ALEA PEISTER

Alea’s writing has been featured in Relief, Solum, Ekstasis, The Curator, The ClayJar Review, Vita Poetica, Whale Road Review, and Art for the Isolated, among others.  In 2025, she will graduate with an MFA in Spiritual Writing from Seattle Pacific University.  Alea is passionate about the relationship between creativity and prayer, which she explores in ministry at her church.  She daylights as a copywriter at a marketing firm.  You can follow her writerly escapades on Instagram at @alea_peister and Substack at aleapeister.substack.com.

CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM

In the Church of the Nativity

dust clots every crevice

in every wrought

metal orifice.

Of course

we cannot comprehend

simplicity,

or discern

how we might inhabit land

divinity has touched

but worship the land

instead.

Here

is how I think it must

have been within

the first cathedral:

his exhausted Mother

cradled him.

Her skin touched

human skin. He wept. God

breathed.

Read more of Alea’s work in Solum Journal Volume I and Volume VI: Doubt (forthcoming).

Listen to our interview with Alea on Solum Podcast.