J. Stephen Rhodes writes about living on the edges between security and fear, and guilt and grace, as well as between country and city, and prosperity and scarcity. For example, in his essay "Dark Glasses in Church" (forthcoming in Gettysburg Review), he describes making the transition from being a married, plane-hopping administrator to being a divorced, small-town pastor: "I felt like I was spinning inside a washing machine while looking through a sudsy window at my wife, children, vocation, and the rest of the world." Or in his poem, "What was Taken," he reflects on leaving the world of security for the world of anxiety after being the victim of a break-in:

Tonight it’s hard to sleep
because the door still swings open in my mind
letting in strange fingers I might have seen
today putting coins in a parking meter
or shaking out cigarettes while I walked
by and waved as I often do

Regarding his poems and essays, he comments, "I want to write in a way that offers hope for people like myself who are more than a little overwhelmed by modern life. I want to be honest about the brokenness that besets us, but I also am looking for beauty in the brokenness, or at the very least, beauty in the act of lamenting it."

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