November 5, 2015

PAINTING COURTESY OF ERIC HILL

I've implemented a couple of changes in this issue of Indiana Voice Journal.  1. The author photographs are at the end of the posts. 2. No fictional short stories.

It is my hope that this issue of IVJ will awaken your faith and cause you to seek God's presence beyond the veil of religion, and to step into a supernatural, life-changing encounter with Jesus. God is all about relationship. He loves you. Allow yourself to take delight in the wonder, mystery, beauty, grace, and love of the Father. He's seeking you, ask Him to show you his glory.

FEATURES

~Click the links below, or scroll down to browse~

POETRY:

Two Poems By Elizabeth Brooks: "Full Circle", "Somehow"

Two Poems By Philip Brown:"My Old Sheep Dog Pain", "Joy Is Not A Feeling" 

Three Poems By Allison Grayhurst: "Getting Up", "Impossible, Only Possible  Way", "Covenant"

A Poem By Katie Hall: "Finding God on a Day at the Beach"

Four Poems By Nels Hanson: "Sanctuary", "Prayer", "Haven", "The Stone"

A Poem By Andrew Hubbard: "Revelation"

Three Poems By Michael Lee Johnson:  "Jesus Knelt in Grief Over the Death of Children", "The Christians Arrived", "Children in the Sky"

A Poem By Anna Keeler: "Children of the Sky"

Three Poems By Amy Nemecek:  "The Work of our Hands", "Prospect Park, Winter 1930", "Winter Solstice"

Three Poems By Scott Thomas Outlar: "Each and Every Breath", "Renewal Song", "Revelations in the Marrow"

Two Poems By Bruce Owens: "Unspeakable Joy", "He Is"

Three Poems By Elizabeth Poreba: " "A Question That Becomes a Complaint", "For a Beloved Minister, Who Committed Suicide", “Bequeath to death your numbness -A Winter’s Tale"

A Poem By EF Schraeder:  "Cobweb Church"

A Poem By Pat St. Pierre: "Rainbow"

Three Poems By Alisa Velaj: "A Tale", "Kindness", "Inception"


NONFICTION

An Essay By Barbara Altamirano: "Prayer and Meditation"

Creative Nonfiction Memoir By Amy Gray-Cunningham: "Daring to Believe, Amy’s Memoir as a Living Kidney Donor"

An Essay By Thomas Larson: "I Go to Church, Meet God on Film, and Find the Pastor’s Faith Lay Bare the Absence of Mine”

Creative Nonfiction By Colleen Warren: "Midwest Mimicking: Thoreau in Indiana"

Creative Nonfiction By Jennifer Waters: "Christina The Astonishing"

"Uncapping the Wells" Maria Woodworth Etter--Miracles, Signs, and Wonders with Jack and Deb Welch

Testimonies/Prophetic Words


Elizabeth Brooks resides in Tampa, Florida. She is originally from Trinidad and Tobago.  A lover of life, family, friends, a good book,  lots of laughter and continues to grow and accept many challenges. Elizabeth has currently been giving poetry reading live in Tampa. She is a librarian by profession and a part-time reference librarian at Saint Leo University, St. Leo Florida.


Two lyrical poems by Phillip Brown. Phillip also has work published in the January and February issues of Indiana Voice Journal.


Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 675 poems published in more than 315 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers in 1995. Since then she has published eleven other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press in December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series in October 2014. More recently, she has a chapbook Currents pending publication this Fall with Pink.Girl.Ink. Press. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com




Katie Hall is a writer, artist, and free spirit. She lives in Virginia and dreams of being in summer Maine with the fresh scent of pine trees, warm air, and blue lakes. She loves to weave words that have soul, meaning, and emotion together, and hopes her wordsmithing will move mountains and people.



Nels Hanson grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley and has worked as a farmer, teacher and writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 12, and 2014. Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review and other magazines and received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.



Andrew Hubbard recently moved back to Indiana after ten years in Houston, Texas.  He has had five books published, including, most recently, his first book of poetry, "Things That Get You," which was produced by Interactive Press



Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 875 small press magazines in 27 countries, he edits 10 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American: "From Exile to Freedom", several chapbooks of poetry, including "From Which Place the Morning Rises" and "Challenge of Night and Day", and "Chicago Poems".  He also has over 74 poetry videos on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos


Facebook Group:  Contemporary Poets https://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/      




Anna Keeler is a poet and fiction writer attending Rollins College.    She is currently a columnist for The Odyssey Online, as well as the poetry editor for Brushing Literary Magazine. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Crab Fat Literary Magazine and Red Fez Literary Journal. She lives in Winter Park, FL.


Amy Nemecek is a freelance book editor living in rural Michigan with her husband, their teenage son, two cats, and a Yorkie. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Vine Leaves Literary Journal and Mothers Always Write. When she's not working with words, she enjoys watching baseball, playing the violin, hiking, cross-country skiing, and researching family history.


Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his published poetry and fiction can be found. His chapbook "Songs of A Dissident" will be released in January of 2016 through Transcendent Zero Press, and his words have appeared recently in venues such as Yellow Chair Review, Dissident Voice, Literary Orphans, and Sleeve Lit Mag.

Bruce Owens has been writing poetry for 50 years. One of his poems appeared in the Robinson Jeffers Newsletter (No. 93 & 94, Winter & Spring) in tribute to friend, and fellow poet William Everson. He has been a guest lecturer at various colleges in California, lecturing on the nature of the creative process, and he has conducted poetry workshops, mainly with young adults, especially those struggling with various addictions or having come from an abusive household, using poetry as an instrument of discovery for both self, and as an entry into the world around us. His collection of poems: Eddies in the Rush (ISBN 0-971256-0-0 [149 pg.]) was endorsed by C.C. Bailey and poet William Stafford (1914-1993) a "National Book Award recipient." 

Elizabeth Poreba taught English in New York City high schools for thirty-five years and now volunteers as a docent at the Old Merchant's House in Manhattan, a tutor of conversational English at New York University, and a foot soldier for the Sierra Club. She has published a chapbook, The Family Calling (2011). Her poems have appeared in Ducts.org, First Literary Review East and Commonweal, among other print and online publications. She is the author of Vexed.


Schraeder's creative work has appeared recently in journals including GlitterwolfDark Moon Digest, Katzenhatz, Hoax,  Bloodbond, and elsewhere.  Schraeder's short fiction also appears in several anthologies, including Between the Cracks, Petals in the Pan, and others. Schraeder studied literature and philosophy in graduate school and is author of a poetry chapbook, The Hunger Tree Find more online at www.efschraeder.com


Pat St. Pierre is a freelance writer (poetry, fiction, nonfiction) for both adults and children. Her work has been published both online and in print. You may view Pat's work at: A Long Story Short, Feathered Flounder, Mountain Tales Press, Kids Imagination Train, Silver Boomer Books, Fiction 365, etc. Her third poetry book "Full Circle" was just published. She is also an amateur photographer whose photos also can be viewed online and in print. You may view some at: Sediments, Front Porch Review, Decades Review, Ken *Again, Our Days Encounter, etc.    Please visit Pat's blog at the following link:  www.pstpierre.wordpress.com.

Alisa Velaj has been shortlisted for the annual international erbacce-press poetry award in June 2014. She was also shortlisted for the Aquillrelle Publishing Contest 3 in January 2015 and was the first runner up in this contest. Velaj’s full length book of poetry “A Gospel of Light” is published by Aquillrellle in June 2015. 
The three poems published here are included in the book “A Gospel of Light” published by Aquillrellle.  Alisa Velaj’s poems are translated into English by Ukë Zenel Buçpapaj.

Barbara Altamirano is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature whose work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Journal, Living for the Whole Family, The Majellan: Champion of the Family, and Pittsburgh Parent among others.

Amy Gray-Cunningham is an author, speaker, blogger and freelance/virtual assistant. She's lived in Charlotte, NC for over 30-years where she met and eventually married her high school sweetheart, Chuck Cunningham on September 26, 2009. Together they have two (almost grown) sons – Alex, 21 and Chase, 20.
Amy is a living kidney donor and is writing her first novel – Daring to Believe, Amy’s Memoir as a Living Kidney Donor, which she plans to have published in 2016.

Journalist, critic, and memoirist, Thomas Larson is the author of three books, the most recent, The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease. He is a longtime staff writer for the San Diego Reader and Book Reviews Editor for River Teeth. Larson teaches in the MFA Program at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. Recent essays and reviews are in Free Inquiry, The Humanist, Counterpunch, and Solstice.
 www.thomaslarson.com


Colleen Warren is a professor of English at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, where she teaches writing and American literature. She is the author of Annie Dillard and the Word Made Flesh: An Incarnational Theory of Language, a book of literary criticism. She lives on seventeen acres of Indiana farmland bordered by woods, in which her Thoreauean cabin is set.
Visit her blog at warrenpeaceofmymind@wordpress.com


Jennifer Waters was born and raised in Michigan and has been writing for as long as she can remember. She has been going to college on and off (beginning as a liberal arts major and ending now in social and behavioral sciences) since 2003. I has had two pieces of poetry published as well as a monologue.

Maria Woodworth-Etter, Indiana Voice Journal Issue #16
Maria Woodworth-Etter
Maria Woodworth-Etter is one of my hero's of the faith. Her powerful ministry was instrumental in bringing the gospel to Indiana, and literally, to thousands upon thousands of people. She traveled across the land holding revivals, saving souls, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. In other words, doing exactly what Jesus did; what we're all called to do. When she prayed, people were touched by God sometimes from a distance of 50 miles away. Actual newspaper reports, books, and testimonies about this amazing woman of God are numerous, and I'm sharing the links: Her books are available on Amazon.

There is a wonderful Facebook page started by Maria's great-great-great grandson Jack Welch of Lite The Fire. I reached out to Jack
through Facebook to ask if I could share his story in this issue of the journal. He agreed, and stated that he and his wife Deb would be in Anderson the following Saturday. God's timing is so perfect...We decided to meet for coffee. They are an incredible couple claiming their inheritance, walking in the anointing, and working to uncap, or re-dig, the wells of Jack's grandmother Maria Woodworth-Etter.




A PROPHETIC WORD COMES TO PASS:

My family thinks I am crazy for believing in a supernatural God who loves them. The "religious spirit" was all they ever knew of, and turned away from. About a year ago, a particular family member was going through a tough time and I asked God for a word to share with her.  He gave me a vision of her standing in a beautiful garden dressed in vivid colors. In my spirit, I heard, "she is one of the most beautiful flowers in my garden". When I relayed this message to her, she laughed and said I was just making things up to make her feel better. She said," IF God is real, there are so many people on the planet, he wouldn't bother with me". She didn't believe she was worthy of God's love or attention. But she asked me to describe the garden anyway and I said, "beautiful colors, flowers and plants, new growth and blooms all over the place and you are dressed in the colors of the garden, and there are swarms of butterflies over the garden."

November 1, 2015

Indiana Voice Journal, Veteran's Day

Indiana Voice Journal would like to say thank you to all veterans and military personnel serving the United States. Your stories are heart-wrenching, your sacrifices real. I pray your stories and your sacrifices become beams of light bringing change, love, honor, peace, and courage back to an America that no longer desires war. We love you, we celebrate you, and we hear you...

To read true stories from veteran's, or if you are a veteran and have stories you need help writing about, please visit the following link: http://veteranscominghome.org/

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