Dear Reader,

The Christian doctrine of grace is a world-changing idea, a notion that flips all power structures and hierarchies on their heads. It is, among other things, prodigal: God pours it out, like rain, on both the evil and the good, on those who accept it and those who reject it, with equally extravagant lavishness. “God goes,” as Christian Wiman writes, “belonging to every riven thing he’s made.” It is this sheer liberality of God’s free gifts to his disordered and disorderly creatures that we explore in this issue of Fare Forward. 

In this issue, Ralph James Savarese shares the unexpected gifts of poetry shared without the expectation of professional acclaim or reward. Tulio Huggins writes about growing up on Chick Tracks–and how both because and in spite of them, he found his spiritual home in the Catholic Church. And Alexander Pyles describes his path to a sense of belonging in the faith through the most unlikely of paths: the writings of atheist philosophers. We hope that these essays will encourage you and remind you of the unexpected and even shocking ways that God works in the world. And we hope that this Eastertide, you will feel the outpouring of grace that is God’s largesse to all humankind—and to you, in particular.

Fare Forward,
Sarah Clark
Editor-in-Chief