Ekstasis' Top Pieces of 2023
What's your favorite of the past year?
We’ve had a big year here at Ekstasis! In addition to starting this new branch of Ecstatic, launching an Ambassador Program, hosting a couple of events, running the annual Bright Wings Poetry Contest, and releasing the 10th Print Edition, we’ve formed a closer connection to our readers and better honed the thing that makes Ekstasis unique: a prioritization of the literary, poetic angle of our life of faith.
This year, Ekstasis was shared with about 100,000 readers, spread out across 450,000 pageviews via the website and newsletter. If you’d like to support what Ekstasis does into 2024, it would be wonderful if you would consider an end-of-year taxable gift to Christianity Today. Now, let’s enjoy a look back on our best of 2023!
Top Ecstatic Features of 2023
1.
I believe there’s an ache in the body of our generation. An ache for something deeper, richer than anything we’ve known so far… God has to be so much more than a happy transaction, he has to be a loving Person.
2.
When music that comes from the deepest places within us marries with imagery that pierces and buries itself in the marrow of our bones, the result defies categories and even goes beyond our own words.
3:
We received many prophetic words that have not come true—words about good health, children, success, recognition. The weight of those words carried us through that time; inscrutable as they are, they carry us still.
Top Longform Ekstasis Essays of 2023
1. The Kind of People We Need at the End of the World
By Elizabeth Oldfield | Read full essay →
The end of the world as we know it is not, after all, the end of the world. Although the theological story I am always trying to locate myself in did not promise that the world would live forever, or that me and mine would live a comfortable middle-class life. Billions never have. Someone will live in a time of endings, even if it is not us. It won’t be comfortable, or safe, but it might call us to become more like the people we were meant to be all along.
2. The Island with No Words
By Paul J. Pastor | Read full essay →
This is countercultural in the most basic way, and it puts us immediately at odds with the entire world system, the Spirit of the Age, and, likely, the majority of our friends and relatives who, we will find, become deeply uncomfortable or confused at anything that begins to dip below the superficiality that characterizes contemporary life.
3. Standing Bare Before Infinity
By Josh Nadeau | Read full essay →
I’m not here to answer all the deep questions of our modern times, or give my two cents about Sasquatch, aliens, ghosts, the Rise of the Machines... What I am here to say, or at least draw your attention to, is that the world is bigger, and more alive, than we tend to realize. In the coming days, we will need more than a “baptized modernism” to answer the questions that haunt the Modern Man.
Top Poetry of 2023
1. After Hamelin
By Ava Pardue | Read full poem →
Every widow and barren one will stand
At the opening of the mountain gate
As the rumble of children’s feet echoes
And a pipe’s melody rises on the wind.
2. There Are No Children Named Rahab
By Grace Teater | Read full poem →
The fall of Eve, the hesitancy of Moses, the refusal of Jonah,
the sins of King David, the crimes of the Apostle Paul — and yet children still bear their names. There are no children named Rahab.
3. Be in this World
By Jordyn Fouts | Read full poem →
the only thing i am certain of
is that the heavens are best seen
when one’s back is pressed
into the soil.
Top Interviews
1. Elizabeth Bruenig
My beat as a journalist is violence in America. That’s my domain. What appeals to me about death and suffering and violence is the idea that mercy, compassion, and Jesus can meet people even in their darkest, most unsympathetic, most grueling moments.
2. Jessica Hooten Wilson
My way of softening even the hardest heart of a Christian opposed to literature would be to invite them to read aloud with me the best works of literature and walk through their meaning. It’s something I show versus tell, but I’ve never had someone leave a conversation with me with a book in hand and say, “Meh.”
3. Cory Asbury
And again, I'm encouraged by some of the young artists I see coming up who are just creating from a place of intimacy with Jesus that doesn't necessarily look like a big worship banger. I'm down with that. I think that's beautiful. As long as it's pure, I'm happy.
Onward to 2024! Thanks for joining us on this Ekstasis journey. Consider an end-of-year taxable gift to Christianity Today
The piece on contemporary worship music has stayed with me and made me think in new ways about the intersection of art and faith