Avellina Balestri – Official

Author: Avellina Balestri

  • The Ekron Initiative: Interlude

    Avellina Balestri

    BY G. CONNOR SALTER When a freelance journalist receives a leather dossier of messages from the enemy, he doesn’t know he’s getting an inside look at how evangelical Christianity has changed over the last fifty years. Read more

  • Day of Wrath: Sweeney Todd and the Search for Salvation

    Avellina Balestri

    Perversely, Sweeney seems to believe this type of purging will be his “salvation”, which he sings in the jarringly brilliant number “Epiphany”, as he challenges men to come and sit in his barber chair and be “welcome to the grave.” Read more

  • Mother of Her Father

    Avellina Balestri

    BY ADEEL AHMED “Pray for a miracle, my father,” Fatima pleaded. “You are Allah’s final messenger. Surely, He will cure Mother if you make supplication.” Read more

  • Easter to Me: A Personal Reflection on Holy Week

    Avellina Balestri

    My childhood memories of Holy Week, when Christians the world over commemorate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, are a kaleidoscope of images and impressions, turning from lighter colors to deepening hues. Read more

  • Our Lady of Britannia

    Avellina Balestri

    Thou stood on Newgate Arch and graced Pendragon’s shield; Cardigan bore thy taper and Walsingham thy seal. Humbly we now beseech thee as at thy feet we kneel: Our Lady of Britannia, ora pro nobis! Read more

  • “A Savior of the Savior”: A Josephite Reflection

    Avellina Balestri

    BY SEAN EARNER One title stands out from the centuries accumulated list of titles: Savior of the Savior. To say it almost seems blasphemous in its audacity. Read more

  • Christ in a Waiting Room: An Early Spring Spiritual Epiphany

    Avellina Balestri

    The painting showed the body of Christ being taken down by the cross, about to be placed in the arms of the sorrowing mother, and all at once I imagined the tears trickling down her face and the blood trickling from his heart, and it felt that everything around me dissolved in that one moment. Read more

  • Ferguson’s Grave

    Avellina Balestri

    Ferguson, lying beneath cold stones, gray with lichen clinging, do you yearn for the sounds of home? Can you hear me singing? Read more

  • Through My Most Grievous Fault: A Hunchback of Notre Dame Story

    Avellina Balestri

    BY AVELLINA BALESTRI “You say that? You?” She stood up and looked at him full in the face. “Then you cannot bear the evil eye, as first I thought…” Read more

  • Washington Takes Command: An American Girl Story

    Avellina Balestri

    BY HANNAH SKIPPER “Mr. Adams argued that if the colonies didn’t unite around the cause, then they’d lose.” Read more

  • Under the Brooklyn Bridge

    Avellina Balestri

    “The arches would rise more than a hundred feet, like majestic cathedral windows or the portals of a triumphant gateway” Read more

  • For Wrath, For Ruin: A Lord of the Rings Fanfiction

    Avellina Balestri

    Is this the way of you mortals? Is this the thing you most fear? We have tasted it now, though we are unused to it…I am unused to it…you see? it is a terror to face it alone…oh, Estel, teach me how…stay with me… Read more

  • Christmas Giggles

    Avellina Balestri

    By Hannah Skipper Ge nerally speaking, a Christmas Eve church service is a solemn occasion. One should not make a lot of noise or fool around while attending. This story, however, is about the time I was accidentally not on my best behavior. I don’t remember how old I was, just that I was a… Read more

  • Our Love Must Make Us Strong: The Music and Mysticism of Loreena McKennitt

    Avellina Balestri

    While no single religion may be able to claim Loreena for their own, I think there is no doubt that she is a deeply spiritually aware person, and has led others to search for God and the meaning of existence through her music. Read more

  • Shattered Mirror

    Avellina Balestri

    Thus a broken boy with glassy gaze was spirited away to serve the fates of reason, with measurements just-so, a fairyland enchantment, robbed of soul. Read more

  • Saint Hubert’s Hunt

    Avellina Balestri

    Hail, Cross between the antlers beaming, brighter than the brightest pain! Hunted as the wild stag, white as host-to-tongue, we long to savor Thee! Read more

  • Slaves, Sons, and Submission: Christian and Muslim Understandings of God

    Avellina Balestri

    As with verses from the Quran dealing with violence and warfare, it seems many Christians tend to emphasize the names of Allah that deal with dominance and power and de-emphasize or skip over others involving love, mercy, and forgiveness. Read more

  • Come, My Love: An Analysis of Thomas Merton’s Mystical Poem “Pass Through My Will”

    Avellina Balestri

    The poem calls for the coming of the Divine Lover, as “all through the night I lay longing, eagerly to wait for love’s union”. There is no shame in this, but rather a reveling in the anticipation as it was meant to be, not cheap, not base, but holistic between body and soul. Read more

  • The Crossing of Christopher

    Avellina Balestri

    The salmon that swam around his legs spoke to him in their ancient tongue, “Thou bear upon thy shoulders the weight of the universe.” Read more

  • Abraham’s Sacrifice: Reflections from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

    Avellina Balestri

    Sometimes we see Abraham’s hand pressed over the boy’s face, as if to cover it, lest they make eye contact, and he lose his nerve to go through with the sacrifice. Some have the boy lying on his belly, his mouth agape, waiting in horror to have his throat slit. Read more