Ten Glimpses of God in Five Hours
Gwyn’s sick, which means two nights of interrupted sleep. This morning she arrives in our dark bedroom wanting to play. I don’t. She curls up at my feet, right where the cat sleeps, and lays still for five minutes. Snow has dusted the earth. It falls all morning in trace amounts, miniscule white thoughts moving through air. Hot tea fills my belly. Emily can’t wait to get to work, she loves what she’s doing so much. Gwyn watches movies, a special treat reserved for when she’s sick. She’s snuggled under a blanket on the couch. I keep her company by cleaning out the hall desk. Stationary, old maps, coupons, manila envelopes, photos. I haven’t sorted this stuff in years. Quiet organizing calms me, as though tossing old bus schedules has a counterpart in my heart. Curious George gets himself into innocent mischief. I show Gwyn the glitter I’ve found. Her…
Windows onto a Wider World
The real subject of autobiography is not one’s experience but one’s consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool. –Patricia Hampl Perhaps because I’m entering my twenty-third year of teaching writing, I’m getting curmudgeonly about memoir. I still revere fine examples in the genre, but the vast majority of memoir seems myopic and disengaged. Published works irritate me the most; I read a memoir like Sheryl Strayed’s Wild and run screaming back to the classics to recover. Memoirs-in-process at least contain the possibility of improving. The amateur writers I work with fear that memoir is selfish, but this isn’t my gripe. “You may keep the self-centered material—that’s all we writers have to work with!” writes Carol Bly. The self is a wonderfully worthy subject. Perhaps what grates on me is a distinctly American understanding of the self, obsessed with personal pain and disturbingly isolated. I am interested in the self…
The Journey from Self-Conscious to Aware
The other evening I taught a lesson at the Loft that was meant to help beginning memoirists distinguish between the character and the narrator in their stories. We create personas for ourselves on the page; the main character in every memoir is the younger self who experiences and is changed by events; we can also portray ourselves as a narrator looking back on these events. For writers who assume the “I” on the page is also the living, breathing self, the lesson was tough. Brows furrowed, baffled questions were asked, small groups struggled to figure out which “I” was which, and despair settled everywhere. I’ve observed this happen whenever I teach some element of craft. Say I reflect on the value of using sensory details; suddenly my students are overly conscious about not using sensory details and assume they’ve failed, or their writing grows ridiculously burdened with sensory details and…
Changing Church
Ages ago, when I was in the messy middle of coming out bisexual (I felt raw and unformed because I was not the person others had thought me to be; I railed against God for making this world such a difficult place to be honest in) I read a passage my spiritual director Cil Braun had written in a newsletter: “God is not static. God is in constant creation, constantly being created. We are not static, either. We are in constant creation.” Yes, I thought; I am being created. At the time it felt wretched. Looking back I know coming out was gloriously, divinely formative. “Discomfort is the nerve ending of growth,” Jonathan Rowe writes. Kids know this viscerally when growing pains wrench their legs; they know it emotionally when cascading new experiences—getting dressed themselves, suddenly drawing figures—send them scurrying back to babyhood. Sometimes Gwyn crawls into my lap and…
The VIDA Count and Spiritual Writing
Recently, while reading yet another volume of Philip Zaleski’s Best Spiritual Writing, I grew increasingly annoyed at essay after essay of heady language about grandiose meditations and abstract ethical conundrums. My spiritual life, lived out as I potty-train my daughter, lift canned tomatoes from a boiling bath, struggle to remain a loving member of my bickering church community—in other words, lived out in details and increments—was absent from this collection. I thought of the hundreds of times I’ve folded my daughter’s trainer undies, printed with delicate pink roses; I hold their warm cotton to my cheek, imagine them snug on her sweet behind, and my knees go weak with adoration for this life. Underwear can be holy, too! I wanted to shout at Zaleski. Fortunately I’d also recently read the 2011 VIDA count (http://www.vidaweb.org/the-2011-count). VIDA, an online organization serving women in the literary arts, takes an annual survey of how…
Write–Or Be Written.
This past weekend my sister married the man she loves in a sunny meadow. Because this was her second marriage, she had resisted it mightily—“marriage” is a story the culture imposes on couples, and it doesn’t necessarily work. You have to understand—Marcy is a woman who, on her own, adopted two boys from Guatemala; she started a community farm and has midwifed countless babies into the world. Her performance artist sweetie moved in two years ago; the boys already call him Dad. Why bother with marriage? Eventually Marcy conceded that a wedding would give them a communal and sacred blessing. The couple created a “family union” ceremony with their Lakotan spiritual leader that involved the guests hiking across a canyon, drumming, washing in a stream, and making vows to one another and the boys. The guests cried and danced. What made my sister’s wedding powerful? It was faithful to tradition…
The God of Dreams
“God lives in your dreams.” So says a line in one of Gwyn’s children’s books. Our congregation is beginning to dream again, and I’m curious how this dreaming can invite God more fully into our midst. When I’ve dreamed dreams for my future, those dreams that tug me with longing are born of both me (my talents, my interests, my personality) and God. How do I know God’s in the mix? Usually some mystery is involved—where did this longing originate? Where is it taking me?—with no logical explanation. Usually the essence of my being is stirred when I work with the dream. Usually the dream pulls me into my best self while also serving some pressing need evident in the world. Almost always the dream seems impossible or stupid; it rarely comes with cultural affirmation and almost never with money. By following the dream, the world becomes a better place,…
You Are What You Write
When I teach, I often ask the question, “What’s at stake for you in this story?” I’m not alone; it’s a common question in the world of writing. Students are puzzled by it, however, and usually ask me to explain. Really I’m looking for the intersection between the writer’s heart and the words on the page. How does this subject terrify you, compel you, wrap its sweaty hands around your longing and jerk you into unexplored territory? When a story nags, it always shares some fundamental passion with the writer. It always taunts the writer with the promise of discoveries that cannot be made in any other way. How does this project set you on edge? What’s the rabbit hole you’ve been skirting? Your writing will take you down. For people who keep journals and new writers, writing is a natural extension of the self. We don’t recognize any separation…
Humility
It’s gone out of fashion. Even in Christian circles we associate humility with the mothballed faith of our grandmothers. These days we have more hip spiritual practices, like living in the present moment and doing yoga and advocating for GLBTQA rights. Why bother groveling? With anything that might undermine our pride? Spirituality’s supposed to make us feel good, right? Lately I’ve been reading some Benedictine spirituality. Joan Chittister believes the Rule of Saint Benedict is a relevant and alive document, one that speaks directly to the contemporary consciousness. In my skepticism, I came across this question in the Rule—“Who will dwell in your tent, O God?”—and Benedict’s answer: “These people reverence God, and do not become elated over their good deeds; they judge it is God’s strength, not their own, that brings about the good in them. They praise the Holy One working in them, and say with the prophet: …
Dismissing, Then Welcoming the Audience
You must sympathize with the reader’s plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader’s wants. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. When I came upon these words in Strunk and White’s classic writing handbook, Elements of Style, I felt pleased as punch. For years I’ve tried to convince writing students to surround themselves with a safe, protective bubble as they draft projects and begin revising. We all know how concern for our audience can loom over our shoulders, pestering us with questions like “What will your mother think?” and “Who will give a rat’s ass about that?” and judging our language or ideas as inadequate. As soon as we allow that dreaded entity, “the reader,” into our writing room, we begin censoring and performing. …