*Afterthought # 15 - Halfway Point

Last week marked the halfway point in my MFA in writing program at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts.  I’m majoring in nonfiction, but this low-residency program requires students to take some courses in other genres.  This semester I’m taking a course in the Craft of Poetry; I wrote about my tentative beginnings in the class in January, and I continue to be challenged by this “foreign language.”  Yet, as I’d hoped and expected, the poetry reading and writing I’m doing is strengthening and invigorating my prose; I’m seeing evidence of that as I also work on my thesis—a book-length spiritual memoir.

 To reward my progress, I treated myself to a couple of days on the mainland, including a stop at the award-winning Katie's Cupcakes in Bellingham, WA.  For now, I enjoyed a mini-cupcake (about half the size of a regular cupcake).  Delicious.

*Beginning in January 2012, I instituted posting an “Afterthought” on the last day of each month, fashioned after a practice in some Quaker meetings. At the end of meeting for worship, some groups continue in silence for a few more minutes during which members are invited to share thoughts or reflect on the morning's worship. I’ve adopted the form here for brief reflections on headlines, quotes, comments overheard, maybe even bumper stickers.

Design Flaws

No flaws in the design of these mini-irises

On a recent New Yorker podcast, writer Tony Earley read and discussed Robert Maxwell's short story, "Love."  It’s not what you think. Well, the story is about love, the love of a young boy for his fifth-grade teacher. Even more, it’s about death, but as Earley said when talking about the story, “Who would read something with the title ‘Death’?”

At the end of the conversation, Earley, the author of the personal essay collection Somehow Form a Family, added his own commentary about death.

“I see death as a design flaw,” he said.  “And I want to write a letter to someone about that.”

When Earley figures out who the letter should go to, I’d like to report a few other design flaws. On my list of flaws I’d add infections like meningitis that nearly killed a 21-year-old and left him facing months of rehab.

Birth control that fails for a single woman and physiology that doesn’t work for a couple wanting a baby.

Surges of electricity after a power outage that spark fire and burn a house and all of its contents to the ground.

Hurricanes that wash away homes and schools anywhere, but especially those that repeatedly devastate the poorest parts of Central America.

War.

Poverty.

Guns.

You likely have a few you’d add to the list, too.

When I was growing up, I was taught that God knew best.  That when horrible things happen—like illness, shootings, hurricanes, fire—these were all part of God’s plan.

I don’t believe that way any more. Now, I think God views these as flaws, too, and would like nothing better than some fixes. 

Testimonies

Recently I wrote a letter to the editors of local media in support of a candidate for county council.  I’ve known this candidate for nearly twenty years, having met her at a Quaker Meeting for Worship even before I moved to the county. In my letter, I cited examples of her work for affordable housing and her careful and respectful listening to many perspectives and explained that I’m backing her because her life speaks to the Quaker values of peace, simplicity, integrity, equality, and community.  Another term used to describe those values is “the testimonies.”

As much as I cherish the absence of dogma in Quakerism, I’m grateful for efforts throughout our faith tradition’s history to describe our beliefs and how they shape our lives. Although early Friends didn’t refer to “the testimonies,” they’ve been a reference point for me in my thirty-plus years of being a member of the Religious Society of Friends.

In an article in the March 2013 Friends Journal, Doug Bennett quoted Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice to define testimonies:

“Testimonies bear witness to the truth as Friends in community perceive it—truth known through relationship with God. The testimonies are expressions of lives turned toward the Light.”

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) included the same definition in its excellent pamphlet, An Introduction to Quaker Testimonies (that’s the cover in the photo), to explain the basis of that organization’s work to promote peace and overcome violence and injustice.

In this neck of the Quaker woods, we sometimes use the shorthand of SPICES to reference these “truths” of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship (or some people say sustainability). Not everyone in Quakerdom likes the acronym and some claim the classifications are simplistic and narrow our vision. I find the testimonies helpful, though, as a framework for teaching (sometimes called “advices”), followed by queries.  Here are some examples from the AFSC pamphlet for the testimonies of peace and equality:

Peace –

“Peace is not the product of terror or fear…Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.”  ~ Oscar Romero, Catholic Archbishop

Query:  How can I work to settle disputes within an organization or the community with love and sensitivity for all involved?

Equality –

“Until we can respect another person without justification except that he or she is a child of God, it is not really respect.”  ~ Paul Lacey, Quaker Educator

Query: How can I speak up and take action in a loving way when I see and hear injustices?

It’s those questions that have the most power for me as they prompt reflection, self-examination, and spiritually-centered discussion. As Bennett writes, “…testimonies help us pick a path through tricky terrain where simple, mechanical dos-and-don’ts won’t suffice.” And the questions are worth asking over and over, because there are no right answers, no single answer that fits everyone, and the answers may change over time.

During this local election season, the testimonies on peace, equality, and community have led me to write some letters. Next up is one in favor of the school bond.

Afterthought #14

It’s the last day of the month and time for an Afterthought.

Some days, all I have time and energy to read (other than what I'm assigned in my writing program classes) is the tag on my Yogi tea bag.  This one deserves a post:

To learn, read.

To know, write.

To master, teach.

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.