EDITORIAL
Living Wild Like Barkley and Madison

Michael A. King

We need more wild living. That has turned out to be the implicit and sometimes explicit theme of this DreamSeeker Magazine issue.

Daniel Hertzler inaugurates the theme with a treatment of the Bible that strikes me as classic. Hertzler insightfully blends serious consideration of ways biblical scholarship can open up the Bible with accessible, down-to-earth thinking about why Scripture matters to us. The Bible that leaps from Hertzler’s words wraps us in trauma, pain, violence, betrayal, life’s wild dark side, then invites us again and yet again to live a different holy story.

Next Luanne Austin wants worship wild enough to suggest it has been planned by Someone Else. C. Jack Orr tells the hauntingly honest story of how a father and son seek what is itself a wild thing: reconciliation as they each worship a wild God but in opposing ways. David Greiser reflects on "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Bruce Almighty," both films likewise pursuing the wildness of the divine as they address "some of the weightiest and thorniest theological dilemmas ever posed."

Laura Lehman, Nöel King, and yours truly report on wild events. Lehman tells of "The Wreck, destructive, terrifying, something from which you never quite recover." King tells the shocking story of the man who sees the sun for the very first time. I tell of a trip to the West with Jack Kerouac and Jesus Christ. Mark Stevick tells poetically of wild hauntings by Christ and Helen Alderfer speaks of the need to "tread carefully" on the "new ground" of aging but confesses the urge to "twirl a few dance steps while the tea water boils (but only if you are alone)."

Welcoming "Community Sense"
and "Beneath the Skyline"

Still there is more. Valerie Weaver-Zercher, having made what strikes me as the wild—and wonderful—commitment to serve with her husband and family in Kentucky for the coming year, will be taking a break from writing her "Marginalia" column even as behind the scenes she continues to provide her valuable editorial services.

Meanwhile we welcome new columnists Deborah Good (The Other Side magazine intern) and Mark Wenger (pastor and more). Through their eloquent comments, emerging from two quite different settings, the wildness rolls on. Because Good dares to ponder the privileges and limits inherent in her white skin. And Wenger opposes North American culture’s fateful decision to allow consumerism to kick God out of the Sabbath.

While pondering wild living I took our Norwegian Elkhound Barkley and Shihtzu Madison for a walk. Tiny Madison jumped up and down grabbing her leash in her mouth, then leaping with delight against large Barkley. Barkley raced ahead as if he had never seen either the sun or the world itself and couldn’t believe its grandeurs. I hope reading this issue feels like that.

—Michael A. King