition. He is alive, whole, full presence, and the substance of God is Himself. He remains untarnished by the corruptive nature of sin that seeks so hard to unravel the fiber of being, of purpose, the core inside the apple. And instead of remaining in this broken system of difference, God allows us the opportunity to enter into the wholeness for which we were created through the blood of Christ.

If you’ve picked up SciendaQ Spring 2012, you might have found that Zelda in Erased is tragically unaware of her self. The relabeling of library books bothers her so much because she locates their meaning on their spine, which can be equated to the social realm that structures our dialogue with the world in which we live. But what Zelda has yet to discover is that there is still hope. There is more to life than a cosmic Dewey Decimal System.

There is a story. Inside.