Writing Portfolio

My review of Joy Clarkson's Aggressively Happy

To participate in politics in 2020 seems to be an exercise in fear, like the call from Dark in Ray Bardbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

A good world that begs—and begets—attention is on display in Gardeners’ World.

To say that the pandemic slowed life is uncontroversial. Across the world, many people ceased travelling, commuting, and disposing of their leisure time freely.

Writer Matt Civico analyzes how Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back reflects the feelings of uncertainty and failure when we're in the middle of things.

What does it profit someone to gain marginal technological conveniences, but forfeit their soul? The answer may depend on whether or not the costs of such conveniences are, conveniently, passed on to others instead.

And, as inevitably as Hopper strives against the darkness of the Upside Down, he also struggles to choose the higher goods before him.

The longer I remain a Christian, the more assurance I find in the mysteries of the faith. When I consider the seeming contradictions within the Incarnation, the Kingdom, Grace, and Lament, they’re almost conspiratorial. They whisper about a reality broader and brighter than either/or; the paradoxes hold out the promise of both/and. In her new book, Surprised by Paradox, Jen Pollock Michel invites readers to puzzle over the paradoxes of Christianity, and wonder at the mysteries: The saviour who is God and man. The kingdom that is here and is coming. The gift of grace and the work that follows...

Matt Civico takes a look at the importance of play in Stranger Things and how it primes our hearts for bravery, hope and faith.

Despite what you might have heard in church, echoes of the gospel can found in video games, Dungeons & Dragons, anime, comics, and board games.

After practicing the habits of The Common Rule for over a year, I can confidently report that I am a failure; I have been formed by failure though, and I’m no longer the same. The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction by Justin Whitmel Earley is a book about building spiritual habits. At bottom, however, it’s a book about learning to live a life that’s loving and life-giving, one failure at a time. The Principle Humans are limited. We are not omniscient or omnipresent and trying to live as if this were untrue crushes people. By...

Video games are a massive and maturing medium that has received little engagement from the church, when compared to literature, film, and television. Why are video games largely dismissed by believers?

The difficult yet wondrous world of Hyrule challenges players to hope for a better world and maybe even find creative solutions to problems in the present.

Today I welcome visitors and break bread with the francophone congregants of Église du Plateau Mont-Royal in the language I once worked so hard to avoid. How did this happen?

God created Adam and Eve in God’s image and every human being who has ever lived reflects this – the imago dei. This means we create because our God is creative; we tell stories because God is a storyteller. Stories are a fitting medium for a God who is called the Word. Whether it’s written […]

Eleven longs for somewhere to belong more than most, though almost every character in Stranger Things 2 mirrors this struggle in some way.

True freedom comes with risk, and if we live in an enchanted universe then the risk is real, but the burdens are light....

Matthew Civico on hope and justice in iGame of Thrones/i....