Read any essay, story, or poem Terrain has ever produced, right here…
SPRING 2024
by Mitchell Schultz
In my (admittedly brief) life experience, the modern American layman holds a vague idea that Christianity and intellectualism are fundamentally incompatible ways of life. Most non-believers – and even some believers – point to the seeming dichotomy between the Judeo-Christian creation story and the scientifically reviewed and supported Theory of Evolution as a definitive sign that faith in a God and serious intellectual thought are incompatible.
by McKay Lawless
At the sight of dawn, darkness scatters and at the delicate touch of the sun’s beams, perched dew caves…
by Madelyn Hajovsky
It is only your fickle heart
learning some sense of permanence
as you pass from womb to womb,
making room for the eternal Present…
by Ava Malcolm
Most of us were raised on a steady diet of Percy Jackson, Magnus Chase, Marvel, and other modern myths. Although we may think of them as retellings of ancient narratives, no one would deny that they feel real, relatable, and immersive. They seem to reflect the stories of our own lives. Even though Bible stories aren’t wrapped up in the Rick Riordan packaging, Bible stories can also be viewed as pertaining to our own lives. We can take a similar approach in applying the principles found within them as we do to myths and demi-god stories.
by Joshua Chung
What is Virtue?
EZEKIEL: What is virtue?
BARTHOLOMEW is surprised. He pulls out his phone and searches for the definition.
BARTHOLOMEW: Behavior showing high moral standards.
EZEKIEL: Well, surely it’s more than that, right? Virtue is just the way we act?
BARTHOLOMEW: Maybe not–I have heard it said that “patience is a virtue.”
EZEKIEL: So virtue isn’t just another character trait or method of action. It’s gotta transcend that somehow.
by Zach Lacy
The idea of a “heart sparkle” has spread through various cultural platforms and social media sites, but taps at a much earlier tradition and concept, that of love at first sight. Dante famously fell for Beatrice at the age of nine from a chance encounter at the Portinari house—whether they even spoke is unknown—devoting lines of poetry and prose to a woman he once crossed years after she married another and passed. Romeo falls the same way for the beautiful Juliet. Love at first sight may be the grandest motif in literature and art, but is it a reality or just a great coincidence?
by Deborah Chu
Liar. Felon. Corrupt. These were some of the most popular keywords circulated in media headlines and public discourse during the controversial 2024 Presidential Election cycle. Once again, America found itself a house divided as a chaotic electoral season unfolded. American voters had two options: a presidential candidate who secured her nomination without a democratic vote or another on trial for a string of serious crimes. One question troubled many Americans: How did we get here?
by Lance Cartwright
In 1895, the great mathematician and logician Georg Cantor published the first part of his defining work: Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers. In it, he solidified much of his career’s work by studying the nature of infinity and fathering the field of set theory. He helped establish the foundations of mathematical logic, along the way proving that there are an infinite number of infinities, distinguished by size. For Cantor, the importance of his mathematics extended far beyond his academic career: his understanding of infinity determined his understanding of the divine.
by Audrey Hughes
Consider what worship services in the early church must have been like: dirt floors, stone walls, handcrafted stringed instruments, and humble hearts lifted towards God. Such services in the ancient church bore a beauty and simplicity that fostered an environment wholly fixated on Christ. Yet churches have slowly evolved, specifically in the way worship services are structured. What began in humble rooms of Hebrew homes, now inhabits massive sanctuaries with large bands and flashing lights. When comparing modern worship services to those of the early church, one can’t help but wonder if certain trends in contemporary worship have turned church services into a production; a time of manufactured emotional experiences, rather than a time of turning our eyes back to Jesus and glorying in who He is. It seems C.S. Lewis had a similar concern.
by Lydia Demlow
Humans are creative. We paint, weave, sing, and invent, among a litany of other processes. The process of making something out of an idea, transforming abstract inspiration into reality is deeply fulfilling and integral to our status as image-bearers. Our creations can show care—a knitted blanket recalling the love of the mother who made it; our creations can be practical—clothes and houses to keep us safe and warm; or, they can be expressive—a child’s artwork that speaks not only to our minds but to our hearts. We imitate the breadth of the creative nature of our own Creator.
by Josiah A. Jones
Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century philosopher and theologian, once wrote, “The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality” (“The Greatest Danger” 16-17). In 1854, he began writing one of his most prescient works: a scathing critique of the Danish church entitled The Attack Upon Christendom. He argued that despite Denmark’s status as an overwhelmingly Christian nation, the church had become an apathetic shadow of its true calling.
by Noah Thomason
The briny, brackish, tidal night retires…
by Hunter Rapp
Father Amos knew him well. He spoke to him on the long roads and quiet trails, across trampled dust and through settling dusk. In Amos’s imagination, the deserts that ancient monk made his home were not dissimilar from his own Texas plains, and praying familiar words aloud offered some measure of comfort on those haunted stretches.
by Cara McMillan
Everyone puts their faith in something, whether that be religion, philosophy, a wise friend, or even themselves. When we put our faith in something we consult it, seek guidance from it, and create expectations around it. American society increasingly identifies as post-Christian, so we must ask the question: what is our civilization trusting in?
by Molly Tompkins
The rush and roar of the wave crashes through Leila. Wind beats through her imagination, and she plunges underwater to behold the kaleidoscopic shimmer of the sun breaking through the membrane of the wave. “The sun is rising,” her mother calls…
by Margaret Grace Voelter
The stars have prompted both religious and scientific inquiry for thousands of years. As Plato once wrote, “This study [astronomy] certainly compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to those higher things.” (Plato) For the majority of human history, people considered the fields of science and religion to be one and the same. However, in our modern era, most consider them to be mutually exclusive. When did this paradigm begin to crumble, and what caused it? With a glance at history, it is apparent that this conflict originated with the study of our solar system, when Renaissance astronomers' technological innovations revealed that the universe was ordered contrary to the Catholic Church’s doctrine.
by Jessica Jang
Just like the last notes of a cadence
Man is caught in growing ebbs and fast flows,
the present,
a moving melody that taunts in its
tension
running towards harmonic resolution yet
remaining, lingering, in the time before those final notes ring sweet.
by Isaac Basil
“Do you remember there being this much grass last year?” He turned to me.
“Looks like there’s more water.” The gentle noise of streams flowing into the caldera murmured as we stared at the lake.
“It’s warmer this year.”
“You think?”
“Look at yourself.” He gestured to the sweat stain left by my pack. I could feel its coolness around me, a breeze from the water pressing the damp cloth against my body.
“It was hailing last year. Do you remember the wind?” The image of our party walking single file, under assault from the elements on the South face of Mt. Siyeh came to me.
by Noah Thomason
The Son of Isaac grappled God alone.
The stubborn one, with dust upon his chest,
Swindler, trickster, birthright-stealer, thrown,
Refused to go until he had been blessed.
A sickly woman, by her blood beset,
Pushed through the throng, and touched the Lord God’s fleece.
by Mollie Walters
Margot was gone for two years before she found me at the lagoon. At the deepest point, its sandy foundation bore two fathoms of water, and beyond the reef, the ocean carried thousands, traversable by my family’s catboat. For now, I stayed on shore, not wanting another lecture from my eldest sister, Dylan, about the dangers of the riptides. With my Polaroid camera, I snapped a photo of the bullheaded sunset, which glared on the water’s surface.
by McKay Lawless
Every student at the University of Texas at Austin has felt it–the pressure following the most asked question.
“What are you doing this summer?”
People threw this question around my freshman year. I didn’t think much of it, not until I returned to UT after my first summer break and asked my peers about their time off.
“Mine was so fun! I worked under Vivek Ramasamway to create a think tank,” one said.
by Mitchell Schultz
Going to church has always been a statistically feminine activity—more women attend on average than men. This gap has been well-documented since early Greco-Roman churches, where women were given higher social standing and domestic protections than in secular society. Contemporarily, the phenomenon is still known and accounted for, with a book coming out as recently as 2018 entitled Why Men Hate Going to Church. As the gap seemed to widen in the mid 2010’s, there was real panic about this issue. Since then, however, something has shifted.
by Jessica Jang
I have been embraced by God
With soft sweet arms
And fiercely tender, open hands.
Mom’s fingers, not often manicured, Hold
tight to soothe innocence and fear, Heavy and
secure.
Dad’s hands, daily clasped white
knuckled, chapped and red.
Enveloped in praying,
Typing
Dish-washing
Blowing drying hair
Tickling
I.
Commence blindness, invisibility,
A woman fleeing the temple in search
Of a sea in which to drown in.
Arbitrarily the feet cry, “Eastward!”
The Sun not yet risen compels her so.
Soles strike against something unstrikable—
A stream of one weary thousand cubits.
Frustration climbs unbidden to her throat,
And the body tugs itself onward, tripping,
That it may collapse in darker waters.
by Hannah McAnally
All humans crave love. At the root of every action is the desire to belong, to be known, and to be loved. In a healthy marriage, love is one spouse serving the other and striving to be the hand of God to their spouse. God created marriage “so that man would not live alone.”1 Marriage is the beautiful and trying dance of two humans seeking the Lord together and honoring Him by honoring the other. God designed marriage for the purpose of giving oneself to an other in heart, mind, and body, receiving them in the same, and being intimately known in those realms. One aspect of power in marriage results from knowing the depths of light and dark in the other person. The signs of a healthy, God-honoring union are a shared love for the Lord and the use of power to serve your spouse.
by Braxton Bullock
In modern Western society, there are two domineering worldviews. One of them is Christianity, which teaches that Christ is God, the law-setter of the universe, and the giver and creator of all creation. The other is modern secularism, which often garners a reputation of being relativist or even nihilist, but in reality, most people who would be classified as secularists claim to at least believe in some morality. In fact, almost all of them do. About 98% of atheists and 97% of agnostics report it is possible to be moral or have good values without religion. Yet, a common objection yielded by the Christian or theist against this secular morality is to assert that morality cannot possibly exist in any true sense without God. They usually mean this in both a practical and philosophical sense, for the power of God is essential for the practical existence of any enduring moral system, and the love of God is required for philosophical existence; the secularist comes up empty at both ends.
by Avery Crowley
Tertullian was an early Christian author and apologist from Carthage whose work contributed greatly to the formation of early Christian theology. Most remembered for his writings against Marcion, he and some of his contemporaries sought to protect the church from heretical teaching. Marcion taught that Jesus Christ came to earth as a different God than the God of the Old Testament, and in 144 AD he was deemed a heretic and excommunicated from the church. This liturgy is meant to make us aware of our own tendency to misunderstand our God’s nature and to allow us to dwell in the paradox of His character.
by Isaiah Pyle
Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is a set of Biblically-based guidelines on how Christians are called to participate in society. It originated in 1891 when Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, an open letter advocating for a significant change in the exploitative treatment of the working class at the time. The letter first compares and contrasts the flaws of socialism to those of “unchecked competition” in the form of unregulated Capitalism, and then it advocates for a reasonable middle ground. It claims that the ability to hold private property is a fundamental and Biblically-supported human right, but that society must also provide public aid to those who find themselves facing hardships, economic or otherwise, that they likely will not be able to overcome on their own. Among other things, it makes the case that it is the duty of society to both provide a space for individuals and families to exercise independence and to provide aid to and care for those who cannot do so for themselves.
by Isaiah Pyle
Despite its reputation of glorifying the occult and taking an anti-religious stance, heavy metal contains and revolves around Biblical and Christian imagery. In fact, Christianity is both explored and proclaimed by numerous songs within the genre, illustrating the universal desire for truth and salvation that transcends all else.
by Birdie Anderson
On a summer day in Georgia, with peach-sticky fingers and wiry limbs strong from days on the trail, four kids set off on a final hike down Tallulah Gorge.
(Their parents and grandparents were with them as well, but that doesn’t sound quite as adventurous, does it).
by Deborah Chu
“Burning the midnight oil.” “Burning the candle at both ends.” Or to put these sayings into modern terms: “pulling an all-nighter.” Phrases such as these roll into our daily conversations as easily as melting wax rolls down the sides of a candle. In our culture that values high productivity, speed, and instant results, deprioritizing sleep, rest, and self-care has become common. In college especially, where we control our schedules and find ourselves exposed to many exciting opportunities and experiences, biting off more than we can chew becomes disturbingly easy—at the expense of our sleep and well-being.
by Zach Lacy
The labyrinthine depths of Tlön invite us inward, towards a world where the very fabric of the universe is malleable to the minds of man. Thus, it leaves us to face the blurred lines between perception and reality: a concept not unfamiliar to our own world and its philosophical traditions. In his short story entitled “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges examines the rational consequences of realism and idealism in a highly plastic world. Created by a secret society of intellectuals, the fictional world of Tlön represents a foil to our own world. Tlön embraces idealism wholly, with a metaphysical structure lacking any material existence. This world relies solely on perception: what is not perceived simply does not exist. The language of Tlön embraces this ideal, as “there are no nouns in Tlön,” but merely “impersonal verbs…with an adverbial value” (Borges 8). Borges exemplifies this concept further, for in Tlön there is no “word ‘moon,’ but there is a verb which in English would be ‘to moon’ or ‘to moonate’” (Borges 8). This rejection of the material extends into every crevice of the Tlönian’s being, rejecting any notion of a material world into even their language. Borges builds this world as the antithesis of our own, and yet this conception of reality doesn’t seem so far from the one many know.