So I’m happily reading the Land Stewardship Project newsletter when I come across this passage, about a tribally supported agricultural organization: Growing food in the community and getting people to consume it are different things. That’s why Wozupi provides classes for the public throughout the year on not only food production, but preparation and preserving. […]
A heartfelt thanks to Elizabeth Fletcher for inviting me to participate in The Next Big Thing, an internet-age ponzi scheme to connect writers to one another. Creative projects incubate in privacy for SO LONG; it’s a relief to get a public glimpse of a work-in-progress—almost a confirmation that it exists. I imagine all the contributors to
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Something’s got to change. I mean in my life and how I respond to the environmental crisis. Because global warming threatens our political stability, our food system, and our health; it’s already eliminating the water source for thousands and will soon displace whole populations, particularly in poor countries. Things are bad. Out of love for
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I write about love because I tell stories; and it is impossible, I believe, to tell any kind of powerful or valuable or meaningful story without writing about love. And, too, I have found that it is impossible to write a story without love. The writer must love her characters, must open her heart to
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I’ve been mulling over a Zen story about a farmer whose horse ran away. “Such bad luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. Then the horse returned, accompanied by two wild horses. “So fortunate!” the neighbors said. “Maybe,” said the farmer. Later, the farmer’s son tried to ride a wild horse, was thrown off,
As I move to the close of my second decade of teaching creative writing, I’m experiencing a dramatic shift in my philosophy. Writing has always been for me a means of personal discovery; I came to understand and claim my identity as a bisexual Christian when writing Swinging on the Garden Gate, and then melded
Writing from Deep Gladness to the World’s Deep Hunger Read More »
A friend explained to me yesterday why she, a born-and-bred Catholic, is faithfully attending adult education classes at her UCC church, asking hard questions, giving the pastor blunt answers, and otherwise being a rabble-rouser. “I want to know what I believe before I die,” she said. “I don’t want simply to fall back on what
I can’t tell you how often I read early drafts of memoirs that are thorough, lively recordings of events, great for preserving family history but absolutely unsatisfying as memoirs. First this happened, and then this, and then this… Even when the events are shocking, amazing, horrific, terrifying, or otherwise scintillating, the drafts read like flat
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From the moment her eyes pop open in the morning until that instant of surrender at night, Gwyn emits a steady stream of imaginative possibilities. “What if I’m a hermit crab? How about we live on the beach? How about you’re my crab mom? What if I have a shell? A shell, Mama—we have to
Whutif and Howbout Read More »
Sorry, folks. I’m too busy to write a Faith Finder article this month. I could give you all sorts of explanations—the 8 a.m. phone call with Gwyn’s teacher, the hassle of bundling her off to school, the disaster I’m ignoring in the kitchen, my crazy to-do list—but ultimately the problem is internal. Jangled nerves. Thoughts