Love Wins: Unless God Decides You're Evil

Travis Griffith discusses the implications of Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins. Will it define a new Christianity or destroy those who believe him?

To an outsider, the Christian religion can look awfully intimidating.

Between the constant threats of judgment and the, forgive me in advance here, fanciful stories that dot the Christian landscape, it's really no surprise to hear that modern Christianity is struggling a bit.

Seriously, why would a non-Christian voluntarily join a religion where he or she risks eternal damnation in hell come Judgement Day?  Oh, right. They'd do it for the reward of a blissful eternal life in heaven sitting next to the great Mr. Christ.

Well what if damnation was removed from the equation, along with the requirement to devote life to Jesus? Or even know his name?

Whoa. That'll get some attention!

And it has, in the form of a new book from megachurch pastor Rob Bell called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne).

Followers of the Christian faith have no doubt heard of him. I have to admit the first I heard his name was earlier this week while reading a newspaper article while on an airplane coming home from a particularly sinful weekend in San Diego. The article laid out a couple of Bell's claims:

• God gives humans the choice to either live with him or without him.
• Death doesn't cut off the ability to repent and there is no infinite torment for things humans did in their finite lifetimes.
• Jesus makes salvation possible, even for those who have never even heard his name.

There are plenty of folks in the Christian world writing Bell off as a heretic and false teacher of Jesus, which of course they have every right to believe.

From the perspective of those in a situation like mine, though, Bell's vision is an incredibly refreshing, loving and accepting message that will appeal to legions of lost young people searching for some kind of spirituality.

In the trailer for his book (which you can watch here), Bell discusses a moment when a church-member said "Gandhi is in hell." That is exactly the kind of close-minded statement  that turns people off to Christianity. Gandhi, the "Great Soul" himself, is as likely to be in hell as Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a believer in the Universe and a fierce proponent of the power of love and acceptance of all humans, I believe Bell's message could be an interpretation of Christianity the world can embrace in the future: a world where everyone can go to heaven and hell simply doesn't exist.

What do you think: is Rob Bell about to become irrelevant or will his message resonate with a new generation of Christians?

***

Travis Griffith, Relief's Blog Manager, is a former atheist now exploring what a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, was published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. Travis works from his home in Spokane, WA as a professional writer.

The Inconvenience of Lent

In our American culture of drive-through coffee, instant Twitter feeds, and video on demand, we prize immediacy. We like to check our email on our touchscreen phone as soon as it hits our inbox, grab lunch to-go, and download live-streaming news. We are a nation of busy professionals, parents, and students living under the banner of “carpe diem,” driven by the idea that there’s no time like the present.

This “now” syndrome certainly has advantages, motivating us to work hard and invest fully in whatever we’re doing, but what happens when we apply our instant-culture values to spirituality?

Last month, I had a bizarre experience with communion that made me consider this question. After months of exhausting church-searching, my husband and I finally found a church where we wanted to stay. It’s a contemporary kind of church, the kind that has a graphic designer on staff and a coffee bar out in the hall, and we came because we like the teaching and the small groups. But you have to understand, the church we went to before we moved was a liturgical church, the kind with Kierkegaard quotes in every other sermon and weekly communion. So we knew we’d have to make some adjustments at our new church.

But this is what I did not expect: communion that is served before the service, an addendum tacked onto and separate from the worship service. So we set our alarms a little earlier, entered the sanctuary, and found only a fraction of the congregation had shown up. The pastor said a prayer for this handful of early-risers, and at his invitation we filed up front and received the elements, and then it was over. The whole ordeal took literally five minutes. There was no time of confession before receiving the sacrament. There was no benediction afterwards, charging us to go forth bearing Christ into the world. There was no community, only a faithful few. There was no ritual, no careful unfolding of holiness.

It was like grabbing Christ’s blood of the covenant, His outpouring for the world, in a Styrofoam to-go cup. It was a sacrament dictated by convenience, quickly squeezed in between other items on the agenda, and left out of the greater context of cosmic redemption.

The problem with an instant culture, and an instant church, is that a preoccupation with the present diminishes our ability to see seasons, to see story, to observe the unfolding of time. This is the pivotal idea of the sacrament of communion: Christ asks us to remember Him by taking the bread and wine (Luke 22:19), and to anticipate the future when we will eat and drink with Him face to face (Matt. 26:29).

As we now enter the season of Lent, we enter a time of waiting. There is no immediacy or convenience here. But there is a story of cosmic proportions unfolding, as we take the forty days of Lent to remember, to walk through the events of the life of Christ: the temptation in the desert, the agony of Good Friday, the silence and sorrow of Holy Saturday, and the joyful victory of Sunday morning.

It is often difficult for us to lay down our gadgets and agendas to just sit for a while, quiet our souls, and dwell with God. And yet, He laid down everything for us, making Himself “nothing” and emptying Himself to the point of death (Phil. 2:7-98). In his beautiful poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” John Updike writes of the agony of the cross, “Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience...” As we cross the threshold of Ash Wednesday, let us reflect sincerely and sorrowfully on Christ’s suffering for us, so that on Easter morning, our hearts will grasp the incredible joy in His resurrection.

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 writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers' blog, www.insidepages.net.

A Philanthropic Mind

Bonnie talks about the history of Philanthropy. Philanthropy is not a new concept.  According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, charitable groups existed in ancient Rome and Greece.  Plato's Academy was supported by an endowment for 900 years.  Even the medieval Christian church began trusts to use for benevolent purposes. "Starting in the late 19th century, large personal fortunes led to the creation of private foundations that bequeathed gifts totaling millions and then billions in support of the arts, education, medical research, public policy, social services, environmental causes, and other special interests."

The ideas of charity and philanthropy are important in the history of humanity.  While everyone gives for different reasons, I think that people give to elevate society.  The arts, education and research all help to enrich our lives and raise our standard of living.

Charity comes from the Latin word "caritas" which means unconditional love.  Show Relief your unconditional love right now and give to a journal that is elevating the standards of Christian fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction!

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/philanthropy#ixzz1GAPib0QA

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Relief News Tuesday 3.8.2011

#LoveRelief Update

So you may have already noticed, but our support raising campaign is really coming along. We're at 13% of our goal and feeling good about it. But do you know what would make us feel better? Giving to us if you haven't already so we can get that 13% over 20% by the end of this week.

If every person that visited our website last month gave us $1, we would have more than enough money to meet our campaign goal. If everyone who visited our website in the next two days gave us $1, we'd be over that 20% goal for this week. Just $1. That's a cup of cheap coffee. We're not asking you to donate the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee--though we wouldn't mind it. But maybe if you just gave up the cost of a cup of coffee that you'd order at that run-down diner you visit too late on Saturday nights. Really, that's all we need here.

So if you've got some spare change sitting around, think of the positive effect it would have if you gave it to your favorite edgy Christian literary journal. :)

Introducing Travis Griffith, Blog Manager

Relief is proud to announce the arrival of Travis Griffith as the new Blog Manager. Travis has blogged for Relief in the past, and we appreciate his willingness to conquer the tasks that are required in this new staff position. Travis is a Relief published author, and he has a book out called Your Father Forever. Please join me in welcoming Travis to the Relief staff.

An Encouraging Story

Bonnie shares an encouraging story about how donations can save print media. In this age of technology, digital media has overshadowed printed materials.  Looking around it seems like everyone has an e-reader of some type.  While the pros and cons of e-readers are a topic of debate among literary connoisseurs it is hard to ignore the growing number of people who use them.  Even in my family it is a topic of debate.  I have one and enjoy it and my husband feels negatively about them.  With the growing number of people reading from digital files, it is growing increasingly harder to sell printed material like books, journals, and magazines.  I found an encouraging article about one such magazine that turned to donations to keep going in this technology-saturated age.  I hope that if you read their story that it will encourage you to give to Relief Journal.

In this age it is hard to believe that there is any hope for print media.  Paste is a small independent music magazine that shares a story of financial triumph in hard times by turning to donations from loyal readers to stay in print.  By asking for donations and changing their magazine’s format for a short while they were able to continue to pay their staff and print their magazine while increasing their subscriptions.

Relief, run by volunteers, offers authors a creative outlet and provides exciting new stories to interest readers.  It is important to realize that subscriptions don’t cover all of the costs of printing, so for print media to survive, donations are needed.  Please consider a gift to Relief so we can keep on printing.  While digital media is growing, there is nothing quit like sitting on the couch with a good book in your hands.  Please show Relief some love.

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Relief News Tuesday 3.1.2011

#LoveRelief Update

As you can see by looking in that left sidebar, we currently have 10% of our goal met in the #LoveRelief campaign. We would like to thank those who have already given to us, but we still need more of you to step forward to help us out. Each dollar given to Relief will help us continue to put out the quality writing that we receive everyday. To chip-in, click on the button in the sidebar that says "ChipIn!"

Relief Submissions Closed; Diner Submissions Open

As of today, submissions to Relief are closed. The submission period will open up again on May 1. At the same time, submissions are now being accepted for the fourth volume of the Midnight Diner! The Midnight Diner, Relief's sister publication, is a hardboiled genre anthology with a Christian slant.  To submit or learn more, visit TheMidnightDiner.com.

Memoirs: Self-Obsessed or Sacramental?

American novelist Henry Adams once wrote, “Everyone must bear his own universe, and most persons are moderately interested in learning how their neighbors have managed to carry theirs.”

This line, written in 1918, would be an understatement for modern readers who are consuming the published memoir as fast as it can be printed. The memoir, as a published form of self-narrative, has successfully climbed the literary ladder, claiming equal standing with the traditional novel and receiving recognition by literary scholars as a genre revolution. Within the past thirty years, the memoir has asserted itself as a rising trend in the writing world.

Yet public responses are mixed: skeptics claim that the memoir indulges in syrupy solipsism, the theory that the self is the only reality, while enthusiasts praise it for the value of self-discovery through story. With an emerging cultural impulse to chronicle the self and such conflicting estimations of this trend, the church must join the conversation. The church must recognize the rise of the self-narrative as a signpost for the human longing for transcendence and affirm storytelling as a sacrament in the high art of illuminating divine grace.

The memoir is a personal narrative that provides the author with a verbal processing of the self’s “becoming.” This kind of literature has charmed millions of readers with this human interest appeal in bestsellers such as The Color of Water by James McBride, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The voice of memoir offers its readers an occasion for personal identification so that a reader can find him or herself within the story of another and perhaps borrow the wisdom, healing or insight from similar life threads.

Henry Adams’ idea of the private universe of men is being born into memoir, as the individual universe of motherhood experience, healing from the trauma of abuse, or growing up in a racially mixed family is translated into print. The private universe of the writer, then, opens up a new world to the reader in which a common human spirit is realized, introducing the memoir as a catalyst for community.

The Church’s Response: Stories as Sacrament

The church is no stranger to self-narrative, understood in Christian circles as spiritual testimony, and Augustine’s Confessions is just one example. Beginning with the gospels and later patterned in martyology, hagiography, confession and conversion testimony, the story paradigm is rooted in ancient church tradition. The church has an evangelistic responsibility to engage the rising confessional characteristic of culture for kingdom purposes rather than dismissing it as a narcissistic endeavor. The church need not be suspicious of the collective cultural cry for self-understanding, having its own so satisfied in the Person of Christ. Instead, the church must bridle the technique of self-narrative for Christian testimony, and affirm the art of life story as a powerful witness for grace.

The pattern for spiritual testimony finds its structure in the grand drama of redemption, as the unfolding story of a believer’s sanctification is only understood in the identification with the rhythms of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. The storyteller must then recognize the tension between the cosmic Story of redemption and the echoing story of personal redemption. By telling personal story within the framework of God’s Story, we can engage the cultural trend of self-narrative while adding the new, redemptive element of pointing beyond the self to the Savior.

The cultural rise in the self-narrative affords the church a powerful opportunity to channel the very same confessional trait into spiritual testimony. The church can enter the social scene of life-writing by affirming it in theology as sacrament and encouraging it in practice as testimony. The church is already a credible voice in the self-narrative genre not only because of its tradition of testimony, but also in its sacramental ability to transcend the very story it tells by praising the grace of the Divine Author, something no secular memoir can claim. The art of testimony, then, trades a religion of solipsism, characterized by self-devotion, for a religion of sacrament, marked by the surpassing of the self to point to the Savior.

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.

Thankfulness

Bonnie Ponce reflects on being thankful. Thankfulness.  It is a word that we think of around Thanksgiving but recently I have been thinking a lot about being thankful.  The other day my husband and I were watching Veggie Tales, which may be strange since we don't have kids, but we were watching the episode with Madam Blueberry.  She is a very "blue" berry who is sad.  She is told that buying more stuff will make her happy but on her way to Stuff Mart she sees a less fortunate girl thanking her parents for a meager birthday dessert of apple pie.  Later she sees a little boy ask for a cool train set but is told no by his father and instead he gets a bouncy ball and he also says thank you, making an impression on Madam Blueberry, who learns to be thankful.

Seeing this short video made me think about my wish list - all the stuff I want and if I had money to burn I would probably begin to make a dent in my list.  It also made me think about what I am thankful for in my life.  Thankfulness is tough - it is so much easier to go through life, see stuff, and want it but to be thankful you have to use your brain and think of what you are thankful for.

Thankfulness is the language of love and joy.  It speaks from a heart overflowing with hope of good things to come.  With Relief I see many good things coming in the future and I hope that with the Love Relief campaign we can continue to bring great literature!

Just an ending thought on thankfulness:

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it. -unknown

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Backwards Blogging

Pondering some realities of journal and blog. Recently I read through my physical journals. Again. Every year or so I get the urge, and usually I begin with the first journal I started since I haven't stopped. My initial post was on March 3, 1989. A Friday afternoon. We rented a house in the countryside, where log trucks woke us mornings and deer spied us from the lawn after dinner. My daughter was three, and my son wasn't quite yet conceived.

Nowadays it takes two or three weeks to finish my journals from '89 to the present. I tend to journal about reading them along the way. Always new insights shine from the book(s) about my years raising children (and a dog, cats, rats, snakes, and mice, plus one mallard duck). I wrote discouragement and joy. I penned creative ditties. I jotted a gazillion ideas, a few of which became published articles and essays.

Sometimes reading through I'm impatient with my entries on writing. Blah, blah, blah, waiting for an editor, blah, blah, this title's a winner!, blah, that rejection hurt, blah, I never expected such a nice response...

Other times I truly relish recalling the writerly process. I think it reflects the rest of my life journey well. Always the unexpected. New turns. Wow, I've really been through all that and lived to tell it.

I keep my journals in a metal file cabinet, and I imagine people reading them when I'm gone. In fact, I write with that in mind and don't share just everything (a girl's got to have some secrets). Rarely do I scratch things out. My basic post is one side of one page, and they aren't super regular. Consistently, though, they're there year to year.

After I started blogging nearly five years ago, my journal entries became fewer. Still, there have been weeks and months of needing only the grittier tools of expression: pen, ink, and welcoming blank pages.

I've enjoyed the similar yet different sensation of blogging, but I don't know how long I'll keep up my individual blog. With vague structure to my system, I find the best part of the experience reading other "journals" on the web when mine's in play. Many good words are out there.

What bugs me about blogging is the nature of review. Blogs were made to be current, newsy. Their top-down, last-first nature makes it difficult to read somebody's story from beginning to now. This may not bother anyone younger than 40. And I'm all for getting a sense of today's happenings. But I don't and won't own an I-Phone. I live without a laptop, even. Instead I stick with my journal and my even more portable Moleskine. I carry books. Blogs could give me that booky connection to other author-type people, if they were accessible from first post to last without archive manipulation. (Maybe there's an easy way to read a blog consecutively that I don't know of...? Would love to hear it.)

You're likely thinking, old woman, don't fret over the way things have become. We read the immediate, we update each other's thoughts all day, and what's wrong with that?

You're right, I'm sure. It's a preference. After all, in his day Plato complained about the new technology involving writing things down, because it would take away the experience of remembering long passages. It would make our brains lazy.

I consider, however, taking my lazy brain off the Internet, though I like the other minds I connect with. I just want to read stories from the beginning. I'd like the chance to see where some bloggers were years ago, follow the flow of their journey, and see the contrast with who they're becoming, to review and reflect on collections of the other me's I'm reading.

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.

Share a Story

Bonnie Ponce encourages Relief readers  to love Relief through donations. When I think about helping Relief through support raising, I think about my current job - support raising at a university.

Support raising, I think can have a negative stigma.  Asking for money, even for a really good cause like Relief Journal, can be awkward for people.  But the support raising process can lead to rewarding new friendships and shared stories.

Relief Journal allows authors to bare their souls through their writing and they reach a unique audience. Great questions are asked through poetry, fiction, and shared experiences. We support raise because we want people to continue to find their voice and share it with others.

I remember when I first heard about Relief.  I was a little confused by the name but after I read the mission statement, I understood that Relief was raising the bar on Christian literature and bringing a fresh new point of view.  I was thrilled to find like-minded people that wanted to write and read faith based fiction that dealt with the sinful and painful side of humanity but also the hope that we have in Jesus.  I knew that I wanted to be a part of this group, to help support raise so these stories could continue to be shared.

Women Who I Love

Stephen Swanson finally admits to loving women.  Surprise!

With this being near V-Day and the midst of the "Love Relief" campaign, I felt the need to write about something more pleasant than my anger with legislatures, both state and federal, or what's happening on the Bachelor.

I need to think positive, and you should too. Therefore, I want to write about my love for women. No, not THAT kind of love. Sure, I could talk about my wife or mom. I could write about my sisters. I could write about the wonderful, strong, and intelligent women who are my colleagues, both online and IRL.

However, there's a group of women that I respect more than any other at the moment: my students.

This is not to say that I do not have wonderful male students, friends, and colleagues. I do. They're great!

But, unfortunately for them this semester, I have some women in my classes that are not only dedicated, sharp students who make teaching fun and interesting on a daily basis but who have also overcome considerable obstacles to be there.

Take, for example, on of the students in my afternoon class. She is what we would call a non-traditional student, meaning that she is not 18-23, and I had the pleasure of teaching her in the prerequisite course. At the beginning of that term that I first had her, she struggled with everything. Not only was she frustrated with her own lack of experience with computers and word processors, she had a strong sense of self-criticism, that she just wasn't a very good writer.

This week, she not only led a discussion on her own but also takes time before class to help other students get their work formatted on the computer. She, like the rest of us, still struggles with self-doubt, but she does not let it stop her cold like it had.

I have a whole set of women with whom it is my pleasure to work as part of the dual-credit program which teaches high school students so that they get both high school and college credit for their work. They are not only smart, funny, and hardworking, but they have begun to take pride in the very value of intellectual pursuit in an environment where little value is placed, especially within their gender sub-culture, on thinking and consideration.

Now, I can only take a very small part of the credit for their evolution as students, but I can own the pride and affection that I have in them and a society where they can be what they are and become even better.

Therefore, in a new spirit of "Valentines", I urge you all to express your pride, encouragement, and...yes, love, to one another, as least for a few days in February.  We all need it.

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.

Relief News Tuesday 2.15.11

Relief 5.1 Editor's Choice Winners

Issue 5.1 is currently steaming down the line toward the first printing. This is going to be an issue to be remembered, and well worth the long wait. As promised, here is a list of our three Editor's Choice winners:

Editor's Choice for Fiction

"Catholics," by Margot Patterson

Editor's Choice for Creative Nonfiction

"Like a Spread-Eagled Cat Suspended," by Samuel Thomas Martin

Editor's Choice for Poetry

"Doubt," by David Holper

At the risk of sounding like doting parents, we are really proud of all the authors we're featuring in this issue. But a special congratulations is due to Margot, Samuel, and David. Leave a comment and make them feel extra special!

Don't Forget to Show Relief a Little Love

The LoveRelief support raising campaign kicked off yesterday, and we've had a lot of people peeking in here and on our Facebook and Twitter as a result. Unfortunately, though, we can't run a journal on website traffic alone. So please click on the "Chip In" widget to the right and help us fund Relief for Issue 5.2 and beyond!

Luci Shaw's Spiritual Erotics

A propos of our Love Relief campaign, Relief's Poetry Editor considers what it means to look with love at something while reviewing Luci Shaw's What the Light Was Like (Wordfarm, 2006). As a point of order, he wishes to say that he began this post well before Valentine's Day, but while it's become a propos of the occasion, it is notably about Shaw's "spiritual erotics" rather than, say, the canned greetings you'll get today from e-cards.

...To find some kind of essence-- the soul within the structure, taking my body in their eyes and fingers in a kind of lovemaking. I the love object.

As I read the above lines from "Life Drawing" in Luci Shaw's What the Light Was Like, I was struck by how they fly in the face of a line of postmodern thinking that is vexed by the power of the gaze. After all, seeing is almost the same as knowing in Western thought; we tend to act like seeing gives us essential information about people and things, when in fact we often see what we expect or desire to see - think of racism or sexism, but think also of your attitudes towards the elderly, or children, or liberals or conservatives. The gaze can be an extension of a mind anxious to avoid the surprises and risks of dealing with individual persons, a mind looking to see only iterations of what it already knows. The clichés of Valentine's Day come from the fossilization of our concept of love, from our inert and idealized notions of romance.

One might fault Shaw for being too complacent about her own looking in this book. One could accuse this gaze as being just as domineering and male ("They'd work to get beyond surfaces / to penetrate what lives / inside" [emphasis added]) as so many that have come before. But that would be to miss the point. As the book's title indicates, these poems are not about finding the same light everywhere she looks - about casting her gaze like a spotlight that turns all things one color - but describing "what the light was like" in specific places and persons. Shaw no doubt looks with an expectation of finding beauty, but it is a looking that at least tries to be open to the looked upon.

Thus she speaks of her looking as "loving," as "witness." These words put her looking in relationship to people and things rather than guarantee her authorial distance. In "Life Drawing," she puts herself in the object's place, imagining herself as a nude model in a drawing class. She calls the students' looking "a kind of lovemaking," and she, though naked and exposed to the ostensibly male gaze, is not merely object, nor sexual object, but "love object."

The challenge for a Christian reader and writer is to look with and bare oneself to this love. As Shaw models it, it is to believe that this love will discover the light without trying to trap it or own it.

At the same time, the co-creative capacities of art play a role in transforming the love object. In "The Redress," the speaker compares the other's gestures to a "too-large shirt" given her by someone else merely to cover her nakedness. Then she imagines undressing and redressing the other, performing a kind of makeover. But this makeover seeks to realize the fullness of the other, to provide her with "a silky second skin / that will keep growing as you grow."

If you've noticed the amount of sex and nudity, you'll appreciate my reference to a "spiritual erotics." Shaw's sexuality in these poems is as innocent and liberated as in Milton's Eden. Baptized by love, erotism becomes an electrifying pulse between and amongst people and things, truly part of our shared lives together. Its purity consists in its generosity; this love celebrates the other and seeks first to give of itself or to give honor and praise, rather than seeking sexual possession.

On this day when the word love is spoken with the casualness of a curse word, it's lovely and good to read Shaw as she luxuriates in her daughter-in-law's hospitality:

"I love the crisp word apple, with its hard and soft sounds, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the way light offers itself without measure, the way Christa reverses the Fall, slicing herself out to us-- her own tart sweetness--without reserve.

---

Brad Fruhauff is Poetry Editor with Relief. He holds a PhD in English from Loyola University Chicago and is currently an adjunct instructor in the Chicago area where he lives with his wife and 2-year old son. He has published fiction in The Ankeny Briefcase, poetry in Relief, Salt, and *catapult, and reviews in Burnside Writers’ Collective and The Englewood Review of Books.

Love Relief

<---love is... a want

We want to keep bringing you Relief Journal. In print. eBook. Hopefully in other eReader formats soon.

We want to keep publishing phenomenal new writers and fabulous established authors.

We want to remain on the radar of literary journals (with a Christian worldview.)

We want to keep offering an outlet for stories that paint a complete picture of Christ and life –- real, gritty, painful, wonderful, this-side-of-heaven life.

but

we have

a need...

Money.

We're not in (the negative.) We're thinking in proactive terms and anticipating financial needs for 2011.

We don't need a lot. Our goal is $1500.

...a want and a need brought together.

Love is--->

all about communication

If we could wildly spend unlimited amounts of cash, we'd be doing all dreamy things.

But the reality is we only have so much and it only goes so far. We are dedicated to being good stewards of the blessings we've received thus far. We're an all volunteer staff. No one gets rewarded with cash. We're rewarded with heavenly crowns. We do this because we LoveRelief. The mission, the people, and the hard work. From Valentine's Day to Tax Day, you'll be hearing from our volunteers. They'll tell you why they work so hard for so little.

The $1500 we're asking for will help to pay our printer. The US Post Office for shipping and the cost of our PO Box. Office Depot for shipping supplies. It will help pay for our web presence. Our e-junkie account so we can sell you copies online. Our bank fees. It will help pay our yearly fees to the government.

It will help us start 2011 in confidence. Knowing that we'll have fundage in the bank allows our staff to focus on what we consider the important thing: Excellent stories.

We're communicating our need.

We're hoping you LoveRelief enough give a little so that we can continue giving you what we love--this journal.

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The Ideal Writing Spot

It seems that most famous writers create a certain habitat for their genius, a custom-made space where their creativity can flow forth uninhibited. Virginia Woolf had A Room of One’s Own, J. K. Rowling has her European café, and Kurt Vonnegut has his hardwood floor where he worked out of his lap. So what are the basic requirements for a writing spot?

A desk, of course, is essential (except, apparently, if you’re Vonnegut). Preferably, a mahogany, stylishly-distressed desk that just looks like classics have been written all over it. A desk in the tradition of Tolkien’s and C. S. Lewis’, which you can actually see on display (including the wardrobe that inspired Narnia) at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. Extra points if your desk has a secret compartment.

Next, coffee. Every writer needs an energy boost now and then. And if you’re self-employed, your caffeine addiction might even count as a tax deduction (don’t quote me on that…)! But don’t try to outdo French novelist Balzac, who was known to drink 50-300 cups of coffee per day.

Your writing space should also host somewhat of a cozy mess. Creative minds aren’t known for their organizational skills, you know.

Surround yourself with inspirational literary quotes. These will remind you not only how much you love, live, and breath writing, but how fun it is! Motivational catchphrases such as, “My stories run up and bite me on the leg” –Ray Bradbury, and, “Writing is…like a long bout of some painful illness." -George Orwell, should get you off to a good start!

You should also have something to fidget with as you wrestle your brilliant ideas down onto paper. Stress balls, those cool moldable erasers, etc. Now is the perfect time to develop a bad habit such as cracking your knuckles or chewing your hair. All for the sake of art, of course.

A muse: whether it’s a picture of your sweetheart, your cat, or your Edgar Allan Poe bobble-head, you should have something to attribute your strokes of genius to. And someone to take your frustration out on when writer’s block hits.

What’s your writing environment? Where do you hammer out your thoughts, poems, and stories?

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.

Do Anger and Creating Mix?

Are You Reading Along?

Have you clicked over to Don Miller's Blog lately? You know I have, because this isn't the first link I've posted on the Relief site. He's been blogging a series on "The Way of A Creator," and I think Relief readers everywhere should be reading along.

Anger + Creation = ?

Today, his post states that "A Creator Resists the Urge to Create out of Anger." You'll want to read the whole post, but here's a quick quote:

The public only has a consciousness so big, and when you create something good, and it gets into the public consciousness, there’s less room for whatever it is that made you angry. So go and create something good, and displace whatever it is that is pissing you off.

This post has me thinking about Relief's beginnings. Part of our story is that the vision for this journal was born out of frustration. I'll be honest--sometimes "Christian" literature makes me angry. For years we've endeavored to create something that displaces the sometimes-overly-sanitized work that well, pisses us off... okay, I'm not sure I'm following Don's advice in this sentence.

Thoughts? How do you, as a creator, wrestle your anger? Do you agree with Don's advice?

Relief News Tuesday 2.8.11

Relief Issue 5.1

The Relief staff is hard at work putting the finishing touches on the upcoming issue. If you didn't catch yesterday's blog, check out Editor-In-Chief Chris Fisher's post about how the cover captures the theme of the issue. Next week, we'll be announcing the winners of our Editor's Choice Prize in each genre, so stay tuned!

Ready to pre-purchase your copy at a discounted price? Click here.

Love Relief?

We do, too. The truth, though, is that this economy has been pretty hard on artistic ventures like literary journals. Though times are tough, we're committed to bringing you many more issues of Relief and The Midnight Diner. So we're about to get creative in order to make ends meet. Next week we'll give you the chance to get involved and to show a little love.

The New Cover

One of my favorite parts of putting together an issue of Relief is working with the photographers and graphic artists who help the outside of our journal look as good as the work we publish inside. You see, I'm well aware that, while we all know that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, we're all prone to do it anyway. Fortunately, Relief has developed great relationships with gifted visual artists who contribute to covers that are as original as our vision for a Christian literature that is both true-to-life and beautiful, gritty and wonderful. The cover of our current issue is a composite of two images. The central image (the tree and sunrise in the doorway) is cropped from a landscape taken by J. Brisbin, a former Relief author and photographer whose work we featured on our last cover. Like his last, this image demonstrates the high dynamic range (HDR) technique, which is a favorite form of Brisbin's. As he explains it:

HDR is simply a way to capture an image that pretends it has more dynamic range than it actually has. The eye can see about 15000:1 contrast ratio, while photography can usually only capture 300:1 to 500:1. Highs get overexposed, lows get lost in shadow. HDR algorithms seek to compress multiple exposures of an image that expose various parts of that 15000:1 contrast ratio in "slices" by altering the exposure, then combining those images (3-12) using special software. What makes HDR cool, in my opinion, isn't this technical side of it, but the artistic result of the tone mapping software. Different algorithms produce different results and a vast range of effects can be produced by manipulating the knobs and switches in the tone mapping software. It can be time-consuming and takes a lot of trial-and-error but with the right composition, the effects can be stunning.

The second -- and much less technical -- image of the dark foreground, was taken by my wife, my youngest son, Josiah, and myself during a hike at a nearby abandoned and run-down house. (Actually, I took the picture from inside while they stayed safely outside and prayed the roof would not collapse on my head).  With some clever arranging by Harriet Brewster, who also designed the cover for our last issue, the result is an image we're calling "Lazarus, Come Forth" for its juxtaposition of  desolation with hope and beauty, and to hint at this issue's themes of isolation and communion.

And now that you've seen the cover, click on over to our store and pre-order a copy of your very own!

It All Began with a Picture

I have a question for all you writers out there: how do your stories begin?

Do they begin inside you, with a striking thought, image, or scene? Do you observe something in the world that makes you want to put in onto paper? Do you imagine your characters to life, or do you see them on the street, at the Farmer's Market, the corner coffee shop?

Many of my favorite authors, it seems, birth their stories like this: a curious image arises in their mind, an image they see and cannot forget, and they write to discover the story behind the image.

Beloved author C.S. Lewis says that his enchanted world of Narnia began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella in a snowy wood.  "This picture had been in my mind since I was sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.'”

Kate DiCamillo was lying in bed one morning, her life in a state of depression, when she suddenly saw a magician, joined by an elephant.  They looked as real to her as anyone, and this curious introduction gave her the motivation to get out of bed and start writing again. The tale of these two characters entwine in what became The Magician's Elephant, a whimsical story about magic, homecoming, and belonging.

Sue Monk Kidd's award-winning novel, The Secret Life of Bees, began with an image of a girl going to sleep in her room amidst a swarm of hovering bees.  Right now I'm reading Traveling with Pomegranates, the author's memoir which gives the reader the backstory behind the creation of her bee novel. I find myself fascinated with the way Sue Monk Kidd collects the smallest of details and finds a home for them in her book.  Simple things like a pink house she saw in a magazine, a childhood memory of bees that hummed through the walls of her old house, and a story about a black Madonna struck something in her and she wove them into her novel.

As much as I love reading fiction, this genre has always been the hardest thing for me to write.  Characters do not appear to me in dreams, or start talking to me in the shower, or hover over my bed in the form of circus animals.  But I do often see images in real life that I pause over and tuck away for later, for a story that will be woven with bits and pieces of things in the world that catch my curiosity.

Here are some of them:

A man sitting on a porch that is covered with wind chimes.

The way a book in my hand vibrates with the live music of a cello playing in a bookstore.

A snippet of overheard conversation, “Once when I was seventeen and wild, I cut off all my hair.”

What sparks your stories into life?

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 insidepages.net.