Archive - January, 2011

Sunrise, Sunset

January 31, 2011 in Staff Posts with 2 Comments

Michael Dean Clark

This is the third in a series of thoughts on how place shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell. The first two can be found here and here.

According to George Washington Carver, “nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.”

As much as I love peanut butter, I have to disagree. Not completely. In an earlier blog, I concluded that sunrise is most beautiful in the mountains, but sunset is more beautiful over the ocean. Being back in San Diego, however, has reminded me of one of life’s true-isms: in a wrestling match, sunset on the Pacific beats sunrise anywhere over the head with a steel chair every time.

Don’t agree? Here are three reasons you should.

1. You don’t have to get early up to see it.

This isn’t a morning person/night person binary. It’s just common sense. I mean, seriously, early risers get everything – the worm, a quiet house, the best waves, an unfounded reputation for being go-getters. They also get a sense of ownership over the beauty of the moment, that self-serving pride that says “I deserve to see this because I set my alarm clock and didn’t ignore it when it went off.”

Slackers need a prize, and that prize is the most beautiful part of the day. We know we don’t deserve it. We know we’re unable to lay claim to having a hand in the experience. Maybe we just have a better understanding of grace because we have a much harder time convincing ourselves we should be given any based on our actions.

2. The death of color is always more vibrant than its birth.

Apologies to Robert Frost (and Pony Boy), but nature’s first green isn’t gold. (Irony alert: Microsoft Word’s grammar check identifies this version of his famous line as grammatically problematic. Guess humans are still better than machines at a few things even if one of those things is not winning Jeopardy). No, nature’s last gold is gold. Just before they die, greens give way to the deepest, richest colors. And so it goes with the sunset. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve watched the light of the sun coming up and thought “those colors are amazing.” I can count the same number of times I’ve uttered those words as the Big Orange dropped into the ocean in the last ten days.

3. The Green Flash.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s probably because you either haven’t spent much time in Southern California or you’ve followed the age old of wisdom of not looking directly into the sun. But out here, we do it anytime the day is clear and the water is calm on the off chance we’ll get to see fingers of green light splay out across the water just as the sun dips below the horizon. It’s a rare event, but when it happens, you know you’ve been given a gift (unless you were also up to see the sunrise that same morning, in which case you assume you’ve earned a bonus for working overtime).

I’m sure some of you disagree. Please do, in the comments section below. While you do, I’ll be outside watching the sunset.

Michael Dean Clark is the fiction editor at Relief, as well as an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and three children.

The Word and words

January 28, 2011 in Writing and Publishing with 2 Comments

Editorial Assistant Stephanie S. Smith meditates on the relationship between the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, and the writer, the wordsmith.

I often wonder why, out of all the ways to describe the miracle of God-made-Man, the writer of the gospel of John chose to call it “The Word.”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” –John 1:1

He says it three times; he really doesn’t want you to miss this: This Jesus? He’s the Word. As a writer who lives and breathes words, this intrigues me.

If the Incarnation is composed of the Word given skin, of theology given a body, lungs, hands, sweat glands and elbows, what do my creative words translate into? If the Word became flesh and brought Life to the world, can my words, fragile and human as they are, become something more than ink on a page? Can they also bring life?

As writers, I believe that our words wield powerful weapons of influence, for better or for worse. And as Christians, I believe we are entrusted with language to point to redemption, by faithfully articulating the brokenness of our world and the wholeness of the gospel. The written word, as creatively communicated in story, poetry, and prose can help us to interpret our lives in light of the greater, eternal context.

Flannery O’Connor affirms this, “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” Good writing connects the regular details of our lives with eternal reality and puts them on the same plane.

The response of the Christian to the revelation of God should be that of Mary’s, who said to the angel Gabriel, “May it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:39).  Mary, who Scripture describes as a woman in God’s favor, invited the divine word to manifest itself in her very life, which was fulfilled literally in the Incarnation.  In the same way, we invite the Incarnation into our lives when we obey God’s Word.  We give our faith a face when we love the widow, feed the hungry, visit the sick.

Madeleine L’Engle, in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, says our writing should reflect the response of Mary, “who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command.” L’Engle remarks, “I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am.  Enflesh me.  Give birth to me.’”

In the creative process, the writer-artist responds to each idea like Mary to the angel’s revelation: Yes, manifest yourself in my very flesh, that I may nurture you, cultivate you to grow, and pour you into the world for men to see. The Christian writer uses language as a frame, clothing the abstractness of idea in the flesh of syllables, sentences and words, and then presenting it to the world as a bright and shining advent.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.insidepages.net.

Relief Spreads the Love: Sarah Wells’s “Cascade Valley”

January 27, 2011 in Author News, Relief Recommends with 0 Comments

Here’s a lovely little poem from a former Relief author, Sarah Wells, called “Cascade Valley.”

Congrats, Sarah, and thanks for sharing your poem.

Bobbing a Bit

January 26, 2011 in Writing and Publishing with 2 Comments

Deanna Hershiser

It’s a question of responsibility.

My employers recently held a training day for our nonprofit group’s volunteers and staff, during which we reviewed the right attitudes to strive for with clients. One of our manual’s pages reminded me there’s a difference between feeling responsible to someone and thinking I’m responsible for someone.

The first is possible and desirable, the second, not so much. Obviously, another adult has charge of her own decisions. I can choose to be there to listen, to empathize, to suggest options. But I must release the other person’s outcome to be what they make it, or, if you will, what God makes it in their reality.

I’ve been considering this responsibility concept in other areas. One that strikes me is my writing. Here’s a good question, I hope: How can I best be responsible to my gift as opposed to laboring under the delusion I’m solely responsible for my gift?

Writing, as we know, treats the humans involved in fickle ways. There can be wonderful, short-lived moments of recognition. I love a sentence from an essay by Poe Ballantine. He describes receiving notice that something he wrote was selected for Best American Short Stories. He hadn’t been sure his writing was going anywhere special. “But,” he says, “I figured that much of what happens in the literary world is a lottery, and I had been plugging away for a while, so maybe it was time for my head to bob to the surface of the sea of drowning writers, if only for a few minutes.” **

Ballantine’s quip makes me smile and sigh. On the one hand, I’m glad I’m not the only one “drowning” a lot of the time. A little voice in my head will often lament that if I’d only do more of this or that, my work would become…something. Recognized by more people. Helpful in more “real” places. Better than I’ve imagined it could be. So it’s good to hear that even if the voice is wrong and I’m doing everything I can, I don’t have control over the realities of 21st century writing.

On the other side of my brain, I’ve pondered Ballantine and nibbled my nails over whether or not to quit. Just quit. Shouldn’t I be responsible for my work with words and discern when it’s not going anywhere? Soon I may find I have plugged away at this stuff till life is next to over.

But there’s always been this ancestor on my dad’s side. His journals were found, long after he died. In the 1800s he pioneered with his family across the midwest. With pen he scratched beauty onto rough pages, sharing wonder at rock formations and the hue of prairie sky. He enjoyed his gift of writing and didn’t worry what ultimately happened with it. Unless he lay awake by dying campfires, chewing his nails in his bedroll. If so he didn’t say.

My point is I continue to be given a view of my lack of control over outcomes. And yet I decide again I will keep writing, taking steps each day on the journey. Being responsible to it. I may not get to choose which generation of readers ultimately finds and enjoys my words. I’m not in bad company. And the reality taking shape may contain a surprise or two more for this little head bobbing in the sea.

** (Ballantine’s full essay, Blessed Meadows For Minor Poets, is part of his collection, 501 Minutes to Christ.)

Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief, and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com/stories-glimmer.

Introducing 5.1 Authors

January 25, 2011 in Author News, Relief News with 0 Comments

The wait is over!

The next issue of Relief is here, and it looks great! Below is a list of authors and works that will appear in issue 5.1, but when you’re done looking at the make-up, go ahead and order a presale for 20% off the list price.

Michael Cocchiarale

 God She Could Tolerate
Fiction		 Michael Cocchiarale is Associate Professor of English at Widener University (Chester, PA). Some of his other stories have appeared in REAL, Galleon, Stickman Review, Dirty Napkin, Eclectica, and Flashquake.

Michael G. Cornelius

 Notre Dame
Poetry		 Michael G. Cornelius is the author/editor of ten books.

Zach Czaia

 The Wonderful Thing About Forgiveness
Fiction		 Zach teaches reading and mathematics at a high school in Minneapolis, MN. His essays and reviews have appeared before in Rain Taxi Review of Books and Dappled Things. “The Wonderful Thing About Forgiveness” is his first published short story.

Barbara Westwood Diehl

 Those Prayers
Poetry		 Barbara Westwood Diehl is founding editor of The Baltimore Review. She works for the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and is a M.A. in Creative Writing student at Johns Hopkins University. Her poems and stories have appeared in a variety of print and online publications, including JMWW, MacGuffin, SmokeLong Quarterly, Confrontation, Measure, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, American Poetry Journal, and Rosebud. She was raised Episcopalian, married a Methodist, and is now happily attending North Baltimore Mennonite Church. This is her first foray into publications with a Christian focus.

Tim Elhajj

 Simon, I Have Something to Say to You
 Creative Nonfiction		 Tim Elhajj‘s work has appeared in Brevity, Guernica, Sweet, The New York Times, The Yalobusha Review, and others. He edits Junk, a nonfiction literary magazine that focuses on addiction. His first memoir, titled Dopefiend: A Father’s Journey from Addiction to Redemption, is forthcoming from Central Recovery Press in September 2011.

Leslie Leyland Fields

 Making the Perfect Loaf of Bread
Creative Nonfiction		 Leslie Leyland Fields is the author/editor of 7 books including Surviving the Island of Grace. Her most recent is The Spirit of Food:34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, where this essay originally appeared. She teaches in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program, writes for Christianity Today, and commercial salmon fishes with her family on Kodiak Island, Alaska, where she eats salmon as often as possible.

Hannah K. Grieser

 The Last Enemy
Creative Nonfiction		 Hannah K. Grieser is the mother of five young sons and the wife of a literature professor. She also moonlights as a graphic designer. When she’s not changing diapers, designing brochures, pulling weeds, or cleaning peanut butter fingerprints off the piano, she keeps a blog at http://cinnamonrollsandbacon.blogspot.com.

David Holper

 Doubt, The Problem of Ascribing Evil, Margins, Under the Archway, Civilization
Poetry		 David Holper has worked as taxi driver, fisherman, dishwasher, bus driver, soldier, house painter, bike mechanic, bike courier, and teacher. With all that useful experience and a couple of degrees, he has published a book of poetry called 64 Questions (March Street Press), as well as numerous other poems in literary journals including Relief. He teaches at College of the Redwoods and lives in Eureka, California, which is far enough from the madness of civilization that he can get some writing done. Another thing that helps is that his three children continually ask him to make up stories, and he is learning the art of doing that well for them.

Robert Jonte

 First Breath, Elegy, Elegy for the Bell, Another Elegy
Poetry		 Robert Jonte graduated from the College of Charleston and worked for Crazyhorse Magazine. He studied with Morton Marcus in Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program and returned to the city to earn his Cambridge CELTA. Robert’s articles and poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Charleston City Paper, The Kingstree News, Miscellany, and Xenith. He currently teaches English in South Korea.

Kolby Kerr

 To Cain, Descending Moriah
Poetry		 Kolby Kerr is currently finishing his MFA at Seattle Pacific University. He writes and teaches in Dallas, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Emily.

Emily Lawrence

 Crusade for Lost and Frying Worms
Fiction		 Emily J. Lawrence is a young college graduate, eating tears and rejection letters as she waits for a “real job.” She spends her time creating sentences nobody has ever muttered, metaphors never thought of, and characters who take over. Her work can be found in A Capella Zoo, Hawk and Handsaw, Luna Station Quarterly, and Glossolalia. She is an assistant editor at Literary Laundry.

Judy Lorenzen

 Semantics
Poetry		 Judy Lorenzen holds a BA, English; MSED, Community Counseling (LMHP), and MA, Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska-Kearney. She received the 2007–2008 Outstanding Thesis Award for her poetry thesis, “Let Autumn Come.” She also holds a Doctorate of Theology from an online seminary. She teaches high school English, is a Fine Lines online editor, and a past contributing writer for the Heartland Gatekeeper newspaper. Publications include The Nebraska English Journal, Nebraska Poet’s Calendar, Fine Lines, Times of Singing, 2009 Nebraska Shakespeare Sonnet Contest winner, 2010 Plains Song Review. She has three poems forthcoming in the Platte Valley Review.

Marjorie Maddox

 Communion of the Saints
Fiction		 Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published Perpendicular As I; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation; Weeknights at the Cathedral; When the Wood Clacks Out Your Name: Baseball Poems; six chapbooks, and over 350 poems, stories, and essays in journals and anthologies. She is the co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press, 2005) and author of two children’s books from Boyds Mills Press. The recipient of numerous awards, Marjorie lives with her husband and two children in Williamsport, PA. She gives readings and school visits across the country. For more info and reviews, please see http://www.lhup.edu/mmaddoxh/biography.htm.

D.S. Martin

 The Dogs, Passage
Poetry		 D.S. Martin is a Canadian poet who has authored So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press) and Poiema (Wipf & Stock)—which was an award winner at the 2009 Canadian Christian Writing Awards. His poems in this issue are from a series inspired by the life and writing of C.S. Lewis. Poems from this series have been previously selected for Anglican Theological Review, Relief 1.4, Ruminate, Sehnsucht, The Other Journal, and Windhover. Visit his blog about Christian poetry: www.kingdompoets.blogspot.com.

Samuel Thomas Martin

 Like a Spread-eagled Cat Suspended
Creative Nonfiction		 Samuel Thomas Martin is the award-winning author of This Ramshackle Tabernacle, a collection of linked short stories that has received great reviews since its publication in June 2010 by Breakwater Books. Sam also runs the literary blog Dark Art Cafe and he is at work on a new novel about an ex-Norwegian death-metalist turned hippy.

Margot Patterson

 Catholics
Fiction		 A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, Margot Patterson has worked as a writer and editor in this country and abroad. She now lives in the greater Kansas City area.

A.S. Peterson

 The Art of Work
Creative Nonfiction		 A. S. “Pete” Peterson is the author of two historical adventure novels, The Fiddler’s Gun and Fiddler’s Green, and is a founding member of The Rabbit Room, a group of authors, musicians, pastors, and other artists engaged in an ongoing conversation about story, faith, art, and the importance of community. He lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee.

Linda Ravenswood

 The Birth, He knew What the knew When He knew
Poetry		 Linda Ravenswood is an internationally acclaimed performance artist, specializing in Music, Fine Art and Writing. Her creative and critical work has appeared in print and in recordings since her first publication in Ireland, where she lived in 1993. She holds a BFA from CalArts (2000) and an MA from Mount St. Mary’s College (2009). She works in live performance, in independent films and recording projects, and has appeared on PBS. Recently five fine art/installation pieces of hers appeared at an exhibit of international artists at The Pico House Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles (Autumn 2010). She is the principal juror for The Southern California Women’s Art Caucus (2010-2011). The work included in this edition of Relief will appear in her new book, Hymnal, from Mouthfeel Press (Spring 2011). Linda lives in Los Angeles, and is pursuing her PhD.

Michael Schmeltzer

 Elegy/Sound, Migration Quartet, The Vast – a ghazal
Poetry		 Michael Schmeltzer earned an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. He helps edit A River & Sound Review and is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears or is forthcoming in Natural Bridge, Water~Stone Review, New York Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, and Fourteen Hills, among others. He lives in Seattle.

Karen Schravemade

 Forgotten Things
Fiction		 Karen Schravemade lives and writes in Australia. Her short stories have won first place in the Bauhinia Literary Competition and the Warana Writers’ Week awards, and have appeared in Idiom 23 and the Faithwriters’ anthologies. Before having children she used to dream about writing acclaimed novels in her spare time. Now she dreams about having spare time, and her greatest ambition is to get a full night’s sleep.

Deborah J. Shore

 The Secret, The Intercession of Time
Poetry		 Deborah J. Shore has poems forthcoming in Radix, Anglican Theological Review, Sea Stories, and Christianity and Literature. Additionally, she has won first place in two poetry competitions at the Alsop Review and has several other poems included in their print anthology. She has three books of Christian teaching under revision in addition to a couple of loosely formulated poetry manuscripts.

Elizabeth Slater

 The Place between My Hips
Creative Nonfiction		 Elizabeth Slater lives in the Midwest. This essay is a part of a manuscript entitled, What Is Romantic, Honestly, which chronicles a successful attempt by her and her husband to have sex 183 times in a year.

Tan Wai Jia

 In Her Shoes
Creative Nonfiction		 Wai Jia is a 23-year old final year medical student who dreams of becoming a missionary. Constantly inspired by the strength of the marginalised, her burden for the poor drives her passion for community outreach. She is the author and illustrator of Kitesong, a picture book which raised more than $110,000 to build a new Home for needy children in Nepal. Her next book, A Taste of Rainbow, will be launched in Feb 2011 to raise funds and awareness for people suffering from eating disorders in Singapore. She loves writing, cycling and rainbows. Read her blog at www.kitesong.blogspot.com.
Also featured in this issue is Johana-Marie Williams’ poem “Pablo Picasso, Woman with a Book.”

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