Conspire!

Holly and I are excited to be part the team crafting CONSPIRE! It's gonna be a quarterly publication, seasonally informed, and distributed communally for the most part (that is, you need to know someone who knows someone who knows someone to get it).

Anyway, it's call for articles, artwork, images, poems, short stories, photographs for the first issue. Stuff is due into the editorial team by Jan 9th I believe.

Read below for the "official" call for entries...

Call for visions and voices in our premier issue.

Spring 2009 (March) : Resurrection Stories

At the core of all Christian belief is this bizarre, astonishing, and absurd claim: That someone who was executed and killed came back to life three days later. Most of the time it seems that church folks allow that belief to be a safe, abstract spiritual idea without really grappling with its claim on their lives.

Does the resurrection of Jesus actually have an impact on our lives, personally and communally? Have we felt resurrection in our own experience? Has the resurrection story transformed the way we lived into certain situations or utterly changed the way we looked at our options? How?

Have we gone through real deaths – losing someone we loved, bathing and embalming
the loved one’s body marked by brutal violence, or feeling our hopes and possibilities crushed – only to come out at the other end, more alive and on fire with hope?

Or is resurrection the ultimate Christian mind-game--a story so hardwired into us that we are programmed to find resurrection whether or not it is actually there. Are our resurrection stories a placebo to cover up meaningless suffering and loss? Do we call things resurrection when what we actually mean is that we have gotten over some death and moved on?

This inaugural issue of Conspire! will launch around Easter, 2009. In it, we invite you to share your musings on resurrection. Your stories may come from your personal life, or from the life of your community, or from the world around you. How have you experienced world-shattering hope, good news that turns you upside down and changes your life – and is more than a spiritual cliché? Maybe resurrection happens in sly, subtle ways (after all, only a handful of people saw the risen Jesus!). Maybe resurrections are there all the time – but we finally learn to open our eyes to see them.

We are looking for various kinds of materials:

Articles: Articles can range from 200 to 1,500 words. We are looking for material that is personal, engaged, provocative, challenging – not scholarly, not too heady, but neither too simplistic or pious. Most articles should relate to the specific theme of the issue, though we will occasionally consider others as well.

Artwork and Photography: Do you have an eye for the visual image that compels our attention, draws forth deep resonance in our spirit, unveils the unseen beauty around us – or maybe is just cool? Let’s see what you have –maybe it fits in our pages.

Poetry: Do you weave words that yield the shock of beauty, the jolt of insight, the opening of new awareness? Send something our way – no long epics, please, no piety set to verse.

Short Fiction: Are you a spinner of yarns that probe the human condition, that navigate the interstices of meaning and mystery in our experience? Maximum of 1,500 words.

Reviews: Are there some great books, films, art, blogs, or other media out there that can spark our imagination, challenge our paradigms, empower us in our subversive revolution of love? Let us know – in under 500 words. (Note: Reviews do not have to tie into the theme of the issue.)

The deadline for submissions is January 9, 2009.
Send manuscripts, queries, ideas to: editors@conspiremagazine.com

No large image files, please. Small, low-res jpegs, or links to online galleries.

WHO WE ARE:

Conspire! is a quarterly publication that shares stories of community, revolutionary love, and creative new visions. Conspire! stubbornly insists that small, daily acts of faith, conviction, and integrity can change the world.
Since Conspire! is just starting, we are not able to offer compensation for articles at this point – but we certainly will provide you with a subscription!

www.conspiremagazine.com