(This blog post is reprinted after appearing in The Loft’s “Writer’s Block.”) “I’m not interested in spiritual stuff. I just want to write stories.” A friend—a thoughtful, church-going friend—said this to me in passing the other day. Since she couldn’t hear my internal temper-tantrum, I’ll give it here: What in tarnation is more spiritual than […]
Four Excuses Not to Write Spiritual Memoir, and One Invitation Read More »
Gwyn’s sick, which means two nights of interrupted sleep. This morning she arrives in our dark bedroom wanting to play. I don’t. She curls up at my feet, right where the cat sleeps, and lays still for five minutes. Snow has dusted the earth. It falls all morning in trace amounts, miniscule white thoughts moving
Ten Glimpses of God in Five Hours Read More »
The real subject of autobiography is not one’s experience but one’s consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool. –Patricia Hampl Perhaps because I’m entering my twenty-third year of teaching writing, I’m getting curmudgeonly about memoir. I still revere fine examples in the genre, but the vast majority of memoir seems myopic and disengaged. Published
Windows onto a Wider World Read More »
The other evening I taught a lesson at the Loft that was meant to help beginning memoirists distinguish between the character and the narrator in their stories. We create personas for ourselves on the page; the main character in every memoir is the younger self who experiences and is changed by events; we can also
The Journey from Self-Conscious to Aware Read More »
Ages ago, when I was in the messy middle of coming out bisexual (I felt raw and unformed because I was not the person others had thought me to be; I railed against God for making this world such a difficult place to be honest in) I read a passage my spiritual director Cil Braun
Recently, while reading yet another volume of Philip Zaleski’s Best Spiritual Writing, I grew increasingly annoyed at essay after essay of heady language about grandiose meditations and abstract ethical conundrums. My spiritual life, lived out as I potty-train my daughter, lift canned tomatoes from a boiling bath, struggle to remain a loving member of my
The VIDA Count and Spiritual Writing Read More »
This past weekend my sister married the man she loves in a sunny meadow. Because this was her second marriage, she had resisted it mightily—“marriage” is a story the culture imposes on couples, and it doesn’t necessarily work. You have to understand—Marcy is a woman who, on her own, adopted two boys from Guatemala; she
Write–Or Be Written. Read More »
“God lives in your dreams.” So says a line in one of Gwyn’s children’s books. Our congregation is beginning to dream again, and I’m curious how this dreaming can invite God more fully into our midst. When I’ve dreamed dreams for my future, those dreams that tug me with longing are born of both me
When I teach, I often ask the question, “What’s at stake for you in this story?” I’m not alone; it’s a common question in the world of writing. Students are puzzled by it, however, and usually ask me to explain. Really I’m looking for the intersection between the writer’s heart and the words on the
You Are What You Write Read More »
It’s gone out of fashion. Even in Christian circles we associate humility with the mothballed faith of our grandmothers. These days we have more hip spiritual practices, like living in the present moment and doing yoga and advocating for GLBTQA rights. Why bother groveling? With anything that might undermine our pride? Spirituality’s supposed to make