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I've been struggling recently with finding time to journal. It's not that I even care much about chronicalling my life. I just love it when I put my pen to paper and get something out. Instead, I've been using Google Docs to write. And there's a lot of positive things about holding my writing in a place I can access anywhere I have a computer--which is everywhere recently--but it's just not the same.
But recently, I found an answer in "9 Lists to Keep Updated, and Keep Handy." Actually, I stumbled across it...on StumbleUpon. (It seems everything cool I've found recently is because of that site.) I call it micro-journaling, and it's started to change my life.
Basically, the author had a journal he wasn't using, so he started making different sections in the journal to list out things like "Things I Want," "Gift Ideas," etc. The list that has been my favorite so far is "BHAGs" (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Maybe it's because I just entered the grownup world and I'm about get married, but the pages have been filling up quickly.
What lists do you keep in your journals?
Ian David Philpot is the Web Editor for ccPublishing and the Web Content Developer for Willow Creek Community Church. He recently received his Bachelor's in 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.
Founding Editor Kimberly Culbertson pays tribute to one of Relief's finest.
As we enter our fifth volume, it is with sadness that we announce that Lisa Ohlen Harris will be no longer be serving as our Creative Nonfiction Editor. The upcoming issue, available for pre-sales now, will end her amazing run at the helm of all things CNF. For years she has lent us her talent and her heart, and we are deeply grateful.
Lisa began editing creative nonfiction for Volume 1, Issue 4, and her presence has marked Relief's journey over the years since, including doubling as CNF Editor and Assistant Editor for most of Volume 2. She has consistently shaped and crafted this fantastic genre, and we are proud that creative nonfiction has become such an integral part of Relief.
In the time I served as Editor-In-Chief, Lisa was a profound encouragement to me personally. She not only served on my team as a genre editor, but she shared her wisdom, provided a sounding board, challenged me when I started walking questionable paths, critiqued and sharpened my editorial statements, and reminded me of my strengths when I wondered if this whole adventure was just a little crazy (It is, by the way, which is why you need good people around you for the most perplexing of moments).
While we're dismayed to see her go, we are enjoying watching from the sidelines as she continues to flourish as a writer. Her first book, Through the Veil, was recently released from Canon Press, and has already been nominated for the Oregon Book Awards "Sarah Winnemucca Award For Creative Nonfiction" (the winner will be announced in April). Deanna Hershiser, a Relief author and blogger interviewed Lisa before the book was released, and recapped some of its journey quite nicely:
Sometimes editors edit because writing just hasn’t worked well for them. Not so with Lisa. Her first book, Through the Veil, will soon be released by Canon Press. Its offerings include an essay which was listed under “Notable Essays of 2008″ in Best American Essays 2009, along with two others that have made the Notable lists in volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing. Another of the book’s essays was shortlisted for a Pushcart Prize and received special mention in Pushcart XXXIII.
In fact, one of the essays Deanna refers to here, "Torn Veil" was published in Relief's Volume 1, Issue 4. Her success, both as an author and an editor, has helped Relief to become the journal that it is today. And so, as she moves on to new adventures, we at Relief will miss her dearly, but we'll be cheering her on as rabid fans.
-----
Kimberly Culbertson is the Founding Editor of Relief. These days serves on the board of ccPublishing, NFP (the company that publishes Relief and The Midnight Diner), alongside many other adventures. She and her husband live in Bloomingdale, Illinois, with their dog Latte. Their family-by-choice daughter, son, and godson now reside in California, and they are expecting their first biological child in February 2011.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
God She Could TolerateFiction
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.
Notre DamePoetry
Michael G. Cornelius is the author/editor of ten books.
The Wonderful Thing About ForgivenessFiction
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.
Those PrayersPoetry
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.
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.
Making the Perfect Loaf of BreadCreative 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.
The Last EnemyCreative 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.
Doubt, The Problem of Ascribing Evil, Margins, Under the Archway, CivilizationPoetry
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.
First Breath, Elegy, Elegy for the Bell, Another ElegyPoetry
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.
To Cain, Descending MoriahPoetry
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.
Crusade for Lost and Frying WormsFiction
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.
SemanticsPoetry
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.
Communion of the SaintsFiction
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.
The Dogs, PassagePoetry
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.
Like a Spread-eagled Cat SuspendedCreative 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.
CatholicsFiction
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.
The Art of WorkCreative 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.
The Birth, He knew What the knew When He knewPoetry
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.
Elegy/Sound, Migration Quartet, The Vast - a ghazalPoetry
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.
Forgotten ThingsFiction
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.
The Secret, The Intercession of TimePoetry
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.
The Place between My HipsCreative 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.
In Her ShoesCreative 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."
I'm not a Catholic (and I've never even played one on TV), but I have so many friends who are that I'm always interested in what's going on in the Catholic Church. Today, Reuters has an interesting article on a recent--and I think very wise--warning from Pope Benedict concerning the subtle dangers of online social networks. In a message for the Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, Benedict says: "It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives."
I've long been bothered by a line from Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar: "Why'd you [Christ] choose such a backward time in such a strange land? If you'd come today you could have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication."
On the surface, this seems like a really good question. But now, in the midst of this present "communication age," in which people the whole world over are growing more and more connected, while as persons, as individual men and women, so many are more isolated and lonely than ever, I think I'm beginning to understand that it simply wouldn't have worked. All of the mass communication in the universe could not relay what Christ had in mind with the Church--individual persons communing with one another as a whole. Feeding, soothing, and yes, touching one another. Greeting each other, as the New Testament says, "with a holy kiss," not a virtual finger poke.
The next issue of Relief will open up for presales this week, and the stories, essays, and poems inside follow a similar theme of isolation vs. communion. I hope you will order a copy as soon as it is available. Not only will you help us make our print run, you'll also get to read some of the finest writing we've published so far.
Ben Franklin, one of my all-time favorite editors, once said that "Guests, like fish, begin to stink after three days." But that was certainly not the case with Relief's latest "guest," Michael Dean Clark. Way back in July, I happily announced that Michael would be serving as Guest Fiction Editor for the upcoming issue of Relief. In the process of working with him to select this issue's fiction lineup and get each piece ready for print, I came to trust his skill and insight so much that I just had to ask him if he'd like to stick around--permanently. And I was even happier than before when he said yes.
I first met Michael back in 2009 when we accepted his story "Paddling Out" for publication in Relief 3.1, the infamous--or at least controversial--Love and War issue. Since then, he has been a returning author (with creative nonfiction appearing in Issue 3.2), one of our favorite and most dedicated bloggers, and a true friend of the journal. I'm thrilled to now call him part of the editorial team, because I know he will be an outstanding addition to the journal in 2011 and beyond.
So leave a comment and join me in welcoming Michael as Relief's new Fiction Editor.
Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff read two things about beauty today and couldn't help but put them together.
Mark Jarman in "Tea Fire"* tells of driving toward a forest fire one evening, "seduced / like night moths," to witness its terrible beauty. He and his unnamed, unnumbered companion(s) are in awe of the way the smoke turns silver as it passes over the moon and the way the "red body" of the fire seems to desire to follow the waves of "ashy cumulus" into the sky. Then, however, they come upon homes threatened by the fire and turn back "embarrased--"
Not moths at all
but dazzled lovers
of beauty, any beauty.
The poem works because Jarman convinces us as readers of the beauty of the fire just as the "we" of the poem saw it, but then we share, too, in the abashment of realizing that this beauty comes at the cost of people's homes. It is immaterial whether the homes are the extravagant vacation cottages of the wealthy which, when we hear of them, we often want to think were extraneous and expendable anyways; for Jarman, they are still homes - "doomed homes," in fact. The valence of the poem is that the dazzling beauty of the fire momentarily dislocated the speaker from the heaviness of this world of responsibility and care.
"Not moths at all" could be read as "not drawn to the fire by a morbid fascination with death - our own or others," for it is the threat of destruction by fire that embarrasses the travelers. But "dazzled lovers" does seem to suggest that their difference from moths is not in their volition but in the object. They are drawn by beauty rather than destruction, but they are drawn just the same. As "lovers," they exist in a timeless, even exclusive state - the state of early passion familiar from our adolescence that, we must admit, while pleasant is not without blame. Yet the poem affirms that what they pursued was, indeed beauty - any beauty, beauty wherever it can be found when it is so rare a thing.
I've been thinking about beauty ever since I started studying the sublime. Beauty is often figured as the pacific, angelic counterpart to the dark, excessive sublime - roughly the attributes of Blake's Heaven and Hell, respectively. Suffice to say that Hell and the sublime are quite chic these days, while beauty is trite at best (think Snow White) and dangerous at worst (something like her wicked step-mother). Classical beauty, after all, entailed an ability of the viewer to perceive it adequately, which we nowadays recognize as the road to violence.
Enter David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003). There are a number of bold and counterintuitive aspects to this title, but suffice to say Hart does not find beauty violent or trite. Instead, he attributes to beauty a "gratuity" and a "prodigality" that gives of itself - sometimes in startling and disturbing ways: "a village ravaged by pestilence may lie in the shadow of a magnificent mountain ridge . . . ; Cambodian killing fields were often lushly flowered." Beauty is saved from the violence of abstraction precisely by its particularity, its inherence in just such a arrangement of things. Christian beauty, he argues, inheres in the unavoidable and often offensive narratives of the gospels; most centrally, of course, in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
In "Tea Fire" Jarman registers our modern ambivalence about beauty - something we're drawn to but also embarrassed about. It's a tension also present in "The Heronry." Seeking the solace of a forest preserve, he reflects on his own processes as he sits quietly observing a pond and its many birds. Among his many reflections are these final ones, which I hope I'm okay in quoting at length:
I almost think I could write about it forever,
Adding word to word like coral in a reef,
An excess of language like the genetic code, an extravagance like all the stars,
Too much ever to be needed except
By the need for there always to be more,
That need which, when the end comes, looks past it
For woods and hills and ocean,
For fields and streets and houses and horizon,
Repelled by blankness, expecting beyond sleep
The dream country and its population.
Here he finds himself caught between beauty, language, and desire. Is his experience a projection of his own need "for there always to be something more"? (And if so, what?) Or does it inhere, as Hart would argue, somehow in the world itself, if not in any precise way? Or is it a function of language, words that spring up in the mind as a coral reef?
Jarman's poems may lack the confidence that faith ostensibly offers, but they are nonetheless compelling meditations on beauty because they are full of the desire that faith, in many ways, is - desire for there to be more than what is given and at the same time desire for the given to be "given," as a gift, as what is not labored for or dubiously "earned." Sometimes the challenge for the (American) Christian is to clear away the screen of faith to see - really see - the manifestations of glory that so many have pointed us toward without knowing their name.
* Jarman's poems can be found in the Autumn 2010 edition of The Hudson Review.
Stephen Swanson relishes this time of year: a time of awards, good intentions, and hope. He believes that shows, like the Golden Globes, the Miss America Pageant, and the Bachelor not only fill our time but also our lives.
If I add to this the new book out showing that I might be devoting my life to a complete waste of time, as students learn mostly nothing at college, then it might be even easier to just say...pooh!
But I can't. I just can't. I know that this season of American Idol will be a complete debacle without anyone Simon-ish to reign in the Hollywood dream factory, but I want to watch the train steadily ignoring the "Bridge Out Ahead" signage.
What's my secret? Well, there are a couple of things. First, there is a hope built into this sort of cycle. There is a realization that sometimes things can surprise you. Steven Tyler might come out tonight and tell contestants to stop dreaming and grow up. I doubt it, but it'd be cool if he did.
The hope comes from two main sources. First, hope comes from the succession of exciting things coming up. We've got the playoffs in the NFL, Valentines, the Oscars, March Madness, Easter, opening day of baseball, mid-terms, and a new dedication to trying to at least work out twice a week.
There is not time to give up. One can shift from hope to hope like when video gamers desperately lean to try to get Mario over the gap that he jumped just a pixel or two too early. We can lean a long way before we collapse around July. We can keep moving forward in an effort to maintain momentum. And, sometimes it works!
Secondly, and perhaps more powerfully in the long-term, there is the comraderie of watching the oncoming, impending doom. You can turn to the person beside you and give a look that says, "This is REALLY happening!" The look also says, "Thank goodness we're not on that train." And, for a second before the horror hits, we find comfort together.
I do not, obviously, mean to imply that Miss America or The Bachelor is like a train going off a cliff. It's nothing like that at all, but it takes so much more time to explain to students and people around you about what's going on in Haiti or Tunisia than why Brad does not deserve to "win" anyone, even these women who've asked for it. It's so much easier to give the context of Hollywood wheeling and dealing around the yearly awards than to discuss the federal budget, healthcare, or education.
Therefore, I take momentary hope and relief from the grind towards the lowest common denominators of disorganization, incivility, and violence to just complain about the sparkly, red rose on Natalie Portman's dress and gossip about how it could be that we didn't know she was pregnant. It's just easier to keep with the flow and to hit only the most recent and superficial of information, to go with the "gut". The brain and logic only get in the way of fun and living.
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 approaches to analyzing detective narratives in terms of ethical responsibility.
Our new issue is really coming together. Today we're happy to give you a preview of the cover art. We'll be announcing this issue's authors and opening pre-sales next Monday, so get ready for some excellent reading!
Join the Relief Team
Yesterday Chris Fisher blogged about some open open positions on our Relief staff. If you're passionate about literature and the Relief mission resonates with you, perhaps you'd like to lend your talents to this project for a season. Click here to learn more.
The Relief staff and I are happy to announce that we will soon be opening presales for our much anticipated and long awaited next issue. This issue features some wonderful new voices, as well as a few returning Relief authors, and I am truly thrilled to see it all finally coming together.
This one has been particularly challenging to bring to print, in part because we have a number of vacancies in our editorial and production staff, and it’s been something of a vicious cycle trying to fill those roles in the middle of a production phase: we’ve been working so hard to pick up the slack and keep things running that we haven’t had much time to train the new volunteers we so desperately need in those roles.
After the new issue’s release in the coming weeks, I expect to have a brief, but much needed lull, and at the top of my list of priorities for that time is to make sure Relief is fully staffed for the year 2011.
Think you might be interested in helping with Relief? Below are just a few of the positions we’re looking to fill.
Assistant Editor—will work with the Editor-in-Chief to develop production schedules and coordinate with other staff to ensure that deadlines are being met. The Assistant Editor will also have creative input on content, design, author promotion and networking, etc.
Copy Editor—edits all content for spelling, grammar, and to ensure that it is consistent with our house style guide before sending to the Layout Editor.
Relief Blog Manager—works with the Web Editor to set the weekly blog posting schedule and coordinates with Blog Contributors to ensure that deadlines are met. The Blog Manager may also be expected to write occasional blog posts and assist with building and maintaining our presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Blog Contributor (several openings)—writes on timely, writing-related topics, especially pertaining to the intersection of faith and art. Blog Contributors must be willing and able to post on a regular schedule (either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly).
Please note that these are not paid positions. We're looking for people who are passionate about Relief's mission and the literary culture in general. If any of these positions look interesting to you, send a brief 1-page resume or cover letter in .doc, .rtf, or PDF format to jobs@reliefjournal.com, and we’ll be happy to give it a look.
Note: We also will soon need to fill some positions with our sister publication, The Midnight Diner, and the growth of Relief is always opening new and unexpected needs for talented and committed volunteers. So check back here from time to time to see if new openings have been announced.
This is the second in a series of thoughts on how place shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell. The first can be found here.
I spent a year writing a novel about my hometown because I was pretty convinced I’d never get back there again (other than on vacations). Then I moved onto another novel and another class to take and then another and then a degree. I applied to some schools wondering not where I would end up, but if I’d even get a callback.
And then I got a job offer in San Diego, a short drive south on the Coast Highway from where my novel/childhood took place. Not surprisingly, from the time I accepted the job (which happened on a day when Milwaukee’s high temperature was 32 degrees) to the moment I pulled into Ocean Beach, my mental slideshow of home was strangely blank.
Now that I’m back, however, I keep ending up in my book. I swing past the Self-Realization center at the Swami’s surf beach and I’m walking the reflection path with my character Shandy. I buy a Big Gulp at the D Street 7-Eleven and keep waiting for Marley Bob to walk in wearing his diaper and Birkenstocks. I go out of my way to wind up the hill past the park where Tommy Mac and Troy-boy meet before heading to the beach.
Mind you, I didn’t expect North County San Diego to remain unchanged while I was gone. But somehow, that first attempt to write this place cemented images in my mind that I’m now having a hard time letting go of those pictures. I guess I like the warm glow of nostalgia a bit more than I thought.
Michael Dean Clark is 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 2.9 children.
Don Miller has a great post up this week called "Is Church Life Stifling Your Creativity?" Here at Relief, we've often had to carefully straddle the line between offending our Christian audience (people who keep Relief alive while asking many of the questions that Miller lists) and offending our sense of craft and Relief's mission to bring the authentic to light. So check out his post and let us know what you think--we're eager to hear.
Ian David Philpot shares a few things he found on StumbleUpon.
If you haven't discovered StumbleUpon, then let me give you a summary of how it works: 1) go to StumbleUpon.com, 2) signup or login, 3) hit the "Stumble" button on the top left, 4) wave goodbye to the next two hours. It basically sends you to random websites. You can setup your interests and it will send you to websites that fall into those categories.
So I found out about StumbleUpon almost a year ago, and there are a few things I've found that are interesting. One of those is oneword.com. It gives you one word and you write about it for sixty seconds. It's pretty awesome. There's also a cool graphic I found that explains the sleep levels in the movie Inception. Totally helped.
So, while I'm just copping out from writing a real blog by ungentlemaningly gushing about some guy whose blog I just started reading, seriously check him out. It's like my mom has told me since I was 12, "Good writers read good writers."
The cycle of a student or a teacher is a tough one to break. There is the excitement of the new term with new classes and books. There are new faces and routines. This time there will not be any grammar errors in my syllabi, or the teacher will not be super mean but rather fun and interesting.
Unfortunately, I find myself at the end of that cycle right in the middle of Advent. It seems unfair. Someone needs to move Christmas to September or maybe February. It is hard to look at the faces of the shining kids, decked out in their best shirt or dress, and not to interrupt them in their "pitchy" rendition of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear".
I do not want to be the Grinch, but at the end of term, that is what I am. All the potential has been spent, and it is the end of the line. I must become the Dream-Crusher. I know that it is an oversimplification. My students get what they earned.
So, it is hard to not run up the aisle and say, "Stop! Stop being so hopeful. most of you will struggle your entire lives. Yes, toys are fun, but you will grow up and lose the excitement and curiosity (or have it tested or drugged out of you). You will become bored and sad."
But then that frustration and inclination relies on a misunderstanding. Unlike what I hear on the radio and TV, and often from a variety of pulpits, my faith is not a matter of making everything ok, at least not yet. The promise of the Messiah includes with the "Joy to the World" and "Gloooorrrrria"'s a promise of the suffering and victory of Good Friday and Easter.
So, just as my terms carry with them a certain amount of sadness, nativity scenes always carry a good deal of grief in my heart as well. I used to drive by a church with a Nativity creche right in front of the building, and right behind that small, plastic baby Jesus, with his entourage, was a looking cross the size of a building.
While I can find joy and excitement at the promise of the season, the reality of the life ahead of that small baby humbles me nearly to tears. Within the cries for food and warmth at his beginning on earth were the tears of "Jesus wept.". Those small hands and feet would be pierce with nails and left to hang as he struggled for breath on the cross. Those eyes, still bleary from birth, would greet Mary in the Garden on the morning of his resurrection and be surprised that she did not know him.
That is real potential, and I wish that I could give my students just a small fraction of that.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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.
This is the first in a series of thoughts on how place shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell.
In 1993, I left Encinitas, California – a suburb of San Diego roughly 25 miles north of the city – for what I thought would be a quick four years of college in L.A. Then four years became 17 and I accepted the fact that my hometown would be merely a conversation point for the rest of my life.
In the process, I devised a way to keep San Diego present in my life - by writing about it. The concept came to me in the middle of my first Midwestern winter (which looked a little like the one they’re having now). I can almost pinpoint the moment I decided to make the Southern of Southern California my geographical muse.
It happened on a day when they cancelled school in Milwaukee. Because it was cold. Not a snow day. A cold day.
Coming from a place where I never once had to shovel the sunshine off my driveway, this was frightening to me. They actually shut down school because there was a strong possibility of children getting frostbite while waiting for the bus.
I’d never felt homesickness as actual nausea before. Actually, it was more like creative morning sickness (at least, it seemed to feel like my wife’s descriptions of the actual, baby-induced morning sickness she was having at the time). I found myself thinking about the beach, random snapshots of winter mornings with no clouds or snow, wearing shorts when I went Christmas caroling.
At first, these memories were anti-nostalgia. They mocked me with their warm breezes and complete disconnection from my reality. A quick visit to the coast during the Christmas break only made the feelings worse when I settled into the next three months of outdoor icebox conditions.
The memories continued with the cold and it wasn’t until a friend of mine inadvertently suggested a solution that I found productive use for them. Craig and I were in a writing workshop together and I told him a story about a guy who wore nothing but an adult diaper and Birkenstocks while sitting next to the convenience shop I frequented as a kid. Craig asked why I hadn’t written a story about him and, with no good answer, I set out to do so.
But to tell diaper guy’s story I had to tell a dozen others. And with each, the winter grew a bit shorter and the reason for my being there a bit clearer. By April, the snow had melted and left behind the shape of what would become my first book-length manuscript.
It seemed odd to me at the time that a story contained in a five-mile stretch of the Coast Highway in San Diego was the product of a Wisconsin winter. Now that I’ve moved back to the West Coast (something that seems more dreamlike than less the longer I am here), it feels only natural.
I left San Diego to find it; to discover how deeply ingrained this place is in me and how strongly I feel about sharing it with others. Living here again with that new perspective only makes that more apparent. I don’t know if I’ll ever sell that first book, but maybe that wasn’t the point.
Michael Dean Clark is 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 2.8 children.
The Pushcart Prize anthology is a thick volume produced every year with literary work selected from the best literary journals and small presses. We're proud to honor the following works with this nomination:
I've been struggling recently with finding time to journal. It's not that I even care much about chronicalling my life. I just love it when I put my pen to paper and get something out. Instead, I've been using Google Docs to write. And there's a lot of positive things about holding my writing in a place I can access anywhere I have a computer--which is everywhere recently--but it's just not the same.
