Writing About Faith

Outside of Quaker circles, I’m nervous about writing publicly about my faith.  Sometimes I hesitate to post a notice on my FB page about my latest blog entry, and I’m selective about who I tell about this blog.

Fear is probably too strong a word for my waffling when it comes to writing about my faith, but I do worry about work being lumped in with writing that is prescriptive and dogmatic. I also don’t want to be perceived as unsophisticated or gullible.

Most of all, I struggle with finding the right language to describe my personal experience of God/Spirit/Presence in my life. Those words carry so much meaning for people; for many, they are weighted with tonnage of hurt, confusion, and persecution. And for me, as I grow in my faith, my understanding of such words changes as well. 

Anne Lamott urges us to “not get bogged down on” the name we give to this mystery.  In her latest book on prayer she suggests, “Nothing could matter less than what we call this force. I know some ironic believers who call God Howard, as in ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be they name…’ Let’s just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us… Or for convenience we could just say ‘God.’” 

David Griffith

I’m not the only writer wrestling with how to write about faith.  A recent post on Brevity Blog linked to Writing in the Age of Unbelief by David Griffith. He identifies as a Catholic writer and has observed that many writers shy away from such a label, perceiving it “as a kiss of death.”

I think of my writing as my work, my vocation, my ministry, and apparently Griffith does, too. His recent essay collection, A Good War is Hard to Find, “meditates on the photos of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib and the culture that made them possible.” He explains, “For me, writing essays is a means of understanding how my actions are in keeping or at odds with my faith, and how I can maintain faith in the face of tragedy and atrocity. For me, these are the questions of our day.”

Griffith wrote in response to Paul Elie’s recent New York Times Op-Ed, Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?.  Elie, the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, wrote of his concern about a decline in writing about faith compared to that by earlier fiction writers such as Flannery O’Connor.

“O’Connor called for fiction that dramatized ‘the central religious experience,’ which she characterized as a person’s encounter with ‘a supreme being recognized through faith.’ She wrote that kind of fiction herself, shaped by her understanding that in the modern age such an encounter often takes place outside of organized religion…These stories are not ‘about’ belief. But they suggest the ways that instances of belief can seize individual lives.”

Griffith’s essay also cited Gregory Wolfe’s article, “Whispers of Faith in a Postmodern World,” in the Wall Street Journal, which refutes Elie’s concern. “The myth of secularism triumphant in the arts is just that—a myth,” Wolfe writes, citing his experience as editor of Image Magazine, a journal that “publishes literature and art concerned with the faith traditions of the West.” Wolfe and his wife began Image Magazine 24 years ago believing that, “Christianity [I would counter all faith traditions] is grounded in a great tradition of story-telling that is immediate and concrete. But,” he admits, “we honestly didn't know if we could fill more than a few issues. Sometimes when you look, you find.” The magazine has featured “many believing writers,” including Annie Dillard, Elie Wiesel, and Marilynne Robinson.

Wolfe goes on that lists of such writers, however, don’t “get at a deeper matter. It has to do with the way that faith takes on different tones and dimensions depending on the culture surrounding it. Today the faith found in literature is more whispered than shouted. Perhaps a new Flannery O'Connor will rise, but meanwhile we might try listening more closely to the still, small voice that is all around us.”

David Griffith suggests that in this “age of unbelief,” literary nonfiction—personal essay and memoir —is the medium for discussing faith. I agree. This is what I read in search of wisdom. Lamott, Griffith, and Wolfe have given me a little more courage to write about my own faith. And that writing helps me stay in touch with that still, small voice (or for convenience, God) within.

What reading or writing helps you listen to the still, small voice within and around you?

Grounded

Grounded.  That’s the word I heard over and over at a recent Quaker Silent Retreat. During introductions before we entered into forty hours of silence, many of the twenty people in attendance said they had come with a hope of getting grounded. Many spoke of the annual retreat as a time to regain the Center that had been subsumed by work, causes, studies, care for family and friends. All came for time to reconnect with Spirit. That’s what I sought as well, and as I sank into the quiet at Huston Camp and Conference Center, surrounded by ragged ridges of the North Cascades, I carried that idea of being grounded with me.

Photo by NW Labyrinth Enthusiasts

Grounded. Several years ago, Camp Huston installed an outdoor labyrinth at the site of an abandoned swimming pool. Native plants mark the path; most are still so new I can’t identify them. This year, decaying alder and maple leaves covered the fledgling greenery, and the course was wet and muddy. Typically when I walk a labyrinth, even one I’ve treaded before, I have a moment of thinking I’ve made a wrong turn.  I have to remind myself that part of the message of the labyrinth is that there are no “wrong” turns, that I can trust the path, and that all I need to do is place one foot on the ground before me, followed by another step, then another.  It’s possible that this year, the leafy shroud obscured a turn and I repeated a section. Perhaps this year, the muck helped me to sink deeper into the ground of the winding route.

Grounded. When I was a teenager, being grounded was the typical penalty for staying out past curfew. It didn’t happen very often to me, but at any given time, one or more of my friends was sentenced to home, was denied use of the phone, and couldn’t have friends over.  I couldn’t know then how often I would seek ways to “ground” myself in order to renew and strengthen my connection with God and others.

Grounded. The first quarter mile of a trail at Camp Huston that leads to Wallace Falls is through a clearing under electrical power lines. I quicken my pace as I walk under the pop and sizzle of the wires spanning from the Cascades to the east and carrying hydroelectric power west. Exactly how grounding works with electrical currents is a mystery to me, but I do know that the utility poles that dot our landscapes have wires that connect to the ground. My trek along the Wallace River among the old-growth pines slows me down, grounds and connects me to Spirit. 

Grounded. My thesis advisor uses this word frequently in her critiques of my memoir. She urges me to “ground” my abstractions about fear, loss, and seeking in concrete details of the physical world.  To literally put my readers on the “ground” of my experience—smelling the smoke of a wildfire as we packed evacuation bags, hearing the rumble of boulders and cedars crashing down a flooding river, feeling the cold seep through my ski pants as I landed on my knees at the bottom of an icy cross-country trail.  The very act of writing roots me to the evidence of Spirit all around me.

 Grounded.  Mid-morning on the last day of the retreat, we all gathered in a circle for a final hour of unprogrammed worship. We broke the silence by again sharing, this time, reflections on the weekend.  Without exception, people reported that in the silence they had, indeed, reconnected with the wisdom and strength they too often ignore in daily life. I, too, renewed my awareness that in order to maintain my connection with Spirit, I must make regular efforts to ground myself. Usually, just as when I was a teen, I need to “go to my room” to reflect, at least for a few minutes every morning. Since the Silent Retreat, I’ve been more faithful in that practice. But as the days, weeks, and months of the year go by, I know I might succumb to the world’s messages to move faster and accomplish more. I’ve already put next January’s Silent Retreat on my calendar.

What grounds you?

Afterthought #13 - Nudged Along

Last weekend, as I’ve done nearly every year since 1994, I attended a Silent Retreat at Camp Huston near Wallace Falls State Park. Sponsored by Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting, the retreat draws 20 to 30 Quakers from Washington and parts of Idaho. Our shared silence begins after a potluck dinner on Friday night and continues until lunch on Sunday. I’ve written about this gathering before, and I plan to write more about this year’s time of retreat in the future. For now, it prompted this January Afterthought of a relevant reflection from Holly Hughes in The Pen and the Bell - Mindful Writing in a Busy World.

Holly wrote about a weekend workshop she co-led at the North Cascades Institute called “Sit, Walk, Write:  Nature and the Practice of Presence.”   As she looked at Sourdough Mountain, Holly thought of writers like Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac who spent time in fire lookouts and of all the words that had been written in and around that landscape.

I’m reminded that whenever we come together, we bring the presence

not just of those who are with us, but of a much larger community:

the books that have informed us, and the writers who’ve nudged

us along, helping to shape our views.

Last weekend, as I walked among the cedars dripping with rain and chartreuse moss, I thought of the many Friends I’ve shared silence with at Camp Huston for nearly 20 years. A number of them have died and several have moved away, but I still feel their presence and know that they, along with those I gathered with this year, nudge me along on my spiritual journey.  

Preparation

Cover art work from
The Pen and the Bell

During many years of my work as a public health nurse, I started most days to the voice of Bob Edwards on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”  Edwards’s deep voice updated me about events of the previous twenty-four hours and reminded me of my connection to the wider world. I especially looked forward to his Friday morning chats with retired baseball announcer, Red Barber. I never was much of a baseball fan, but I enjoyed listening to Red and Bob; it was like eavesdropping on a friendship.

“Good morning, Red,” Edwards would say over the phone line from his studio in Washington, DC to Barber’s home in Tallahassee.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Barber always drawled, using the nickname to acknowledge Edwards’s home state of Kentucky.  Barber usually followed up with a report about the camellias in his garden or news of his wife, Lylah.

For a number of years, my preparation several mornings a week also included lap swimming at the YMCA. I’d pack my swim cap, goggles, flip-flops, towel, and change of clothes for work the night before. Bob Edwards’s voice signaled 6 am and cheered me as I tugged my swimsuit over the goose bumps on my hips and tried to dull the pain of the morning air with socks, a pair of leggings and a turtleneck.

Usually only one other woman would be in the dressing room when I arrived at the pool. The smell of disinfectant still lingered from the night cleaning crew.  I’d shiver again as I took off my pants, shirt, and socks, flip-flopped my way to the shower, and turned the handle to hot.

Wide awake then in the cool, chlorine-scented air, I’d adjust my swim cap and goggles and do a shallow dive into an empty lane. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. All I could hear was the slap of my arms and feet in the water and my gulps for air.  At the end of the lane, I’d curl into a ball, roll my body and connect my feet to the concrete wall, push off, and resume the rhythm of strokes, kicks, and breaths. This time of quiet and routine helped prepare me for whatever challenges the rest of the day held.

Before I begin the hour of silent Quaker worship on Sundays, I need to prepare, too. I’m much more open to Spirit if I spend some minutes before I enter the worship space in quiet anticipation—that means no phone calls, no listening to the news on the radio, no checking e-mails.  My meeting reinforces the value of preparation with a sign at the entrance, reminding us to come in worshipfully.  Silently leaving my shoes at the door signals my brain to leave my thinking and fretting there, too.

A discipline of preparation also serves my writing.  There’s no pool on my island home for morning laps, so now I wake my mind and my muscles with a Pilates workout or a walk with my yellow lab, Buddy.  Bob Edwards is long-retired from NPR, so most mornings I light a candle and read a short bit of writing that inspires me. These days I’m working my way through The Pen and the Bell by Brenda Miller and Holly Hughes. I often do a 10-15 minute timed writing exercise in my journal, before opening the lid of my laptop.  A waste of valuable writing time? With deadlines and messages to be productive, it’s tempting to skip my preparation routines, to get right to the “real work” of tapping out words for the essay or chapter I’m working on. Brenda Miller writes,

“We have to do the small tasks so that the big work will emerge on its

own terms.  All of it is preparation for the work—and it’s the work itself.”

The pool, the walks in the woods, leaving my shoes at the worship room door, moving my pen across the page—these teach me that preparation is part of the work.

How do you prepare for your work?

Beginning... again

The sun burst through the heavy mantle of gray on Day Five of my writing program’s “Spring” Residency. I had been eager to begin the ten-day session that launched the new semester, but the first four days’ temperatures in the twenties and wind blowing the rain sideways had dampened my spirits. My first-ever poetry class was weighing heavy on me, too. Verse forms and rhythms with names like villanelle, sestina, spondee, and triolet made me think I was studying a foreign language.  Iambic pentameter eluded my untrained ear and my pen—I littered a fledgling attempt to write lines with five feet of iambs with either too many syllables or too few and accents in all the wrong places.

My stumble through the first assignment in my poetry class left my stomach knotted in anticipation of future tussles with this unfamiliar genre. That’s the thing about beginnings:  along with the freshness of unexplored territory comes the potential—the likelihood— of wrong turns and having to backtrack, of getting lost, of failure. My bruised ego lightened up a few notches, though, as the sunrise overcame the rain-filled clouds.  It felt like a new beginning in the midst of all the beginnings of this season—new year, new semester, new writing form.

Blazing sunrises appear intermittently during Puget Sound winters, but probably more often than memorable poetry will flow from my laptop keyboard in the coming months. In this medium, I’m a beginner, with words hidden behind clouds of insecurity and rhythms tossed by north winds. But I’ll keep at it, watching for at least an occasional slice of light to boost me through the pains of beginning.

How do you fare with beginnings?

Afterthought #12 – Spiritual Memoir

When people ask what I write, I usually reply:  nonfiction, personal essays, and memoir. When I describe my current project, I say I’m writing a memoir that braids leadings about my work with the story of the two years my family and I lived in a remote mountain village. 

Lately, I’ve been reading a craft book by Elizabeth J. Andrew - Writing the Sacred Journey - The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir.  My copy looks a little ragged. I’ve turned down corners of about half of the pages with exercises I’ll use in my writing practice.  I’ve underlined sections that speak to me, such as Andrew’s belief that “spiritual memoir is a form unto itself…a genre in which one’s life is written with particular attention paid to its mysteries.”  She also describes well my experience that “…the writing itself becomes a means for spiritual growth.”

After a break from MFA classes and my job, plus a renewing family vacation, I’m eager to resume work on my own spiritual memoir.  Writing the Sacred Journey will be a good companion.

Giving Up the Life You Have

A couple inches of dust coat my grandmother’s cherry writing desk in the corner of my bedroom; I haven’t yet replaced the dead battery in the clock that sits next to my journal; lint litters the brown sheepskin in the rocker where I usually sit. Since starting my MFA in writing program, I’ve shortened—or many days skipped—my morning writing meditation.

A poetry reading a few weeks ago, though, nudged me back.  More specifically, poet Holly Hughes spurred me with meditations and exercises in The Bell and the Pen, the book that she co-authored with Brenda Miller. Thumbing through it at Holly’s reading, I knew I had found kindred spirits in its authors:

            As writers who have incorporated spirituality as a part of our lives,

             we have found that writing, in and of itself, can be a powerful form

            of contemplation…we also believe that contemplative practice can

            strengthen one’s writing; the two work synergistically to support

            and reinforce each other.

Those lines, and others in The Bell and the Pen, have sent me again to that corner in my bedroom. Today, after I blew off dust on the votive candle and lit it, I noticed something tucked under the stack of books teetering on the desk.  It’s a tiny accordion book that I made in 2007 while a student at Pendle Hill Quaker Study Center.

Its folds, twists, and turns symbolize the way leadings have unfolded for me. The hand-written text includes some of the new understandings I came to during the Pendle Hill course, “Discerning Our Calls.”  On one page I printed a quote by James Hillman, a Jungian psychologist:

You have to give up the life you have 

to get the life that’s waiting for you.

Those words had greeted me one afternoon when I entered a room for a time of worship-sharing. I can still remember the burn in my belly when I read them. Just as I had thought – to be faithful, I have to give up all of the good and beautiful things in my life.   My stomach churning as I tried to settle into the quiet of the room, another sensation prickled. What IS the world that is waiting for me?

I no longer can recall any of the sharing by others in the group that day. But at some point in that hour of expectant listening, the churning in my gut eased, and I heard what I was to give up. The life I have to give up is a life lived in fear.

Fear of loss, of failure, of disappointing others. Fear of making mistakes, being wrong.

I also heard that the life that is waiting for me­—the life that Spirit wants for me (and all of us)—is one of joy.

I’ve made some progress giving up worry and anxiety about those things I can’t control. I’ve gotten more clear about the dangers of trying to please everyone. And I remain certain of God’s desire for us to experience joy. But just like the dust on my writing desk, fear creeps in when I allow the busyness of life to keep me from regular times of contemplation. I’m grateful for being pulled back to my pen, my hand-bound journal, the flicker of a candle, and the quiet. I have more giving up to do, more life that is waiting for me.