White Pine, Red Cedar Evergreen decked in strands of web separated by wind ushering in winter. Once summer's home to spider's fare of fly and flea now flown and barren blown down, a single hair of hoarfrost catching crystals. Sparkle, twinkle single thread newly...
Hoosier Red
A reflection on taking our first son to college Indiana University Orientation A hot weekend in roasted granite wandering the ivory tower of Southern Indiana red. Hoosier Red. Red faces with beads of sweat streaming down alongside sideburns still coming in. Red cheeks...
An Easter Sonnet
With inspiration from Pilgrims’ Hymn by Stephen Paulus Yes, even before we call on your name Lord, you meet us. Before we humbly ask, In a single branch of Jesse you came, Offering life which darkness cannot mask. Unceasing love, O your unceasing love Falls freshly...
Pew Marker, A Tribute to William E. Gahlberg
My mother said, “He was a pew marker.” Colorful, broad-jacketed shoulders marked the spot, twelve rows back, a Sunday regular, always early, always eager, waiting for the word of God. “In the beginning was the word.” God’s word, his marker. Informing life, expanding...
Bluebonnet Girl
College visits come, a prerequisite to growing up, while garden tea parties fade as seasons extinguish alongside summer camps, baby ballet slippers, reading logs, and AP tests. The future is wide open on I-35 north. Open handed sky, arching this Texas highway with a...
Faceless Saints
For the people building of Church of the Resurrection, Wheaton, Illinois, who wrote their names and verses of hope on the concrete floor of the old Alcoa building before it was converted into a glorious worship space. Faceless Saints In black steel and cold concrete...
Trial by Book Launch
It was a perfect June night to launch a novel. Full guest list – check. Plenty of books – check. Fancy pen – check Flowers, music, opera cakes and BUZZZZ. After months of planning, my baby was ready to be delivered into the hands of her new parents and they were...
The Glory of Revising (in Community)
I’m three years and counting into the development of my first novel. Today I found myself laughing out loud at the sheer insanity of time invested with little promise of a future, short of Jeremiah 29:11. Everyone in America is writing a novel and very few are...
Margaret Philbrick
Margaret Ann Philbrick serves the Guild as the curator of the Redbud blog on Patheos at
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/redbudwritersguild/ She also co-edited and contributed to the
Redbud poetry and essay collection, Everbloom, Stories of Deeply Rooted and Transformed
Lives (Paraclete Press, 2017). Her first novel, A Minor - A Novel of Love, Music and Memory
(Koehler Books, 2014) garnered critical praise, “An emotional story…clear prose…delicately
constructed….nuanced characters….breaks the mold.” Kirkus Reviews. Back to the Manger
(Singing River Publications, 2009) created with her mother, an oil painter, is now a family
Christmas classic with ten years of consistent sales. She and her transgender sibling Carly are
featured in the video curriculum for the book, Messy Grace by Caleb Kaltenbach which teaches
people how to love authentically amidst lives in transition. Her poems and articles have been
featured in numerous anthologies and publications including C.T., Relevant, Ready magazines,
The Redbud Post and Patheos on-line. Margaret and her husband live on Lake Mendota in
Madison, WI and serve U.W. students from their lighthouse on Langdon,
https://www.instagram.com/lighthouseonlangdon/ . She is the mother of three highly dramatic,
artistic children and an obsessive compulsive dog, Snuggles.
