World Peace: All Figured Out

Travis Griffith has a surprisingly simple plan for World Peace. Would it work?

Guess what I did this weekend?

Well, aside from watching my Cardinals get spanked by the Saints in the NFL Playoffs, I figured out the way to world peace.

Yeah, I know. And it wasn’t even that hard.

First, I was thinking about the reasons why humans on Earth fight with each other. The biggest reason, though certainly not the only one, is this: faith. Why? Because when humans have faith in a god alone, it makes them crazy. It makes them believe their way is the only right way, and others should believe it too.

Here’s a simple example that boils down the history of faith-based fighting into a brief exchange between characters. Imagine these people sitting in a beautiful café at sunrise, enjoying a latte and talking about faith:

The Christian: Jesus is the Lord and the only true path to God’s Kingdom. The Jew: I don’t believe in Jesus. The Christian: You are going to Hell unless you accept Jesus into your heart. The Jew: That’s why we don’t like you very much. The Muslim: Just don’t come to our land and say Jesus is Lord. Allah is the one and only God. And we’ll fight to defend Him. The Christian: Christ is the world’s only savior and those who don’t believe will burn in Hell. Elsie (the pagan): Enough with Hell. Just love and worship the planet, and the people and nature around you. The Christian, The Jew and the Muslim: You’re crazy. That’s worshipping a false deity. The Muslim: You’re no better, Jew.

Pretty soon, the peaceful little café erupts in a firestorm of punches, hate, judgment and lots of spilled coffee.

Isn’t faith crazy?

Now, what if each of these people had faith in their gods, but also in each other? Maybe the conversation would go like this:

The Christian: I’m curious about what you guys believe. The Jew: We basically believe what you do, but without the whole Jesus as savior thing. The Christian: Fascinating. Tell me more. The Muslim: We believe in a peaceful planet, ruled by one God, who we submit ourselves to. The Christian: Sounds lovely. Elsie (the pagan): We worship our Earth and respect our gods and goddesses while exploring spirituality. The Christian, the Muslim and the Jew: Still crazy, but hey, that’s cool. The Christian: I’ll tell you what, I’ll pick up the bill this time. Nice chatting, friends.

Now the café is a place of love and acceptance. Everyone’s beliefs are still intact and each person had the opportunity to gain some knowledge. Would it really be that hard to expand this little café scene to the entire world?

Granted, on the world scene we’re dealing with spilled blood instead of coffee, but the solution is the same. Love each other. Keep faith in whatever gods we choose, but while working to restore faith in the humanity that surrounds us.

Why is it so hard for humans to accept people with different beliefs? Could love and acceptance truly be the keys to world peace? I have faith that they are. What do you think?

Love... to all.

***

Travis Griffith, who left behind the corporate marketing world, choosing family and writing in lieu of “a comfortable life” financially, is a former atheist trying to define what leading a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. captures only a fraction of his passion for fatherhood.

Special Relief Offer: Send us your 700 Club member card, we'll send you a free subscription

In response to the recent comments by the Reverend Pat Robertson blaming the disaster in Haiti on the impoverished nation's supposed "pact with the Devil," many Christians are understandably distancing themselves from the very public Evangelical figure.

Mr. Robertson's views are increasingly seen by Christians as anti-intellectual, bigoted, and not representative of mainstream Christianity in America . Relief: A Christian Literary Expression is willing to provide some incentive for persons who may be considering withdrawing financial support from Pat Robertson and his 700 Club.

700 Club members who cancel their memberships in protest of Mr. Robertson's latest hateful comment will receive a one-year subscription to the journal--two issues of Relief--free of charge. Participants need simply to mail their 700 Club membership cards in two or more pieces to:

Relief: A Christian Literary Expression 60 W. Terra Cotta Suite B PMB 156 Crystal Lake, IL 60014

The Haiti Earthquake: Sending Love, not Judgment

Travis Griffith reacts to the Haiti earthquake and the troubling reason Pat Robertson has for why it happened.

The devil doesn’t exist anymore. I got rid of him.

I say that, and people will call me crazy. Yet Pat Robertson can go on TV and claim that Haiti suffered a horrible earthquake because its people made a pact with the devil.

And people believe him.

If you want to watch the video for yourself, you can do so here.

The earthquake in Haiti is a tragic event that has claimed an untold number of lives. The people there need all the compassion and love they can get, and I for one am trying to send what I can to them.

The people in Haiti do not need to be told they brought this among themselves. Maybe a reader can clarify for me, but I don’t see how Robertson can call himself a man of God while claiming that humans deserved this earthquake by rejecting God and accepting the devil. That’s an arrogant claim that degrades the whole of humanity, not just those who are suffering in Haiti at this very moment. I don’t believe for a second that God would unleash his wrath on one of the poorest countries on Earth.

I contend that God doesn’t even have a wrath. God has love, for all of humanity.

Robertson’s latest claim is a stunning and sickening example of what is wrong with religion, and only proves that a more compassionate, loving form of religion is due on this planet.

Even the parts ravaged by poverty, death and earthquakes.

Love… to all.

***

If you would like to aid in the relief of the earthquake in Haiti, please visit  World Vision, Edeyo, Red Cross, or text "HAITI" to 90999 on your cell phone to send $10 to the American Red Cross.

Not Another Resolution Post…Nor Lists for the Year or Decade

Stephen Swanson avoids the dangerous pitfalls of genericity (It’s a word he made up. Deal.) and refuses to look forward or backward.

Temptations & The New Liturgical Calendar for Writers

The fear of the blank page/screen holds a deal of sway in our daily lives. Like any common cultural experience, we’ve constructed systems to help deal with it. Shelves of books on how to write (some of which are quite useful) and myriads of places to lose ourselves in the writings of others provide “inspiration”. Websites serve us with distractions we HAVE to check (“But I HAVE to harvest my farm now, or it will rot.”). To be productive, even on a personal level, we need to break the cycle.

To answer to these fears, we’ve constructed templates to follow that take the mystery away, while celebrating the appearance of “mystery”. This “liturgical” calendar outlines a cycle of “worship” that guides our public conversations. Look at the cover stories on those magazines at the check-out, the commercials on TV, the “lead” stories on MSN or CNN, and the products in the “seasonal” aisles.

The Outline

August warns us of the impending school year by article upon article discussing “Ways to Help Your Child Succeed” or “The Area’s Best (and Worst) Schools”. The banner ads for tutoring companies increase, and phonics is shown in every break of Yo Gabba Gabba with magic wands that will read to your children for you. This merges into preparations for Halloween with the obvious decorations and candy displays, but there are also scary movies, books, and Yahoo tells me about “haunted” romantic trips. This morphs into Thanksgiving’s recipes, family advice, and subsequent beginnings of increased liquor ads and then transitions into the ubiquitous Christmas’ obvious place in the cultural milieu. Then, one cannot avoid the New Year’s calls of “to resolve or not to resolve”, weight loss, eHarmony pimping of perfect mates just waiting for you to log on, and beginnings of tax advice/warnings, which are followed my Valentine’s Day, etc, etc, etc…

Whose Calendar?

This is not a surprise. On one level, we believe it makes “sense”. The school year revolves around the periods where the kids are most needed on the farm. The taxes are due on April 15th, and the year starts in January, marking a 1-2 month period of mad scratching on misdated checks. However, in the contemporary moment, these periods are rather arbitrary. How many kids are still needed in the summers? Why not start the year in the middle of the summer? These are arbitrary and increasingly connected by someone telling us that we MUST think of X at Y time of year and conveniently have the perfect things for us to help ourselves.

Life in >140 Chars

For us, writers, we dangerously fall into paths of ease that function retrospectively or predicting the future. This is not a challenge or really effective. Go to any literary function, and views of the past and future abound. What we need to work on is the ability to write and produce in the now. What is our current plan? What do we say at this moment? While these are rooted in the past and future, our struggles, and thus our resolves, need to break out of the cycle and express the meaningful moment in more than 140 characters. Otherwise, we continue to allow the meanings of life to be predicated by the Snuggies and Chia Pets of the world. Did that planning into the “10 Perfect Drinks for your New Year’s” article really make your New Year’s Eve?

*** Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain reasonably aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications, Film, and Media and American Culture Studies from Calvin College, Central Michigan University, and Bowling Green State University, respectively. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in contemporary film noir.

Epiphany: Journeying with the Magi

Wednesday marked the Christian Feast of Epiphany, or the time when the wise men visited the baby Jesus.  Yes, it's true: most nativities lie.  According to Scripture, Mary, Joseph, and the baby were long gone from the manger by the time the magi showed up on the scene, and I'm sure the shepherds were too.  I didn't really learn that the magi were still on their way when Jesus was born--at least, not in a way that stuck--until either high school or college, and I remember being disappointed.  I'm not entirely sure why: perhaps because it seemed weird that the Christmas story extended outside of December, perhaps it was because of the misleading nativities, perhaps it was sadness for the magi who missed the big event and arrived after the fact.

Yet now I find it reassuring that the story continues beyond the decorations coming down, vacations ending, routines resuming.  Epiphany serves as an important reminder that the coming of Christ is about both waiting and movement.  While Israel waited for the Messiah and a teenager waited for contractions, the magi were still on their way, still seeking, still anticipating wonder.  It is perhaps the core of the gospel--God became flesh and walked among us--and we are called to wait, to journey, to worship, which seems so fitting for those of us living in this tension where Christ has already and not yet come.  As a friend aptly tweeted recently, "Words for Epiphany: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."  What are you journeying toward this new year?  Are you paying attention along the way?

I find that poetry helps remind me to pay attention to all that is around me and all that is within me.  I first read this poem on a friend's blog last year and stumbled upon it again today.

The Journey of the Magi

"A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter." And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley. Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins, But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

--T. S. Eliot

What are we Waiting For? Advent…A Season When…

Stephen Swanson moves on to something nicer for the holidays…the holidays! After a recent conversation group at church about the meanings and importance of the Advent season, Stephen tries to piece together something from the scraps of wrapping paper, tinsel, and fallen pine needles.

We are Filled…Literally

I’ve always enjoyed the period from Thanksgiving to New Years. Not only is the weather changing and the semester is winding down, but we enter into food season where the kitchen is filled with enticing smells every week, if not every day. There’s the prep for Thanksgiving, which leads to leftovers, which leads to stock made from leftovers, which leads to soups made from the stock from the leftovers, and this progresses on to cookies, prep for Christmas when the cycle continues, just in time for New Years, football, and Chinese New Years…mmmmm…

How Unfilling?

Of course this plenty has its negative side, gluttony of food and stuffs. In addition to a time of food, family, and friends, it is the time when advertisers tell us that we need to fill ourselves with HD TVs, Nintendo DS’s, plastic toys, and salad shooters. We all know, intellectually, that these things do not feed us through these cold months. We know that we should not spend THAT much, “But, it’s Chrismas,” right?

The 24-hour cable news machine also tells us of our emptiness, as it tries to fill its own. The TVs at school, tuned to Headline News, consistently tell all passersby how much they need to argue about the name of the season, “Holidays” v. “Christmas,” about how one should or should not spend, “Organic” v “Local”/“Wal-Mart” v “Ma & Pa”/etc., and about what to do when you realize you’ve ended up overdoing it, debt consolidation/gold/ diets/gyms/ Gold’s Gyms & Diets.

I go to church and hear the same passages from Luke, see the cute kids in bathrobes, listen to the handbells, and I love those familiar rituals, but something leaves me unfulfilled. It is not that we need more “Christ in Christmas” or need to acknowledge “The Reason for the Season”. It is so much more simple and complex than that.

“Filling” is Filling

Rather, I want people to think outside of the platitudes and simple expressions of faith and fulfillment. What is so energizing and exciting, to me, about the food part of the seasons from late November and into February is not the consumption but rather the “advent”.

I don’t mean the candles in the wreath or the little doors with candies behind them. I seek the “arrival that has been awaited” that advent really means. It is in the preparation and that magical instant at the door when you invite the visitors in to your warmth, smells, and company: your hospitality. No matter your religion or spirituality, the meaning behind this time of year touches the commonalities within all of us to be both host and hosted and gifter and giftee.

The connection between “love”, “joy”, “peace”, and “hope” of advent does surround the “Christ” candle in my tradition, but that messiah also points to the duality at the center of both Christianity and humanity, more broadly: that we are all both citizens and strangers and need connection to remember the transcendent power of hope in bringing peace and joy through love.

And so I ask that you all consider what you are feeding yourself and others, and I ask that you look for the fulfillment of the self through the other.

Also…learn to make your own stock. It’s not that hard and is soo tasty.

My True Meaning of Christmas

Christmas has always been my all-time favorite part of the year.

Well, maybe it's in a tie with Halloween. And hot summer days on the lake. Regardless, I love Christmas because of the magic it creates and for the love I feel on Christmas Day and the eve before.

I love Christmas because of childhood memories of waking up at 3 a.m. and excitedly but cautiously making my way towards the Christmas tree to see if Santa had come yet. I was never disappointed, and the magical feeling of seeing a new toy bathed in the soft glow of the tree's light has never left me. I call it the Christmas Feeling, but it's a feeling that still crops up, occasionally, year-round.

As sacrilegious as it may seem to say this, Christmas for me isn't about the birth of Christ, but about love, generosity, thankfulness and family. All things Christ represents, I suppose, but I reject the story of Jesus' birth happening in a manger on Dec. 25.

Not long ago a friend saw some of my writing here about my search for spirituality and asked me questions about what I believe. She's a devout Christian and a giving, loving human. She asked if I had ever considered Christianity and then invited me to her church.

I respectfully declined.

The truth is, I have considered Christianity very carefully and I appreciate many of the values it teaches (and loathe others). What I cannot accept are the stories behind the religion; Christmas being one of them.

I try to keep an open and respectful eye on all of humanity. Humans have been on Earth much longer than 2,000 years and through it all, humanity has one constant: a desire for the spiritual. It seems people today don't give credit to the advances and traditions of ancient people. December 25th and the winter solstice have been important as early as 4500 BC; acknowledged in everything from ancient Ireland's Newgrange burial chamber, Babylon's Isis and Osiris myths, the Roman's Festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, and the modern day story of Christ's birth.

When Roman Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion in 350, other forms of worshiping were banned. Rather than changing old traditions, Pope Julius I declared Dec. 25 Christ's birthday.

My intent here isn't to persuade people away from Jesus' story. I believe Christ was a real person, an heir of God, who's purpose was to spread the message of love. If your truth lies in Christianity, revel in it!

During the holiday season, it's the Christmas Feeling that I celebrate though, along with many thousands of years of humanity's desire to celebrate our planet, our families and the love that holds us all together.

Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth, friends.

***

Travis Griffith, who recently left behind the corporate marketing world, choosing family and writing in lieu of “a comfortable life” financially, is a former atheist trying to define what leading a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. captures only a fraction of his passion for fatherhood.

"It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you."

Last Friday, I saw that I had a message in my inbox on Facebook.  It was from a good friend of mine who has been, for as long as I've known her, a Unitarian Universalist.  She spent last year teaching in Taiwan, and since she's returned we've only had a couple chances to reconnect.  About a month ago, we talked about our faith backgrounds, and it was one of the few times I've actually shared my deepest beliefs with her.

Her message contained a link to a Shane Claiborne article written for Esquire Magazine titled "What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?" Claiborne starts the article off with an apology to his "nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends" on behalf of Christians.  From there, he goes on to talk about how unloving Christians can be sometimes--and almost every single time it is in the name of our Lord and Saviour.  And that can hurt people to the core.

But it's in Claiborne's last paragraph that I understand why my friend sent the article to me.  Since I cannot sum it up, I present it to you in its entirety:

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

This final paragraph is why my friend sent me the Facebook message.  In her message was the quote, "It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you" and a link to the article.  It was like she understood that Claiborne's last paragraph is my sentiment towards her.  She has been a great friend to me over the last 10 years.  I would be a very different person without her friendship, and for her to understand my faith better than many Christians makes me a very happy person and a very blessed friend.

To check out Shane Claiborne's article, click here.

***

Ian David Philpot, a Relief intern, is studying English at Northern Illinois University and spent one year in Columbia College Chicago's Fiction Writing program.  He writes fiction and poetry and music.   Ian prefers black to white, vanilla to chocolate, and only eats yellow cake.

Finishing those Basterds: Rise Up and…Make Art!

Stephen Swanson concludes his series looking at the messages that Quentin Tarantino directs towards the artist in this summer’s Inglourious Basterds. In this final entry, the oppositions between the “artistries” of Col. Landa (Christopher Waltz) and Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) come to make a very challenging assertion to those of us who create. Both Landa and Dreyfus illustrate the dangers and potential of artists who both come from positions of social, political, or cultural power or weakness.

True Art Comes from Somewhere

With Landa’s success in untangling Pierre’s simple attempts at subterfuge, he discovers the Jewish family’s location and orders them shot through the floorboards. Shoshanna Dreyfus escapes from under the house and runs across the fields as Landa yells his promise that the “Jew Hunter” will complete his identity again. In Landa’s story, the audience witnesses the origins of Dreyfus’s future work as a direct reaction to distance herself from Landa.

The literal beauty of the shot amplifies the audience’s connection with her fear and with a hope for escape that built up through the whole course of the Landa/Pierre repartee. Tarantino opposes Dreyfus’s artistic presentation to Landa and to the Inglourious Basterds, both of which have no real defined origins or purpose beyond the power struggles between world powers and self-aggrandizement, which becomes apparent when both sides compromise their values to get what they want.

…And The Audience Should Know It

In addition to the presence of an artistic source and origin, Tarantino includes a clear directive towards the importance of communicating that origin and the responsibility to the audience. When Dreyfus enacts her revenge, part live performance/part film, she and the audiences, both in the narrative cinema and in the viewer’s cinema, are made aware of the origins and consequences of art. Dreyfus specifically targets a particular audience, just as Tarantino does, and she tells them what she does and why. In making her movie, Shosanna looks directly in the camera and speaks to the Nazi elite as she causes the fire that will consume them all, cleverly “accelerated” by the previous works that she had inherited, protected, and promoted.

True Art Speaks, Produces, and has E/Affect

As the producer and venue operator, Dreyfus must withstand the attentions of the powerful “Landa’s”. Dreyfus recognizes her chance to make her art and takes the fatal risk in transition from critic to artist. She also aims to make her art count. Dreyfus knows the stakes of her art and sets the effect to an analogous level. Tarantino purposefully overlay’s the honored, German soldier, Zoller’s (Daniel Brühl) accusations that Dreyfus cannot “feel” at same time as she awaits her chance to show him the evidence that she feels most deeply and that those feelings have consequences for those that ignored them initially.

A Conclusion of Sorts

Tarantino places the culmination of art/speech/creation outside of Dreyfus’s storyline. Although reviewers level criticism at seemingly gratuitous violence, Tarantino leaves the audience with fresh memories of Utivich (B.J. Novak) and Raine (Brad Pitt) carving a swastika in Landa’s head. In the scope of his purpose and topic, Tarantino’s film embraces art that is destructive and lacking in subtlety to both grow out of and respond to American cinema’s historical relationship to WWII filled with the gunning down of nameless and faceless “Japs” or “Jerries”, of classic Hollywood cinema, or even attempts to gain personal “worth” through individual sacrifice, such as in Spielberg’s war films. Like Dreyfus, Tarantino respects and honors that which comes before but is not contained by it, establishing in narrative and example a guide for art and artists.

***

Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain reasonably aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications, Film, and Media and American Culture Studies from Calvin College, Central Michigan University, and Bowling Green State University, respectively. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in contemporary film noir.

Story Weather

David Holper shares a winter reading list for the upcoming "season of reflection."

Where I live on the far northern coast of California, the storms have begun—wet, windy,  powerful. Today, there’s a break in the weather, and as we rush my son to his last soccer game  of the season, we come down off the hill overlooking Humboldt Bay: the waves are so huge,  they are breaking over the southern jetty, which means that beyond, out where the Pacific is  fighting its perpetual battle with the land, the waves must be peaking at least 15 feet high—or more.

I love this season. The weather is wild, a little unpredictable. Knowing that, and having lived here off and on for over 30 years, I keep an umbrella in my car and one in my office to boot. It’s a perfect time to sit inside, build a fire, and enjoy time with my kids and my wife.

As I sit down to write after the game and the pizza party, I find myself browsing NPR’s website for inspiration, and my thought is perfectly echoed in Sting’s comments about his new album: "I think it's the season of reflection," Sting says. "You know, we seem to need the winter to reassess ourselves, to hibernate, if you like; to seek home, to seek comfort. Somewhere cozy: the church, the family home."

My thoughts exactly.

Although what Sting doesn’t say—at least not here—is that it’s also the perfect time to read. And for me, at least, it’s always a good time to refresh my faith and challenge me to better understand the twenty centuries of believers who have trod this path before me. By this, I mean books that challenge me in my thoughts, in my belief, in my actions. So just in the spirit of sharing some titles I’ve enjoyed, I thought I’d offer a reading list for the winter. But, to be frank, it’s really more an invitation to everyone who stumbles over this blog to join the conversation about books on faith and the church that ignite the fires of our hearts and minds.

In no particular order, here’s my list. Happy winter nights reading!

C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce

Malcolm Muggeridge A Third Testament (a great book I recently read that introduces the reader to the likes of Augustine, Blake, Pascal, Bonhoefer, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky)

Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment and The Brother Karamazov

Timothy Keller The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Donald Miller Blue Like Jazz

Anne Lamott Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (and the other books that follow in her faith series)

Ravi Zakarias The Real Face of Atheism

Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship

John Eldredge Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive

***

David Holper has worked as taxi driver, fisherman, dishwasher, bus driver, soldier, house painter, bike mechanic, bike courier, and teacher. With all that useful experience and a couple of degrees, he has published a book of poetry called 64 Questions (March Street Press), as well numerous other poems in literary journals including Relief. He lives in Eureka, California, which is far enough from the madness of civilization that he can get some writing done. Another thing that helps is that his three children continually ask him to make up stories, and he is learning the art of doing that well for them.

Review of mY Generation

Guest Blogger Christopher Stroner reviews mY Generation: A Real Journey of Change and Hope by Josh Riebock. To say that Josh Riebock has a handle on Generation Y is an understatement. He not only can peg us as a generation, he is this generation. Josh has a firm grasp on this generation not because he has spent time in ministry or even spent so much time talking to people from this generation, because he has, and it shows, but because living in this generation Josh has painted a poignant self portrait. He is Generation Y.

Josh credits his writing this book to some of the more influential people of this generation, like Rob Bell, Donald Miller, Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan and others. Josh writes this book using references that are common to this generation. He writes in a way that connects to each and every person of the generation. He uses illustrations that cut to the core of a generation that is broken and abused. He offers a refreshing story to a generation that lacks the community that we all desperately long for.

It was a quick read for me, which is saying a lot because I am a slow reader. Josh writes like he talks—I was able to see him speak recently—but it was more than that. It was a story that I could relate to and resonated deep within my soul, stirring something so foundational that I could do nothing but continue reading. It is a story that is written in a undefended state and one of humble brokenness. Josh uses his story and a host of other stories that have inspired and changed him. These stories drive the book to greater depth and help to leave the reader wanting more.

Josh's command of story and the use of others stories is astounding and inspires my to tell my story. All of it, not just the easy or nice parts, but the hard and down right evil parts. Josh has giving this generation and other generations a book that allows us to be fully exposed and share our deepest feelings and questions with the world. There is genuineness that comes from Josh's writing and it frees the reader to experience there own story and reach into the dark places and get dirty. Josh's story helps this generation to know that we are not alone and we need to come together to fix the growing rift that has formed between ourselves and others.

I loved this book from the moment that I picked it up; I could not put it down. It spoke so gently and so soothingly to my soul I felt as if I were talking face to face with Josh. It left me wanting more and it left me looking deep into my soul and searching my heart for some of the deepest questions and fears I have. If you took Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller and Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, and combined them, this book would be similar to that. Josh dares to write a fully exposed story that at the same time is insightful and can be applicable to all of Generation Y.

Piles of Poems

Relief's Poetry Editor, Brad Fruhauff, reviews John Hodgen's collection of poems titled Grace.

This volume’s title would seem to promise a series of poems at least indirectly related to a familiar but central Christian concept. “Indirect” is the right word, for among the myriad people, places, and things that appear in these poems, God and Jesus only stick out for their peculiar sanctity among a popular and secular host. There are churches, and there is a form of grace, but it’s not always the kind that makes you think of the generosity and greatness of God.

Not that it has to be. Hodgen’s poems resonate with a spiritual vision, but his audience isn’t specifically us Christians. Rather, it’s anyone who has felt like the heart of life must be beating somewhere else than where we are—somewhere, perhaps, where there are fewer cars and all the iPods are out of batteries. Grace, for Hodgen, is a moment of recuperating life through memory, memorializing, or metaphor-making—that is, through discovering and creating the poetry of the everyday. Grace is an open buckwheat field, and it’s a lightning-struck tree where “a slender roan horse feeds under its basilica of broken branches, / because he knows that is the place / where the soft tufts of grass / taste the sweetest”; or grace is the burst blood vessels of a dead friend’s face that become “God’s autograph, / His certain seal, saying I made this, / this belongs to me.”

This places Hodgen within a class of poets, religious and otherwise, for whom all poetry is about discovering or creating the numinous within the mundane. I used to think such poetry was in the tradition of T. S. Eliot’s shoring the fragments against his ruins, but the ruins of our culture and subsequently ourselves have been bulldozed, paved-over, and replaced with strip malls, so that we barely know there ever was something to be ruined, and we figure whatever fragments we may need can be bought at a discount.

No, the poets of the everyday are not gathering up what cultural riches remain but searching for a richness independent of culture, a richness originating within the vision of the poet himself and, hopefully, taking form or incarnation within the poem. In the latest Image, Gregory Wolfe considers this the very function of art: “not a message to be communicated but a presence and a mystery to be experienced—in the flesh.” Art initiates an experience of presence and mystery.

For Hodgen, the means to this experience is the Proustian means of metaphor. For Proust, metaphors were pregnant with spiritual meaning, and Hodgen squeezes every ounce of spirit out of metaphorical operations as he can. His poem, “Each Moment Is Speaking to You of the Other” explains and demonstrates the gist of this kind of poetry. It begins with the poet landing at an airport, watching another plane landing on a parallel runway. He projects himself into a spectator on the ground looking up and imagining a pair of swans. Planes become swans. Boats become “little florettes on the cake of the sea.” The “Other” moment is “the parallel universe, that twin world that lives like a bubble, like the past / inside each vagrant moment.”

The twin world leads him to his mother guilting him over a putative twin in Europe who wishes he had green beans for dinner, which leads to a reflection on pairing itself and a series of pairs: a lover and his love, a street person and a sitting Buddha, a woman picking up a mango and a man cleaning out his dead mother’s fridge, discovering little peas sliced in half, “worlds split in two.”

Hodgen’s poems are veritable piles of such metaphor-making, following one shape to another to another on a path only the poet can take, turning now and again to show us how the path has been switch-backing all the way from the ground up to the glorious mountain peak of—well, of some kind of vague spiritual experience. One reviewer of this book complained that there feels like little takeaway, which seems fair enough; Hodgen describes a world where people are often lonely or desperate and where death shows up and rends an already fragile existence, and he certainly doesn’t offer any positive statement for how to live in this world.

What he does instead is model a form of meaning-making that memorializes the tragic and strange by integrating these experiences with their “pairs” or “twins”—the simplest form of meaning-making, perhaps, such as occurs when we learn the English equivalent of a foreign word. This is like that.

There is something powerful in this kind of naming and connecting—it suggests that extraordinary experiences can still become part of us, do not have to represent voids or tears in the fabric of the self. But Hodgen doesn’t go much farther than to point this phenomenon out to us—in fine, flowing language with a light but elegant sense of rhyme, granted, but in language that circles back in upon itself. In “Each Moment Is Speaking to You of the Other,” the poem concludes with each of the split worlds “speaking sweetly to the other.” The poem, as does much of the book, ends where it started. We’re not going anywhere, we’re just learning how to be where we are.

Which may not seem like much of a gift, but simple gifts are gifts nonetheless. Hodgen at least offers you a pleasant trip back to where you started, and maybe the world looks a little more wonderful than it did before you started. Christians can often slip into an attitude of pining nostalgically for a version of Christiandom in which miracles happened all over the place; Hodgen adds his voice to the chorus of poets who insist that the miracle world—the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus would say—isn’t in some idyllic past but is staring us in the face every day.

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Brad Fruhauff has recently received a PhD in English at Loyola University Chicago. He occasionally contributes book and music reviews to the Burnside Writer's Collective, and his story "The Strangler" appeared in the first volume of the Ankeny Briefcase. He is by temperament something of an Ancient—"a grumpy old man," as his (young) wife puts it—and does not believe a good idea goes bad by going out of fashion. He is currently excited about the novels of Marilynne Robinson and Orhan Pamuk, and enjoys the poetry of Auden, Donne, Hopkins, Tennyson and, more recently, Scott Cairns.

A Break from Basterds to talk about Faith and Ginger

Stephen Swanson takes a break from his discussion of Tarantino’s new film and its commentary as performance on art as a performance of creation and destruction to talk a bit about some destruction that current performances of spirituality and faith that have struck him. No, I’m not talking about Gilligan’s Island, although that should go on my topic list.

I’m writing about the rhizome, but some background proves necessary.  Recently, a friend who had been following my Inglourious Basterds series asked me why I am writing this for an audience of people who write literature from or with spiritual perspectives.  I wrote about the connections that I see between faith and faith in the creative act, but I honestly don’t know what it means to be spiritual anymore.  I’m casting about to find something larger than my family, friends, and community to latch onto in the contemporary moment that speaks to a belief in belief.  I think that the limits of language present the greater challenge.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve encountered widespread references to faith, spirituality, and religion in Conservapedia’s attempt to rewrite the Bible to eliminate an pro-liberal bias, anti-abortion people on the sidewalk asking for people to honk at them if they agree, a Fresh Air interview with Karen Armstrong, a Diane Rehm interview with Harvey Cox, and my Brit Lit I class’s delving into the Reformation for the first time. All of these present highly variegated views of what it means to look at or be “religious” or “spiritual”. What does that mean for the daily life?

Perhaps language is the cause of the struggle itself. The idea that these contemporary and historical moments of faith all fall under the same, single syllable (faith) is absurd. My “Postmodern Textualities” class during grad school always made fun of the quantities of “rhizomatic” references in discourses on art, life, and literature, but the comparison between “faith” and some weird root structure seems apt. Connections exist. One might trace from one lobe to another, through the delicate joints and branching, and in that respect it is one. On the other hand, the literal, intellectual, emotional, and moral difference present such vast distances that they might function more as separate entities.

Because of this distance, I feel a real and almost physical need to seek out that distance, to pioneer the edges of the rhizomatic “faith” and look at where it intersects with unlikely ideas in unlikely places. Thank you for your patience, and now for something completely different…

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Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain reasonably aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications, Film, and Media and American Culture Studies from Calvin College, Central Michigan University, and Bowling Green State University, respectively. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in contemporary film noir.

Making Crosses Review

Making crosses by Ellen Morris Prewitt is part of the Active Prayer Series by Paraclete Press, which I happen to love so far. From the Introduction of Making Crosses:

The building blocks of cross making are quite simple:

1. Take what the world doesn't value and make it into a work of God.

2. Reject the materialism of this world, in your own small way, by reusing discarded materials and giving them new, godly life.

3. Engage in an activity that takes you directly into communion with God.

Making Crosses teaches us to take broken and discarded objects and make them new. As an offering, a prayer.  What an amazing way to experience redemption and grace.

Anyone can do this.  I have a group of friends preparing for a monthly cross making as I type this. Chapter 18 gives some wonderful ideas for what to do with your crosses such as condolence gifts to grieving friends, family, loved ones, baptism gifts at your church, housewarming gifts and so many others.  Some of my own ideas for the crosses your and your group make are new baby gifts, new mom gifts, and youth groups can visit nursing homes or the homebound of your church with the crosses they've made and prayed while making.  Honestly, the possibilities are endless.

Here are some resources thanks to Paraclete Press.

Preview: Chapter 8 - The Holy Spirit at Work

Chapter - 14 The Story Told by Your Cross

Chapter 15 - Sharing Your Story:  The Communality of the Cross

Making Crosses Facebook Group

Making Crosses Online Community

Making Crosses is a quick, easy read, full of inspiration and ideas. There are activities listed and room for your own notes.

Making crosses will not only affect the maker but also the receiver of the gift, if you choose to give your crosses away.

Other books in the Active Prayer Series:  Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth (See all of Michelle's Visual Prayers that stemmed from reading this book.)

Praying with your Body by Roy DeLeon

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Michelle Pendergrass prays visually and wants to make crosses soon. She'll post pictures at her blog.

Halloween Past and Present

Travis Griffith reflects on Halloween in his life, in history, and presents the reality of censorship and "protection" in the young lives of Trick-or-Treaters today.

Remember how exciting Halloween was when you were in elementary school? At least for me it was; wearing my costume at school, bobbing for apples, making pumpkin designs on cookies and parading through other classrooms were highlights of my early school years.

Of course that was all just a prelude to the real meaning of Halloween: the candy! A king-sized pillow case overflowing with candy was my prize after visiting everyone in the neighborhood who was just giving it away. Pure heaven for a kid.

Today I have my own kids who are lucky enough to be in a public school district that still celebrates Halloween. But I have nieces and nephews who go to public schools that have decided not to hold any type of Halloween celebration for the kids. The reason? Some parents complained. They didn’t want their kids to take part in a pagan and satanic holiday. Isn’t that sad?

It’s sad for many reasons. First, the kids won’t have those treasured memories of Halloween at school (though thinking back, I could’ve done without sticking my face in a bowl of apples floating in other kids’ spit).

Even sadder though is people getting caught up in their own fear of the origins of Halloween. Yes, the holiday has pagan beginnings, but those are beautiful and inspiring; not hate-filled and satanic.

Books have been filled detailing the full history of pagan festivals, but I want to provide the highlights here. Long before Christ ever lived, the Celts celebrated the seasons. Their new year began at Samhain (pronounced sow-en) and was celebrated on an evening sometime around November 1. They celebrated the coming dark season, the end of the summer harvest and honored the spirits of their ancestors.

The veil between this world and the spirit world is thinnest at this time of year, allowing the spirits of loved ones to easily journey back and forth. Back in the Celts’ day, the presence of spirits was met with feelings of inspiration and guidance… not the fear and dread often associated with ghosts today.

Turnips and gourds we carved, lit and left outside to guide spirits home. Folks asked neighbors for bread and other items for feasting. Samhain was a time of honoring family, playing, enjoying life and sharing it with friends and neighbors.

When Christianity was introduced, the church wasn’t able to get people to stop celebrating this wonderful holiday. Eventually it became All Saints Day, then All Hallow’s Eve, then Halloween.

So yeah, Halloween is a pagan holiday. But if schools are going to start banning all holidays associated with a pagan past, count Valentines Day, Easter and Christmas among the causalities too.

The real importance of Halloween isn’t the costume parade, but the interaction between our neighbors. To get over our fears, go outside and build a social bond with the people we live near but otherwise never see. Halloween is a time to let ourselves have fun, let our children (and our inner child) out to play, reflect on who we want to be and most of all, share the fun with our Christian, pagan, atheist and Muslim neighbors.

Happy Halloween!

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Travis Griffith, who recently left behind the corporate marketing world, choosing family and writing in lieu of "a comfortable life" financially, is a former atheist trying to define what leading a spiritual life really means.  His children's book, Your Father Forever, published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. captures only a fraction of his passion for fatherhood.