Matt Stevens's Page

Started writing this weeks and weeks ago and didn't find time to publish it until now. Just sayin'.

It has occurred to me in the wake of my move that not everybody knows that I have, in fact, moved. I imagine that this has partially to do with the fact that I've been back in the Atlanta/Athens area six out of seven weekends—and will continue to return at least every other weekend, for that matter—and partially to do to the whirlwind nature of the hire that brought me to Charleston in the… Continue

I finished reading The Shack last month and I can see what all the fuss is about. Both fusses, actually. That is, I can understand why many fundamentalist Christians are freaking out about its Trinitarian implications, and I can appreciate how others believe the novel drips of revelation. I personally fall amongst this latter group, but I'm not here to riff on the essentiality (and even the common decency) of one's opening their mind to another's earnest attempt to express what they under… Continue

I don't usually do these, but in light of my grandmother's passing a couple months back it occurred to me, and to much of my family, that when a person dies an entire collection of stories, memories, and personality quirks disappear with them. As a wise pastor once said, "God didn't have one of you, so He made one." And to that end, that one, that individual truly produces a gap where they were when they leave, as if a massive limb of the mighty family oak dries up and withers away over the c… Continue

One cannot help but notice the glorious shade of autumn—is there any other way to aptly describe it?—that our trees have taken on recently. In the evenings, I go on long walks down the sideroads that splinter off of Old Jefferson Highway, itself a rivulet that snakes away from Athens into a very rural Jackson County. There really is nothing like a two-lane, blacktop backroad to get lost on and forget about everything, as a friend of mine once suggested. So every evening I disappear from c… Continue

To my continual shock and awe, I have come to learn that there exist people who actually take the time to follow along with my little Thought Parade here. It's humbling and touching, really. And because of the recent swell of my "readership" (as always, I use the term loosely), and because of the length these things usually take on, I am reposting this one seeing that there are probably many new readers who have never tracked this far into the past. If I am correct, I first published this one… Continue