Does it matter if the president believes in Jesus?

Travis Griffith brings up a delicate topic that is sure to generate passionate response. We look forward to your thoughts!

Sometimes it's the little things that get me the most fired up.

While driving through the city on my way to a volunteer job where I work to advocate for children with speech delays, I saw a car with white writing plastered all over the windows.

My first thought was: 'Oh how cute.  A teenage girl is on her way to a state volleyball tournament and her friends scrawled good luck messages on her car.'

But no. As I got closer I realized the white writing belonged to an adult and the message was much more disturbing.

It said:

"America needs Jesus, not Obama."

And it was written on every window except the windshield. This raised my ire for a couple reasons.

First, I don't believe America needs Jesus. I believe some people in America do, but the country as a whole does not.

Second, to completely disrespect the president by saying his country doesn't need him is decidedly unAmerican. (Though the right to publicly state that feeling is quite American.)

The guy who wrote that phrase on his car is obviously a religious and Christian person. I wonder if he realizes this: God tells Christians in His Word that we are to pray for those He has placed in authority over us. When God gave that command in chapter 2 of I Timothy, he was not only speaking of Godly leaders but all leaders. Whether you like President Obama or not, Christians, I think, should believe he was put into power by God, and thus need to respect him.

Rather than denounce the president, why not convey a message that asks folks to pray for him?

The message on that car seems so simple and straightforward at first glance, but to me it sums up a lot of what I see wrong with Christianity today.

When exactly did the name Jesus become a term to fling around as a way to defend intolerance? I have not accepted Jesus as any kind of personal savior because I believe humanity has effective been ly taken away everything that had once so beautiful about the person Jesus was.

That's why I don't care whether or not our current president (or any future president) accepts Jesus as his or her personal savior or ever even attends church. It doesn't matter. I'd rather see presidents govern based on what they feel is best for the country, guided not by an archaic set of ignorant, intolerant beliefs but by a strong compassion and love for all humankind.

Isn't it possible that the real savior of America is not Jesus or the president, but the people who live here? When intolerance and fear are removed and replaced with love, America will move forward.

Until then we'll be stuck in the dark, trying to scare each other with handwritten messages on our cars.

Do you believe a President of the United States should accept Jesus?

Love... to all.

***

Travis Griffith, who left behind the corporate marketing world, choosing family and writing in lieu of “a comfortable life” financially, is a former atheist trying to define what leading a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. captures only a fraction of his passion for fatherhood.

***

Note from the Web Editor: The thoughts presented within this blog post are those of the individual author and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the entire Relief staff. Though there may be some differences between the journal’s theology and that of the author, we believe that the questions this author raises about faith and patriotism are important.

Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing

There is still time  to register for The Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing held at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan April 15th-17th.  This conference is only held every two years, so if you can make it, I highly suggest you get yourself there!

Relief and Diner editors will be on various panels this year!

We are also planning our extremely popular Relief Mixer held off site at a local pub or place of similar interest.  We are in the process of scouting and securing a location suitable for our crowd.  We'll relay the details as we get more information.

In the coming weeks we'll be talking about our presence at the conference as well as making the most of your time there.

We'd love to know if you plan on attending, so please leave us a comment!

One Story Walk-up

It was December 20th and I was waiting for a flight at Dallas’ Love Field... If I were your usual high-quality literary writer penning your usual high-quality literary Relief post, I’d continue: December 20—41 years to the day since John Steinbeck died. Later that afternoon, winging west to LAX, I read a quote from Andre Dubus (in Novel Voices) that writing fiction doesn’t change the world, that “Cesar Chavez did more than six John Steinbecks could have done.” And I thought to myself how everything’s connected....

But I’m not your usual high-quality literary writer. (Blame Christopher Fisher for inviting me: he’s why you can’t have nice things.) So, instead, here’s the best I can give you: December 20—41 years to the day since I was born. My wife and son had given me an iPod Touch as a present and I was thumb-typing a list/article for the someday (please, God, soon) return of The Wittenburg Door:

“Ways to Reboot the Christmas Shoes Franchise”

• The Christmas Hipwaders
• The Christmas Flip-Flops
• The Christmas Sensible Pumps
• The Christmas Pegleg
• The Christmas Soccer Cleats
• The Christmas the guy in line behind the kid dials 911 instead of paying for the damn shoes and saves the mother’s life
• The Christmas Mukluks
• The Christmas Topsiders
• The Christmas Birkenstocks

and so on...

The subject of dead moms and God returned a few days later. Van Hagar’s, errrr Van Halen’s “Right Now” had cycled through on my iPod, and I hunted down its video online. One of the signs appearing in the glorified Powerpoint presentation reads “Right now God is killing moms and dogs because He has to.” (Provocative verb, but substitute "calling home" or “gathering thereunto His bosom,”—or if you're Pat Robertson add “because they made a pact with the devil” to the end—and you've got much the same thing.) Thankfully, that was the last of dying moms on the trip.

But the signs and videos thing came up a couple more times. After “Right Now” I tracked down Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (he flips cue cards with the lyrics throughout the video) and on Palindrome Day (01/02/2010) I checked out “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody video, “Bob” (all the lyrics in the song/on the cue cards are palindromes: “Was it a car or a cat I saw?”). A day or so after that another Dylan pastiche appeared in a book I got from my folks (mom’s fine, by the way; good on shoes, too), The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. In one of the wax paper sleeves was “The 43rd Dream,” a poem King wrote as a teen, riffing on Dylan’s “115th Dream.”

Toward the end of my California Christmas my family took in Cannery Row. Yes, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is more responsible for its renaissance than any Steinbeck story, but I posed by his statue on the waterfront, nonetheless. Meanwhile, back in Texas, my pre-AP students were (allegedly) reading Steinbeck’s novella The Pearl. And we’ve come the long way round to the idea that “it’s all connected.” (Another “Right Now” slide reads “Right now oysters are being robbed of their sole possession” … hmmmm.)

In his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster says “There’s only one story … Whenever anyone puts pen to paper or hands to keyboard or fingers to lute string or quill to papyrus. Norse sagas, Samoan creation stories, Gravity’s Rainbow, The Tale of Genji, Hamlet, last year’s graduation speech ... On the Road and Road to Rio and ‘The Road not Taken.’ One story.” Pride and Prejudice and Zombies makes his point as well as anything, I suppose. And while Solomon wrote “there’s nothing new under the sun,” it’s true that there’s increasingly more “nothing new” under that sun, influencing, intersecting with all the “nothing new” yet to come. Steinbeck to Dubus for the smart set; Christmas Shoes, Sammy Hagar, “Weird Al,” and Steve King for the rest of us. (Dylan, maybe, bridging the gap.) All of it to all of us via this blog entry. This blog entry to your angry letters to the editor. And so it goes. Circle of Life. Hakuna Matata.

Honor those who’ve influenced you, good or bad. Make the most of the chapters to the story you write. You never know whose chapters they’ll intersect with down the road.

***

Chris Mikesell teaches sophomore English at a public school in Dallas, Texas. His short fiction has appeared in Coach's Midnight Diner 1 & 2; Dragons, Knights & Angels; and Ray Gun Revival. His haiku have appeared here at Relief on numerous occasions.

Why I Hate Nazis (Apart From the Obvious)

This week Stephen Swanson lets out his supreme hatred of Nazis.  No, it doesn't have anything to do with his dislike of efficient extermination of whole peoples.   Nor is it a reaction against the Sieg Heil, in both the formal and informal forms.  It's more...so much more.

Reason 1: They are Everywhere.

I'm not the first observer to notice that Nazis and talk of Nazis are everywhere.  You can't kick a looted Luger without running into a video game, pundit, protest sign, movie, or documentary mentioning Nazis.

This is too much!  I know that in the 1980s, we had the brief flirtation with drug dealers as the bad guys, but that petered out despite the attempt of Miami Vice (2006) to bring it back hard on board numerous "go-fast" boats.

The Nazi's just won't die!  I've spent hours sniping them  in Medal of Honor and before that in Castle Wolfenstein.  They just coming and coming.

Reason #2:  They've Taken Over

No, I know that "we" won, and even in today's divisive political arena, most people think Nazi's are bad.  However, right there is the problem!

"Nazi=Bad" has become "Bad=Nazi".  Anyone who was awake in formal logic class (Oh right, NCLB doesn't really emphasize logic and many colleges are decimating their philosophy departments)...umm, anyway, people should realize that just because B follows A does not mean that A follows B.

And for these people, I have one message:

Stop Referring to Everyone You Don't Like as a Nazi!

Don't compare them to Nazis, unless they are actually similar to the National Socialism of the 1920s-40s.

Hey, you, Teapartier, Obama is not like Hitler.  He's just not.  Hitler came to power using the rhetoric of fear of foreigners and difference to correct the post WWI economic crisis in Germany.

Hey, student writing a paper for my class, anyone who commits genocide is not a Nazi.  They might be bad people that Americans should speak out against and maybe use force to contain and destroy, but you can't call everyone a Nazi.

Hey, liberal protester in Ottawa, Ann Coulter is not a Nazi.  Yes, she does seem to fit the ideal of beauty.  She is Wagnerian in many ways.  Yes, she does look a bit like Leni Riefenstahl.  Yes, she does use race and class as divisive methods to build up a strong nationalist base bent on eliminating the "Other" usually by violence or force.

Ok, you might get away with that one.

The Point:  Nazis are Destroying Our Language from Beyond the Grave

The English language is a pain in the tuckus, but as this sentence implies, it's strength and vitality comes from its ability to incorporate and accept a wide range of words and meanings from other languages.  This provides an sense of subtlety and nuance that comes with the blending of language.

In recent years, I've noticed that my students have no sense of nuance.  They reach for the brightest, boldest, and clearest example within reach, which perhaps explains the Googling of everything.  Because of this, we, collectively are losing our ability to draw from a diversity of evil and suffering in the history of the world.

There are tons of bad people in our own history and from around the world.  Why are we outsourcing to Germany and not friendly, efficient, welcoming Germany of National Lampoon's European Vacation (You know what I mean) or even of today.  We go with the Germans of the 1930s and 40s?!  We can do better when creating analogies and effigies.

Sadly, I guess the seeds of over generalization of evil were already there at our beginning.  Even then, the "patriots" defined a "tyrant" as their rightful monarch who wanted them to pay taxes like every other colony in the British Empire.

Maybe I'm naive, but we're Americans!  Our country was founded by people who stuffed straw in sacks, put a crown on it, and called it "George" as they set it alight.  Now, we let people in the Middle East doing all of our flag burning and effigies.

I'm better than that!   You're better than that! We're better than that!

***

Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in detective narratives.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 3.24.10

Photo courtesy of Michelle Pendergrass. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Relief News Tuesday 3.23.2010

Review of 3.2

"Karen" at GoodReads.com wrote a review of Relief Issue 3.2 (find it HERE).  We appreciate when people write reviews of our journal, so if you have written one or want to write one, let us know so we can feature it in RNT.

JunkLit.com

A new online journal has arrived on the scene under the name: "Junk, a Literary Fix."  If you head on over to JunkLit.com, you can see the start of a brand new creative nonfiction journal headed by Tim Elhajj.  While Junk is not proclaiming itself as a faith based journal, they are open to CNF from the faith perspective.

Junk is still gearing up before it's completely launched, but in the meantime they're doing their best to build community over at http://junklitblog.wordpress.com/, so read more about what Junk is/is looking to be there..

Calvin in < 1 Month

We're getting closer and closer to Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing, and we are all so excited for it!  If you haven't signed up yet, hurry!  If you are signed up, we can't wait to see you there either during the Relief panel or at our booth.

Popular Culture Parenting: A Father's Proudest Day

Prompted by Brad's excellent essay on The Office Nativity, Stephen Swanson reflects on a recent way that popular culture has adjusted his expectations of fatherhood and the potential for father/son relations.

The Greatest Parenting Tool Ever

When my wife and I were expecting our first child, Henry (now 2), we furiously searched for advice on the "must-haves" for parenting in the beginning of the new millennium.  Many friends had great advice, like "Don't read 'What to Expect...' if you are prone to worry about unlikely things."  Other sources, like the explosion of mommy-blogs and podcasts had great suggestions.  We turned to colleagues who had recently became parents for valuable hand-me-downs and suggestions, but the greatest piece of advice was this, "Get a DVR.  Just do it."

I had scoffed at the TiVo craze.  I had laughed alone as comics made fun of the mascot and the schedules and the funny noises and suggestions that it made, but the DVR has saved our lives.  Not only can we tape all of our shows to watch when we want, but just like the commercial shows, when my son wants/needs attention, I can just pause the TV and read a story.  I had completely passed that off as drivel created to make customers think that this, but it works.  The most important use has been to always have a selection of beloved kids shows and movies on hand when needed. (There was a whole month where he raptly viewed the Pixar Shorts Collection, and you have no idea of the eternity that it can take to switch the TV to DVD, open the DVD, put in the DVD, wait through the intros, select "play".)

"Oh No!":  Things that I did not know at 2.

Because of the DVR, Henry has little knowledge of commercials.  Stories are cohesive and continuous, within his daily allotment of TV, and he seriously struggles when we watch live TV or Hulu.  Who are these women in white rooms who rub thing hands on table-tops?  The commercial comes on, and "Oh NOOOO! Where'd it go?"  Because of his online viewing, he also is familiar with "'uffering" and has become adept at putting his finger on the touch-pad when the screen goes dim.

The Real Point of Pride

One word: "'impsons".  Yup, he loves it.  It beats Thomas, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Backyardigans out of the water.  All he needs to hear is the "doo DOO dee Doo" of Danny Elfman's opening score, and he will run from any part of the house, and while we fast-forward through the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, Henry finds the familiarity of the characters and objects in the show extremely exciting.  People "walk", have "books", ride "bikes", and "animals" abound throughout every episode.

Henry was always a hesitant speaker and signer, but he happily describe the events of the latest "Simpsons": laughing, kissing "oh no"-ing, and, yes, even "Ha-ha"ing along with Groening's creations.  When the episode ends, he speaks and signs, "Dada...Mama, please more 'impsons.  Please."

As I tell my students, the power of visual narratives at their best is that they allow for both immediate identification and for depth and complexity as viewers engage with layers and layers of connectivity and meaning.  The best of popular culture, to which I believe the Simpsons has won a predominant place, holds the power to challenge and grow with us.  My pride is not just in his good taste that eschews the frustrating same-ness of children's television for clever and subtle character and plot, but because Henry not only recognizes images but also cheers, "He did it!", when Homer succeeds in stopping Bart from bringing down the school with the old Springfield Subway and gives him a hug, and how could any father not have their heart touched by that, least of a popular culture scholar.

***

Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in detective narratives.

Which One Is Me?

This is the second of four entries on "being" a writer. The first can be found here.

I had a job interview recently in San Diego and while I was there I got a chance to have dinner with my sister Jeanette. She’s in the middle of reading my first novel length manuscript and spent a good ten minutes before the food came trying to confirm which real people from our past were basis for my characters.

Tommy is totally Rob Machado.

Nope.

Well, Craig is you, isn’t he?

No, I see myself more as Bibs. (I should note that most people who’ve read the book think Craig is my alter, so they may be right. However, it really throws them when I say I identify more with Bibs, a deacon’s daughter turned prostitute and right-hand woman of the local pimp/drug dealer Marley Bob).

Well, what about BT?

She got him right, sort of. By the end of the conversation, I realized I really like this game. As a writer, I freely admit I crib the lives of the people around me. If you know me, I’m probably going to use a part of you. Writers don’t invent, we compile and alter and then graft what we’ve taken onto the pieces of ourselves we put into every person we “create.” We mix and match like the socks we don’t think people will ever see us wearing.

But the conversation of “who” my characters are is really interesting to me because I generally don’t know who I’ve composited until it gets pointed out to me. I think that may be one of the reasons I choose to do something as frustrating and low-paying as write fiction without wizards or vampires. I like the way something so personal only makes sense to me when other people explain its facets as they see them.

I even like when people get my stories “wrong” because explaining my intentions has a similar effect. I guess I could never be Emily Dickinson. I can’t write for myself and my four walls. I need feedback earlier than a posthumous release would allow.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and is in the final stages of earning a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin. His work is set primarily in his hometown of San Diego and has been known to include pimps in diapers, heroin-addicted pastors who suffer from OCD, and possibly the chupacabra.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 3.17.10

Photo courtesy of Michelle Pendergrass. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Dr. Strangewrite or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the eBook

Web Editor Ian David Philpot addresses the topic of eBooks from the perspective of an undergraduate student looking to become an author immediately after graduation in eight weeks.

I have two bookshelves from IKEA that take up a lot of space in my room. They are wonderful and everything I had ever wanted from a book-holding structure, but they are also very full.

My girlfriend, who bought me the first of the two bookshelves, recently asked me if I wanted a Kindle for graduation. My immediate response was "No." I mean, how could I stand to ever read a novel from anything but an actual book? As an aspiring author, the thought of eBooks is nauseating. When I get a hold of a published copy of my first novel, I want to feel the pages, not the pixels. I want to breathe in the stories just by smelling the physical object in my hand. (Have you ever tried to sniff your computer screen? I tried it once. Apparently there was some static build up on the screen. I got zapped.)

I'm also aware of the large stigma attached to "online-only" publications. Don't get me wrong, there are some I follow very closely because I know who the editors are, but a majority of the literary community is concerned about the quality being produced by online-only journals. (And if someone happens to read a story they don't like from one online-only publisher, they may forever be turned off to the idea, whereas that person isn't likely to give up physical books.)

It's Not Easy Being Green

Parts of me wants to have an eBook reader: the tech savvy part, the part of me that always travels light, and the environmentally conscious part. That last part is where my biggest struggle exists.

I want to do everything I can to help out with the environment. I turn off the faucet when I brush my teeth. I take home plastic bottles from work--my day job doesn't have a recycling program in place. These are little things, I know, but I like to think they're helping out. So what if I didn't have to buy any more physical books at all? (Textbooks especially.)  Then I started the process of justifying timber sacrifice for my personal needs.

NPR and CPR or: eBook Bound

Then NPR posted a link on Facebook to Lynn Neary's article "No Ink, No Paper: What's the Value of an eBook?" I was scared when I started reading.  What if I finally write something good and it's never actually printed on paper? What if Richard Stallman gets a hold of it and starts distributing it for free? What if my book never makes any money? I dropped my laptop and ran to find a paper bag to stop from hyperventilating.

When I regained consciousness... Okay, so maybe I didn't really pass out, but I did freak out. What right did NPR have of presenting me with the harshness of reality? I was so upset, I went back to the article to read the rest. And a peace came over me when Neary quoted Chris Dannen, a freelance writer:

"If you have iTunes selling your books, you have this entire store right on everyone's desktop and you can expose them to a lot more," Dannen says. "You can just get them into the habit of buying books, and more importantly, you make the whole process of buying completely frictionless."

iTunes--where I spend over $100 a year buying music--could be selling my book to anyone near a computer? How could I not like that idea?

So Erin, if you're reading this, I'll have the Kindle with a side of eBooks, please.

***

NOTE: Relief will not be abandoning the printed form anytime in the foreseeable future. Our eBooks are available on Scribd.

***

Ian David Philpot is studying English at Northern Illinois University and spent one year in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing program.  He writes fiction, poetry, and music.   Ian prefers black to white, vanilla to chocolate, and only eats yellow cake.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 3.10.10

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Kasan. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Deleted Scene: The Scar

Lisa Ohlen Harris provides us with a short passage that didn’t make it into her forthcoming book Through the Veil. (This post first appeared on her website LisaOhlenHarris.com.)

I stayed home with the baby that night. I must have fallen asleep on the sofa, because when I woke about midnight, Todd wasn’t home yet. The gathering at the Manning’s house must have run late, I thought.

While I was putting on pajamas and brushing my teeth, Todd was helping Tim out of the wrecked taxi. A couple of Arab shabab stopped at the scene of the accident to ask if they could help; they took Tim to the emergency room to have his head sewn shut.

When they left the Manning’s house, the guys had waved down a taxi. Tim sat in the front seat, because his Arabic was better than Todd’s. There was a seat belt on the passenger’s side, Tim remembered later, but it was grimy and dusty. He thought briefly that he should put it on anyway, but pushed the thought away knowing that the driver would interpret this as an insult to his driving—and a lack of trust in the will of God.

Todd woke me up when he finally got home, early in the morning. It was still dark, but I remember hearing the birds sing outside our bedroom window. When I turned on a lamp, I saw blood all over Todd’s sandals and a deep gash between his toes, almost splitting his foot for an inch or so. It should have been sutured, but he hadn’t noticed his own injury while he was at the hospital with Tim. Todd’s wound took weeks to heal, and he still has the scar. It’s easy to hide under socks and shoes.

We didn’t see Tim over the weekend, and when he came to the language school that Monday he had a big piece of gauze taped over the wound. When his forehead healed enough he took gauze off, but it wasn’t until the sutures were removed that we all saw the jagged crescent.

----------

So there’s the “deleted scene.” The guys were in a taxi crash. Tim hurt his head and ended up with a crescent-shaped scar. It’s kinda interesting, but so what? I mean, really, why would this story matter to anyone but our family and Tim’s? I might tell about the accident when we get the old gang together, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s book-worthy.

As I assembled my chapters for Through the Veil, I wanted each memory, each chapter to say something more than, “This happened then that happened, now isn’t the Middle East exotic?”

Ultimately, the taxi accident memory just didn’t make the cut.

***

Lisa Ohlen Harris is Relief’s Creative Nonfiction editor. Her Middle East memoir, Through the Veil, will be published by Canon Press in 2010. Lisa’s essays have appeared in journals like River Teeth, Arts & Letters, and The Laurel Review, and have received special mention in Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses (2009) and in Best American Spiritual Writing (2008 and 2010). Lisa enjoys mentoring and editing the work of emerging writers through her critique service.

My Emerging Tendencies

This is the first in a series of four entries on "being" a writer.

I’ve spent the last four years completely committed to becoming a published author and yet only recently come to terms with calling myself a writer when people ask what I do for work. Even though I’ve written since I was young, saying it out loud (and claiming it as a vocation no less) has always felt a bit presumptuous and a lot bougie. And then there’s the inevitable follow-up question:

What’s your book called?

Um, I don’t have one. Until a couple years ago, I didn’t have a single fiction credit to my name. The awkward moment that follows generally ends with another question, or really, variations on the same question:

So what do you really do? Oh, so what’s your day job then? So, writing’s a hobby then? Where does your money come from?

Since drug sales and exotic dancing don’t seem to be acceptable answers to those questions, I’ve been obliged to tell people I teach writing and am working on a terminal degree (anyone else think that a Ph.D. and cancer sharing an adjective is odd?). And then the nod comes. You know, the head bob that says, Oh, you’re a loser.

Recently, however, I’ve had a couple pieces published and some “encouraging” agent rejection letters. As a result, I find myself described in a new way. Now, I’m not a loser, I’m an “emerging writer.” I am troubled by this title as well. Am I a grizzly rolling out of months of winter hibernation? Am I a developing nation? The consensus seems to be that I’m somewhere between caterpillar and butterfly, which in my estimation makes me that nasty, gray chrysalis from which a living creature may or may not spring.

If you think I’m wrong, try out the following:

Sir, you’re going to need triple bypass heart surgery. But don’t worry; one of our brightest emerging surgeons will perform the procedure.

I know you’re on trial for murder, but you’ve got an emerging public defender representing you.

When I think about the idea of emergence, I immediately want another title. I’m trying a few out. Tell me what you think.

I am under-published. I am material heavy and publication light. I’m very market selective. My readership is still on an indie level. Commercial success isn’t all that important. My family likes some of what I write and you should too. If I’m not the next “it” writer, I feel safe saying I could be the next “that” writer.

That last one seems a bit long and probably wouldn’t go over well on a resume. Maybe the one before it too.

I guess I just want to feel less like a fraud when I call myself a writer. Then again, if great novelists like J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and Lauren Conrad from The Hills never settled comfortably into the title, maybe I shouldn’t expect too either.

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and is in the final stages of earning a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin. His work is set primarily in his hometown of San Diego and has been known to include pimps in diapers, heroin-addicted pastors who suffer from OCD, and possibly the chupacabra.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 3.3.10

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Kasan. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

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The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

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Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

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Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Stories like Fine Beer and Cheese: The Importance of Texture (Part 3)

The following is part 3 of 3 from Robert Garbacz.

[Author’s Note: This the final entry in my three-part series on the importance of a rich and multivaried “texture” in which different parts of the story resist each other, making for a far more engaging piece.  In parts 1 (HERE) and 2 (HERE), I discussed Greg Mitchell’s genre-fiction “Flowers for Shelly” and Michael Snyder’s more literary “Normal People.” In this section, I turn to the issue of how--and why--readers might want to take the risk of making complicated, textured fiction.]

Okay, so now what?  Sure that’s how I choose stories, but what good can it do for those of you who actually want to write stories with texture?  Well, I’m not yet an expert writer, but I think I’ve found two simple principles:

1) Let ideas wait for a while, and don’t be afraid to mix them up. For me, an interesting idea will stick in my head for months, if not for years.  My story in the first Diner started when I was listening to way too many 1920’s-1940’s adventure radio dramas.  Somehow, a phrase came to me, “the cozy firelit tavern in the middle of the Abyss.” But it was several months before I started my story, in which I had plenty of time to fill my tavern with dead authors, throw in a generous portion of film noir flavorings, add a single-mindedly Quixotic Preacher, and a protagonist who goes along with him without really buying his program wholesale.  And then, of course, there was the proofreading, where I looked for any odd, interesting spices I could throw in.  But each stage required time, and a willingness to try to stick things together that common sense would keep apart.

2) Don’t be afraid to contradict yourself. In throwing a variety of flavors into the mix, you’re probably going to end up with a story that is true to the parts of life that don’t allow for easy solutions.  Sometimes that will feel uncomfortable, or strange, and you’ll feel the temptation to make everything neat and clean and right.  And maybe you should--for certain publishers and certain audiences.  But the best--and most memorable--tales are the ones that don’t shy away from their endings, even if the end the story leads to only emphasizes the difference between how the world should be and how the world is.

I’ll close with one more example, from a piece of genre-fiction that wasn’t published in the Diner because it was written some ten thousand years too early and was too long.  It is also, through a twist of fate, now considered literary fiction.  The story is the Iliad and the scene is the climactic meeting between the (essentially fatherless) Greek warrior Achilles and the Trojan king Priam (whose son, Hector, was brutally killed by Achilles in a cycle of vengeance).  In a shocking moment of grace, Achilles not only gives Hector’s body back for burial, but he feels a strange sympathy for the father of his dead enemy.  They eventually eat together, remembering another story which beautifully mixes horrific tragedy and simple joy.  As Achilles puts it in Lombardo’s translation,

Even Niobe remembered to eat Although her twelve children were dead in her house, Six daughters and six sturdy sons.  [...] Nine days they lay in their gore, with no one To bury them, because Zeus had turned The people to stone.  On the tenth day The gods buried them.  But Niobe remembered She had to eat, exhausted from weeping. [...] Well, so should we, old sir, Remember to eat.  You can mourn your son later When you bring him to Troy.  You owe him many tears.

(lines 651-3, 659-63, 669-71)

This act of compassion is not the end of the story.  As the poem’s original audience well knew, Priam’s son would soon kill Achilles and Achilles’s allies will soon kill every man in Troy.  The result--texture.  It isn’t just a straightforward revenge-tale, or a saccharine tale of friendship among enemies.  It is something more.

Homer, or whoever wrote the Iliad, chose to interrupt his tale of rage and death with a story of acceptance and commonality (or, conversely, to surround his story of acceptance and commonality with a larger story of rage and cyclical violence.)  That sort of incomplete, soulful, and very-human texture is a goal well worth seeking.

***

Robert Garbacz, when in his natural habitat, can frequently be seen arguing theology, politics, and art over ale with often excessive volume, haranguing his friends repeatedly with obscure but fascinating facts about Medieval literature, or staring cloyingly into the eyes of his beloved wife Hannah. Unfortunately, his natural habitat is Oxford in the period from 1930-1950. This is a bit awkward for someone born in Tulsa in 1983, but he is studying towards his Doctoral at the University of Texas in Austin and feels this is a firm step in the proper direction. His short story, “The Salvation of Sancho,” appeared in the previous Diner anthology, inducting him into this peculiar world of horror, bloodshed, and merciless ravagement of grammatical missteps.

Last Day for 4.1 Submissions!

Today is the last day that Relief will be accepting submissions for issue 4.1.  If there is a story or poem that you've been thinking about submitting, now is the time for you to head on over to the Online Submission System and send it to our editors. If you don't think that your piece is just right, then keep working on it--or, if it's Creative Nonfiction, head on over to CNF Editor Lisa Ohlen Harris's website for a critique.  The Online Submission System will open up in two short months for issue 4.2.

Faith, Love, Acceptance: All Summed Up in a Yogurt Shop

Travis Griffith shares a brief moment in time that, in his opinion, sums up all that is right with humanity. Does it? We'd love to hear your stories too!

Sometimes conversations about faith get so bogged down in philosophy that we forget to look at the human aspect.

We can discuss the relativity of truth and whether or not Jesus is a triune God until we throw up, then wonder if we even got anywhere.

Religious commentary and mock speeches for the pope are interesting and worthy of conversation, but what about the little moments that happen in everyday life that so often go overlooked? Sometimes that's where the answers, or at least the most valuable lessons, lie.

One of those moments happened last Tuesday when I was at a small, locally-owned frozen yogurt shop with my two kids. The shop is in a university district and frequented by college kids (especially on Tuesday nights... $1.69 mediums!).

On this night, among the throngs of nubile college co-eds, two of the oldest people I'd ever seen were there; sitting a few tables away from us. This couple had to be close to celebrating their hundredth wedding anniversary. The man, wearing a matching tweed hat and jacket, was hunched over and moving slowly. The woman was seemingly frozen in mid-bite. A folded up walker rested against the man's chair. The couple didn't say a word to each other and seemed oblivious to the incredibly diverse, laughing, chatty, text-messaging crowd that surrounded their table.

I was just amazed that the kids had enough respect to keep their distance and allow the couple to enjoy some peace. But then the frail lovers of frozen yogurt began the arduous process of getting up from the table and exiting the building. It was then that a complex choreography of absolute human beauty unfolded.

First, one of the college girls at a table next to ours nudged her friend and uttered a quiet, "Cute..." as the couple stood up. Then a man across from their table fluidly stood up, while talking on a cell phone, and in one motion unfolded the old man's walker and set it in front of him before gracefully falling back into his seat and not missing a beat in his conversation.

Walker in place, the couple put on their jackets and made their way for the door. Crowds parted to allow them access.  A customer just entering the shop stopped and held the door open for much longer than would have been necessary, allowing the couple to exit without having to lift a finger.

The couple's Cadillac was parked directly in front of the shop, but the man had to shuffle down the sidewalk until he could step off a lower part of the curb before shuffling his way back up to his car. By the time he got there and started the process of opening the passenger side door, another yogurt customer was passing by and opened it for him. The man gave a small nod before disappearing into the leather-clad abyss of the Caddy's interior.

The man's walker was still outside the car though. His wife managed to fold it up, but when she opened the back door to slide the walker in, she lost her grip on the door and it slammed shut. A customer exiting the shop with her daughter noticed, and opened the door again. She even took a moment to slide the walker onto the rear seat. The old lady smiled, held her purse in front of her chest with both hands, said thank you and began to work her way around to the driver's seat.

As the white reverse lights blinked on, I mouthed the word "wow" to myself and went on with regular conversation. Everyone else in the shop was either engaged in conversation or had thumbs flying across phone keypads. They were oblivious.

The amazing thing about this? No one who helped the couple seemed to notice the person who helped just prior. This was not inspired kindness, but pure, genuine individual compassion that when viewed from 15 feet away looked like a perfectly timed and choreographed TV commercial for human grace. It was nothing short of heart warming and inspiring.

In that little yogurt shop, and for no more than five minutes, humanity came together as one to help an elderly couple in need of a little love and assistance. Then everything returned to normal. But for that moment it didn't matter what religion anyone in that shop followed. Prejudices and orientations and races and beliefs were all overshadowed by one commonality between us all:

Pure, unconditional acceptance of humanity.

Ahh... if only the rest of life was so easy.

Have you seen any similar moments of human compassion unfold? Let's hear your stories!

***

Travis Griffith, who left behind the corporate marketing world, choosing family and writing in lieu of “a comfortable life” financially, is a former atheist trying to define what leading a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. captures only a fraction of his passion for fatherhood.

A Writer Wrestling with Unity

Brent Robison joins the blog to discuss his thoughts on finding unity within his writing and spirituality.

I write fiction, but I'm not much into plots, nor pleasing resolutions. I love the capital-Q Questions -- the questions without answers. I don't need answers, but I love learning as much as my sub-genius mind can handle about everything we humans have so far come to know in our dogged pursuit of answers to the unanswerable.

That puts me squarely in the realm of the invisible, where I travel alone. I don't self-identify as Christian. There is no "ism" I feel attached to. Yet there is a driving force in my heart and mind to explore the territory -- call it "spiritual" -- that every religion's fringe-dwellers, the mystics, have resided in for millennia: the philosophical borderlands currently going by the name of Nonduality. In Christianity today, perhaps Bernadette Roberts is its leading investigator, with her contemplative teachings and "No-Self" books. In her experience, the self and God are not separate: "I and my Father are One," one without even the concept of another.

For me, years of study fueled by parallel passions -- science and metaphysics -- gradually led me to glimpse a perfect interweaving of current knowledge and ancient wisdom. Quantum physics intertwined with Advaita (Sanskrit for "not two"). Spacetime as a metaphor for Oneness. Superstrings pointing to the Nameless Absolute.

Meanwhile, I played the writing game: workshops, submissions, the occasional publication in a literary journal. But mostly I labored away at writing stories: notes, sketches, little stories, bigger stories. Imaginary characters with lives and hearts and pains all their own kept jumping up and asking to be acknowledged. Inspired by literary realism, postmodern and classic, lush or minimalist, I worked at exploring psycho-spiritual states and getting something both meaningful and beautiful onto the page. Then out of all that jumble rose the challenge that got my blood pumping at a whole new rate....

If everything is One, how is that expressed in story?

Well, it's been done, with various degrees of success, in many ways: --exegesis of various cultural mythologies --allegory or parable with a "moral" --stories from the lives of famous gurus or holy men --the conundrums of time travel (see my friend's book The High Priest of Prickly Bog) --fanciful alternate realities like those of Italo Calvino --narrative thought experiments ala Jorge Luis Borges --straight science fiction: on other planets, things behave differently --variations on the sword and sorcery genre --human encounters with angels or extraterrestrials --magical realism --etc.

Trouble is, none of these appealed to me. Or rather, they were not what I was doing as a writer. As Harvey Pekar (American Splendor) said, "Everyday life has a huge effect on people." I wanted to write literary short stories, about us, the common folks. Our ordinary tragedies and existential crises. The mundane epiphanies that move us all incrementally forward. In other words, "real life."

It was my invented characters themselves who offered me the key. Of their own accord they had began lurking on the edges of each other's stories. But I wasn't sure what that meant. Then one day as I surveyed the whole array of stories and fragments, a complex web of faint shimmering lines seemed to materialize before my inner eye. These people, like all of us, were connected by invisible threads, coincidences, ephemeral glancing touches, by which subtle influence was being exerted. Life paths changed in seemingly tiny, but possibly powerful, ways. I saw that we're like cells in one giant body, all going about our business transporting enzymes from one place to another and effecting change on other cells, but with hardly a glimmer of awareness of our own impact.

To suggest this newfound truth seemed to me the best way I could express Unity. One friend argued, correctly, that interconnection requires separateness, so I was a little off the mark. On the other hand, ultimate oneness is ultimately inexpressible in human language. The best we can offer is suggestion, metaphor, a finger pointing at the moon. And after all, in literary fiction -- just as in this thing we call "reality" -- the needs, hopes, dreams, heartaches, addictions, and loves of daily life are the foreground. To see the background is another level of perception altogether.

I'm entirely a beginner on the road toward Unitive Consciousness. But that vision of all human beings interconnected by a vast intangible network of influence, invisible energy lines weaving us together, became the engine driving the finishing, assembling, and publishing of a collection of thirteen linked stories called The Principle of Ultimate Indivisibility. All those bits and pieces of characters' lives finally came together and made sense, to me. And more important, it set me and my writing on a course for the future, and for that I'm grateful.

***

Brent Robison emigrated west to east and is now rooted in the Catskill Mountains of New York. His fiction has appeared in a dozen literary journals and has won awards from Literal Latté, Chronogram, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts, as well as a Pushcart Prize nomination. His collection of linked short stories, The Principle of Ultimate Indivisibility, is available wherever books are sold. Between daddy and hubby hours, he blogs at ultimate-indivisibility.com and continues chipping away at two novels-in-progress. He is also the editor and publisher of the Hudson Valley literary annual, Prima Materia. Brent's short story "Baptism" can be found in Relief Issue 3.2.