It's so easy to get bogged down in this world -- to feel the weight of ugliness, hate, destruction, emptiness, and depression pushing down on us. If you're not careful, life will try its best to crush you. But something gentle exists outside of it, under the coarse fabric of things. There is a soft voice waiting for you to listen and hear. And it's so easy to drown it out, to overlook it, to pretend it doesn't exist, or simply not hear it through the noise.Jesus is the whisper in the chaos. Our contributors see Him in the peripheral, call out to Him from the dark places and wait for His voice, feel the peace in His gentle light, or recognize the weight of His absence in an absurd, seemingly meaningless world.In this issue, you'll find laughter and despair, the everyday moments and the sublime, brokenness and healing, pain and joy, and in everything, bubbling underneath the surface, Jesus -- waiting, whispering, and placing His finger on everything.

Criticizes the patriarchal world view, outlines the historical realities that have produced a culture that glorifies violence and domination, and argues for a worldview that recognizes the full humanity of women.

In Heart of Flesh's sixth issue, there are a multitude of themes to explore. In these pages you'll find an exploration of doubt, faith, awe, reverence, and a desire to seek God, but also a common focus on relationships--the various interplays between people, nature, and the God who made them. Writers speak about seeing God reflected in loved ones, and experiencing nostalgia for those now gone or slipping away, who once emanated Christ's unconditional love. They talk about an ache for knowing God Himself--experiencing a hole where a relationship once existed or never was there to begin with. In their words they convey a longing to draw closer to Jesus, to find evidence of Him in the natural world, to rest in His arms in life's darker moments. Others express the frustration in attempting to shake the ones around us who can't see--to wake them up to His mercy and grace. These interactions are teased out through poetry, prose, and art, while presenting the contrast between what is in front of our eyes and what remains unseen, swirling around us in untouchable significance.You'll also find bulgy monsters, clones, "Jesus lice," and a talking fox.Yet somehow all these unique imaginations pull together as different pieces of the same picture of God's unfathomable love.I truly believe there is something in this issue for everybody, no matter your beliefs or opinions about the Creator of the world. I hope you read with an open mind, and that you allow these different pieces to speak their way into your life.

"This is an exciting exploration of the world of Buddhist attitudes towards religious texts, from Indian scriptures to Japanese medieval tales. Its emphasis on discursive strategies—how Buddhist texts function and what they expect of their readers/users (especially, the connection between books, their content, and their readers' bodies)—is a welcome new perspective."—Fabio Rambelli, author of Buddhist Materiality "Miracles of Book and Body is fluidly written and engaging. This book brings the reader to an awareness of the range and foci of medieval 'popular' readings of sutra literature, and Eubanks provides an important perspective to interpreting these narratives that is original and stimulating."—Thomas W. Hare, author of Zeami: Performance Notes "Charlotte Eubanks' sophisticated, insightful and readable study of the physicalities of sutra texts and sutra recitation makes sense of some of the strangest phenomena in medieval Japan. By disentangling the literal and metaphorical meanings in Buddhist setsuwa, Eubanks explains such things as how memorizing a text is an embodiment thereof, how texts can become sentient beings, and why the scroll is an appropriate format for recording dharma. Her work is both important and engaging."—Margaret H. Childs, University of Kansas "Drawing on an impressive range of Mahayana scriptures and medieval Japanese didactic tales, Eubanks unpacks recurrent tropes correlating text and flesh to reveal surprising connections among the literary, material, and ritual dimensions of Buddhist textual culture. Elegantly written and theoretically astute, this volume will be welcomed not only by specialists in Buddhist literature but also by readers interested in broader issues of text-based religious practice."—Jacqueline Stone, author of Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism

The author examines the "cultural and literary identity among Western Christians which the centrality of 'the Book' has helped to create, and the Christian use of the phrase 'People of the book.'"--Preface.

In Issue Five's eclectic mix of styles, voices, mediums, and backgrounds, you are about to embark on a journey formed by encounters of the past and visions of the future, all shaped by the author or artist's perception of the risen Savior. As those of us who have given our lives to Christ can tell you, once you know Him, you can't look at the past and not see His hand on everything. You can't mistake the presence of sin dripping over every moment like black tar, nor the dazzling occurrences of grace. Once you know the hope of Christ, you can no longer look into the future without being thrown into a prophetic imagining of epic proportions. By simply letting your mind grapple with the possibility of a better place, a better time, you can't help but let your mind wander into a future that rises glorious like a phoenix out of the ashes of corruption (a tired cliché, I know, but, I believe, an appropriate one). Consequently, the present time becomes a place of waiting and passing glimpses- a world full of questions and plaguing doubts, peaceful moments and wake-up calls, obedience and defiance, rebellions and acts of faith with nothing firm to hold onto except the miracles of the past and God's promises for the future. Being still becomes the catalyst for madness for some, patience and growth for others.You'll find all of this in Issue Five, and more.Thank you for reading!