Among the poems and writings you’ll find here, you'll find a theme of the self, and particularly the body, as the battleground of intense spiritual occurrences.

The body is a place of flesh and sin and corruption. A place that can be defiled. But it is also the form that God created—a form that He is capable of using for great things if we surrender it to Him by taking our bag of bones and sacrificing it on the altar of His goodness, telling Him it is His. The body is where we are baptized in water and in Holy Spirit fire—the holy ground where physical and spiritual matter meet. The body is the place most intimate with our souls, where our spirits dwell, and—even more profound—the place where God Himself dwells if we allow Him.

It’s worth stating: your body is a temple—either a temple of the God of the universe or a temple of your own self-worship. This is where divine miracles and great acts of rebellion occur.

The writers and poets of this issue recognize the battleground of the body in different ways, both directly and indirectly. Some recognize their own bodies, or the bodies of those they love, as places of costly sacrifice and surrender to God, leading to spiritual freedoms, love, and peace. Some find the body to be a place of intense loneliness and weighted doubt as they wait for an awakening. A few writers see the body as a sick and dying tether to this world, while others view it as the site of miraculous creation. Some feel the heavy viscosity of sin coursing through their veins, anxious for release.

True worship happens in the body. I pray you keep that truth in your mind as you read, and as you live.