Praying Like a Novelist
The secret to fiction is that the writer “turns from everything to one face…to find oneself face to face with everything,” as novelist Elizabeth Bowen put it.
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Writers, This Is Our Moment.
Whatever we’re given by inspiration we must augment with effort and then release to move and heal and connect and transform the wider world.
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Open My Ears That I Might Hear
Sometimes I sleep through the concert; most times I sleep through it even when I’m awake. This morning I heard. Who knows why?
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Finding Value in your Creative and Spiritual Endeavors
We write within a vast web connecting those we’ve read and those who’ve come before us and our writing colleagues and our readers and all we love; this web forms the ground of our being, it moves through us and beyond us. It does not discriminate. It simply radiates life, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
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The Challenge of Receiving Love
Receiving love is not about our egos at all. It’s deep nurturance, a humble opening of the heart.
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Writing as a Dialogue with Creation
The fundamental, foundational dialogue in any story is the relational exchange of creation.
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Faith and the “Poopy Growth Mindset”
Ask what I’m learning in the Living School and I’ll blather incoherently, enthusiastically, and at great length about the Christian mystical tradition, the significance of contemplation, and a complete overhaul of my faith. I was doing just that at Easter dinner a few weeks ago. My father-in-law asked, and all eleven relatives at the table
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Unpublished But Powerful
Annie Dillard once said that an unpublished, unread manuscript gathering dust under an attic bed still exerts its influence on the world. Is this true? Can we pin our faith and our work’s worth on this hidden, immeasurable impact?
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Blessed Are…Those Who Move?
It’s as though I’d spent the first forty-five years of my life listening to (and being stirred by) great piano concerts every Sunday morning, and then one day sat down at the keyboard. I’ve no clue how to make music. But I’m learning, and as any musician knows, you learn by practicing.
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Finding Acceptance in Surprising Places
What if the new life we look for (in publication, in success) might also be found elsewhere?
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