CA Redemption Value

Some thoughts on trash:

A homeless man in his fifties pulls aluminum cans from the trash barrel in front of the Ralphs Supermarket where I shop. He’s clearly no amateur. What catches my attention this morning is not the act itself. He’s not the only person I've seen scavenging to get by today. This is Ocean Beach after all.

What arrests my general distraction is the way he cleans as he pulls the cans out of the refuse, taking time to pick the cigarette butts out of the ash tray on the top of the stone-speckled trash barrel, dropping them one by one into the bag as if to earn the recycling fees others didn't bother taking the time to redeem.

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When I was a reporter in Los Angeles, I worked for a newspaper that covered the Puente Hills Landfill in a strip of unincorporated county land that was once most likely a dairy farm. Now, it’s America’s largest trash heap at 150 meters tall and covering more than 700 acres. I once covered a meeting where officials discussed the rate at which the massive trash mountain was summiting the space allotted to it. At one point in the meeting, a plan to ship the region’s trash by rail into the Nevada desert was discussed, though not seriously. Apparently, the same objection came up every time the concept was mentioned. It’s less expensive (and thus, more profitable) to continue with the current business model until it is no longer viable.

No word on how viable the people of Nevada find the alternative.

-#-

I love family stories, especially the ones from before I was born. Apparently, there was a DIY trend in the early 70s where particularly resourceful interior design types would piece together area rugs from a number of smaller pieces of (hopefully) corresponding color, though I did mention this was the 70s, right? In my mind’s eye, it’s like a shag quilt. All one needed were the remainders of other pieces of plush pile or low nap and the desire to turn said scraps into one Franken-rug.

My parents apparently harbored said desire, which is why, on more than one occasion, you could find my older brother in the dumpster behind a carpet store. I’m told the results were lovely, though no pictures exist as confirmation.

-#-

I may be over-simplifying, but as I relive these scenes I can’t help but see the writing in them all.

Michael Dean Clark is the fiction editor at Relief, as well as an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and three children.

Vintage Rejection

Rejection always hurts, but this publisher seems particularly hard to please! This vintage rejection slip is from the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company (1907-1925), who is famous for their production of Charlie Chaplin movies (Photo originally posted on NPR). I'm not sure if my writing, or much modern writing at all for that matter, would pass muster! Which reason for rejection do you find most surprising, amusing, appalling? One of my favorites...see #6 for a good laugh.

But to keep you from getting too discouraged, here are a few excerpts from rejection letters of now beloved and classic works,  from publishers who probably still have their foot stuck in their mouths...

Lord of the Flies by William Golding..."an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull."

The Deer Park by Norman Mailer..."This will set publishing back 25 years."

The Diary of Anne Frank..."The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the 'curiosity' level."

On Writings by Anais Nin..."There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic."

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame..."an irresponsible holiday story."

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers’ blog, www.insidepages.net.

Book Review: Brian Spears' "A Witness in Exile"

By Alan Ackmann

Brian Spears, whose debut book of poetry A Witness in Exile was published earlier this year by Louisiana Literature press, is no stranger to long-time readers of Relief, having won the editor’s choice prize for poetry back in issue 2.2 for his poem “Hall Raising”. Although the poem published in that issue didn’t make the final cut of the book itself, many of its themes are revisited in A Witness in Exile, and handled in a way that Relief readers will probably find sincere and compelling.

Keep reading for the full review!

Though not explicitly divided, A Witness in Exile cleaves into roughly two sections. Poems in the first half of the book, with some exceptions, often focus on the relationship between an individual and an environment. As his biography indicates, Spears has a diverse background, and he presents poems set against the bayous of Louisiana, the swamps of south Florida, the deserts of New Mexico, and the coasts of San Francisco—places that “teeter on knife-edge” (to borrow a line from one of the poems). Sometimes these poems feature people; sometimes they meditate on the locations themselves. A sensation of loss pervades even those works peripheral to this motif, however, and the composite effect is of a writer seeking peace and completeness, in an existence that is wandering and fragmentary. On first read, this makes the book itself seem initially somewhat rambling, filled with poems that are occasionally quite strong—but collectively disjointed.

Unity emerges, though, in the book’s second half, where the poems take on a more consistent poignancy and urgency. Throughout this second half, Spears addresses material centered on his own childhood as a Jehovah’s Witness, a life he subsequently rejected, and he confronts this subject matter clearly, honestly, and un-ostentatiously. There are poems drawing from the religion’s core beliefs and practices, as well as its liturgical rituals and personal struggles. Most moving, though, are the poems that deal with the personal wounds that open when a prior believer walks away from the culture, and in this case the family and home, that raised and loved him.

Admirably, the Jehovah’s Witness poems (if it’s fair to label them as such) never descend into simplicity or caricature, and simultaneously never lambast or criticize. Spears—or, more to the point, the speaker in his poems—understands the beauty of the people who inhabit the lifestyle he is abandoning, and wishes them no harm. Indeed, some of the poems’ strongest moments come when the speaker seems to wish that he could go back to a time when he was unquestioning, to a clear-cut life undiluted by the complexity of doubt, when spiritual boundaries were clear, and—as the speaker freely admits in one poem—he was the happiest he’s ever been.

It is common to read Christian-themed poems about a believer’s doubts, and the trajectory of such poems is usually predictable. Less common, though, are poems about doubting ones atheism, and Spears’s inversion of the conventional tropes is tender and surprising.

When these two halves of the book are taken together, they enhance one another nicely. The first half presents speakers and poems who, at their center, seek a temporary version of the peace at one point possessed and then scorned in the book’s second half. The book seems to keep the reader at arm’s length for the first thirty pages, where its sadnesses are often ill-defined; someone is wandering off in exile, yes, but it’s hard to say from what. In the back thirty pages, however, the speakers are much more precise with their longing, inviting the reader into their intimacies, and this adds new texture to the initial poems. This juxtaposition creates a book that can exist as a completed text, in addition to a collection of isolated works.

It may be tempting to interpret the composite impact of Spears’s work from a purely spiritual vantage—as an account of the emptiness that dominates when Christ is not accepted, for example, or of the limitations of a particular sect of Christianity. Such interpretation, though, would be an oversimplified mistake. A Witness in Exile is the rare book of poetry that succeeds in treating matters of spirituality with tact and subtlety, coaxing a legitimate emotional response through its depiction of a worldview, not a dogma. It is a book not about the comfort of belief, but of the costs and consequences of a specific unbelief—costs that manifest themselves not in the hereafter, but in the sometimes melancholy here and now.

A Witness in Exile is available through www.amazon.com, and through the author’s personal website, www.brianspears.wordpress.com. I highly recommend it.

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Alan Ackmann was fiction editor for volume two of Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression. He teaches in the writing department at DePaul University. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ontario Review and McSweeney’s, and he recently completed his first novel. His website is www.alanackmann.com.

Violence and Grace

In my favorite novels, it seems that the characters come to the moment of illumination only after being confronted with great violence.  When Jane Eyre finds her former home and master have suffered a fire in her absence, the agony of separation inspires her to the realization that she loves Mr. Rochester.  In The Lord of the Flies, it takes the death of a comrade for Ralph to understand that the boys on the island have lost their childhood innocence.  And it is not until author Annie Dillard wrestles with the life-altering plane accident of a small girl (in Holy the Firm) that she sees God’s goodness in a crazy world.

It seems to be human nature to have thick heads that only extreme circumstances can penetrate.  In a state of comfort, we are sometimes too relaxed, too unmindful to learn what our lives actually depend on.  But if our child unexpectedly gets sick, our husband is laid off, or our friend is going through a messy divorce, suddenly our senses are awakened and sharpened in a way that lets us experience life a little clearer.

In the face of violence or tragedy, our daily concerns rearrange themselves according to an eternal reality.  When something goes suddenly wrong, the urgency of the situation mercifully clears away any petty anxieties that once occupied us.  And that is some small grace.  I remember last year driving home from a funeral of a friend I’d known from elementary school, and finding myself suddenly careless about the work I needed to catch up on and the wedding planning I had been stressing over. Instead I wondered whether or not I spent enough time with the people I loved, and then hurried home so I would make it in time for family dinner.

Shauna Niequist, in Cold Tangerines, writes, “You pray for honest, gritty, and tender stories, and then you pray to live through them.” The price of epiphany is often violence, and any prayer beginning with, “God, change me…” is a dangerous one.  Anyone who has ever prayed to know our Father better knows.  But with the violence we are ushered into grace, just as there is grace in the story of the Light of the World who had to suffer death and darkness before mankind could see.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers’ blog, www.insidepages.net.

There’s No Crying in Starbucks!

 

 

This is the fifth in a series of thoughts on how place shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell. The first four can be found here, here, here, and here.

This is a love song about the place where I write, not the places I'm writing about.

I have a bad habit, but it’s a habit nonetheless. I write at Starbucks.

Really, most of my friends think I write there so I’ll “have” to buy some coffee. And while I admit that I may have a (borderline) issue with my love for the Seattle bean, that’s not the main reason I work in the House of the Mermaid. It may, however, be the main reason I have a job that provides a paycheck that allows for said coffee ingestion.

But I actually started writing in the Green Room because I discovered that I compose better when there are people around me and natural ambient noise (that I, of course, drown out by putting my headphones on).

But I tried the monastic-writer-thing. The computer-in-the-closet-thing (hat tip to R. Kelly for teaching us all why it’s bad to end up trapped in a closet). The typewriter-instead-of-computer-thing so I could “feel” the story as an extension of my keystrokes.  I even tried the low-rent-Hemingway-stand-and-deliver-thing, but my knee sucks too much to let me grow that manly a beard.

As a side note, I draw the line at the handwriting-in-the-Moleskine-thing. No yuppie journals for this guy (if for no other reason than my handwriting is so awful – thank you journalism years – that the cost-to-benefit analysis just won’t let me be that much of an affluent nerdy hipster).

Nope, for me, the place to write is Starbucks, with their endless supply of Pike’s Roast, horrible cover versions of songs I used to like, and meetings between wedding photographers and their clients. I have, to date, written two complete novel length manuscripts and am a few hundred pages into the first version of a third, and I would conservatively estimate that in the more than 1200 pages of text in those three projects alone, at least 1,000 were written in this, my other office.

Which brings me to yesterday when I was working on changing a scene in one of my books…it’s an important scene. I killed a kid (in the book, not in the store). It’s a child I worked on creating for more than a few years. And I killed her.

Now, I’m not an overtly emotional guy. But I was a little moved when the final words began migrating from my fingers to the screen. Maybe even a little teary-eyed (though I blame that on the eerie confluence of that scene syncing up with my friend’s cover version of Muse’s “Unintended” – thanks for being such a sweet-voiced beast J. Lynn).

 This is the first time I've ever wondered if writing in public, in Starbucks of all places, is a good idea. I mean, I never know when a scene like that is going to present itself and I sure don’t want to get the whole Coffeehouse Weeper rep. That’s just not the guy I want my kids to have to deny is their father. I give them plenty of other reasons for said denials.

On the other hand, what better market research is there for a writer than resting secure in the knowledge that a scene they created brought them to tears in a coffee shop full of strangers? Unless that author is Glenn Beck, it seems like that says pretty good things about the emotional resonance of the moment.  

Michael Dean Clark is the fiction editor at Relief, as well as an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and three children.

An Encouraging Story

Bonnie shares an encouraging story about how donations can save print media. In this age of technology, digital media has overshadowed printed materials.  Looking around it seems like everyone has an e-reader of some type.  While the pros and cons of e-readers are a topic of debate among literary connoisseurs it is hard to ignore the growing number of people who use them.  Even in my family it is a topic of debate.  I have one and enjoy it and my husband feels negatively about them.  With the growing number of people reading from digital files, it is growing increasingly harder to sell printed material like books, journals, and magazines.  I found an encouraging article about one such magazine that turned to donations to keep going in this technology-saturated age.  I hope that if you read their story that it will encourage you to give to Relief Journal.

In this age it is hard to believe that there is any hope for print media.  Paste is a small independent music magazine that shares a story of financial triumph in hard times by turning to donations from loyal readers to stay in print.  By asking for donations and changing their magazine’s format for a short while they were able to continue to pay their staff and print their magazine while increasing their subscriptions.

Relief, run by volunteers, offers authors a creative outlet and provides exciting new stories to interest readers.  It is important to realize that subscriptions don’t cover all of the costs of printing, so for print media to survive, donations are needed.  Please consider a gift to Relief so we can keep on printing.  While digital media is growing, there is nothing quit like sitting on the couch with a good book in your hands.  Please show Relief some love.

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Memoirs: Self-Obsessed or Sacramental?

American novelist Henry Adams once wrote, “Everyone must bear his own universe, and most persons are moderately interested in learning how their neighbors have managed to carry theirs.”

This line, written in 1918, would be an understatement for modern readers who are consuming the published memoir as fast as it can be printed. The memoir, as a published form of self-narrative, has successfully climbed the literary ladder, claiming equal standing with the traditional novel and receiving recognition by literary scholars as a genre revolution. Within the past thirty years, the memoir has asserted itself as a rising trend in the writing world.

Yet public responses are mixed: skeptics claim that the memoir indulges in syrupy solipsism, the theory that the self is the only reality, while enthusiasts praise it for the value of self-discovery through story. With an emerging cultural impulse to chronicle the self and such conflicting estimations of this trend, the church must join the conversation. The church must recognize the rise of the self-narrative as a signpost for the human longing for transcendence and affirm storytelling as a sacrament in the high art of illuminating divine grace.

The memoir is a personal narrative that provides the author with a verbal processing of the self’s “becoming.” This kind of literature has charmed millions of readers with this human interest appeal in bestsellers such as The Color of Water by James McBride, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The voice of memoir offers its readers an occasion for personal identification so that a reader can find him or herself within the story of another and perhaps borrow the wisdom, healing or insight from similar life threads.

Henry Adams’ idea of the private universe of men is being born into memoir, as the individual universe of motherhood experience, healing from the trauma of abuse, or growing up in a racially mixed family is translated into print. The private universe of the writer, then, opens up a new world to the reader in which a common human spirit is realized, introducing the memoir as a catalyst for community.

The Church’s Response: Stories as Sacrament

The church is no stranger to self-narrative, understood in Christian circles as spiritual testimony, and Augustine’s Confessions is just one example. Beginning with the gospels and later patterned in martyology, hagiography, confession and conversion testimony, the story paradigm is rooted in ancient church tradition. The church has an evangelistic responsibility to engage the rising confessional characteristic of culture for kingdom purposes rather than dismissing it as a narcissistic endeavor. The church need not be suspicious of the collective cultural cry for self-understanding, having its own so satisfied in the Person of Christ. Instead, the church must bridle the technique of self-narrative for Christian testimony, and affirm the art of life story as a powerful witness for grace.

The pattern for spiritual testimony finds its structure in the grand drama of redemption, as the unfolding story of a believer’s sanctification is only understood in the identification with the rhythms of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. The storyteller must then recognize the tension between the cosmic Story of redemption and the echoing story of personal redemption. By telling personal story within the framework of God’s Story, we can engage the cultural trend of self-narrative while adding the new, redemptive element of pointing beyond the self to the Savior.

The cultural rise in the self-narrative affords the church a powerful opportunity to channel the very same confessional trait into spiritual testimony. The church can enter the social scene of life-writing by affirming it in theology as sacrament and encouraging it in practice as testimony. The church is already a credible voice in the self-narrative genre not only because of its tradition of testimony, but also in its sacramental ability to transcend the very story it tells by praising the grace of the Divine Author, something no secular memoir can claim. The art of testimony, then, trades a religion of solipsism, characterized by self-devotion, for a religion of sacrament, marked by the surpassing of the self to point to the Savior.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.insidepages.net.

The Ideal Writing Spot

It seems that most famous writers create a certain habitat for their genius, a custom-made space where their creativity can flow forth uninhibited. Virginia Woolf had A Room of One’s Own, J. K. Rowling has her European café, and Kurt Vonnegut has his hardwood floor where he worked out of his lap. So what are the basic requirements for a writing spot?

A desk, of course, is essential (except, apparently, if you’re Vonnegut). Preferably, a mahogany, stylishly-distressed desk that just looks like classics have been written all over it. A desk in the tradition of Tolkien’s and C. S. Lewis’, which you can actually see on display (including the wardrobe that inspired Narnia) at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. Extra points if your desk has a secret compartment.

Next, coffee. Every writer needs an energy boost now and then. And if you’re self-employed, your caffeine addiction might even count as a tax deduction (don’t quote me on that…)! But don’t try to outdo French novelist Balzac, who was known to drink 50-300 cups of coffee per day.

Your writing space should also host somewhat of a cozy mess. Creative minds aren’t known for their organizational skills, you know.

Surround yourself with inspirational literary quotes. These will remind you not only how much you love, live, and breath writing, but how fun it is! Motivational catchphrases such as, “My stories run up and bite me on the leg” –Ray Bradbury, and, “Writing is…like a long bout of some painful illness." -George Orwell, should get you off to a good start!

You should also have something to fidget with as you wrestle your brilliant ideas down onto paper. Stress balls, those cool moldable erasers, etc. Now is the perfect time to develop a bad habit such as cracking your knuckles or chewing your hair. All for the sake of art, of course.

A muse: whether it’s a picture of your sweetheart, your cat, or your Edgar Allan Poe bobble-head, you should have something to attribute your strokes of genius to. And someone to take your frustration out on when writer’s block hits.

What’s your writing environment? Where do you hammer out your thoughts, poems, and stories?

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.insidepages.net.

Do Anger and Creating Mix?

Are You Reading Along?

Have you clicked over to Don Miller's Blog lately? You know I have, because this isn't the first link I've posted on the Relief site. He's been blogging a series on "The Way of A Creator," and I think Relief readers everywhere should be reading along.

Anger + Creation = ?

Today, his post states that "A Creator Resists the Urge to Create out of Anger." You'll want to read the whole post, but here's a quick quote:

The public only has a consciousness so big, and when you create something good, and it gets into the public consciousness, there’s less room for whatever it is that made you angry. So go and create something good, and displace whatever it is that is pissing you off.

This post has me thinking about Relief's beginnings. Part of our story is that the vision for this journal was born out of frustration. I'll be honest--sometimes "Christian" literature makes me angry. For years we've endeavored to create something that displaces the sometimes-overly-sanitized work that well, pisses us off... okay, I'm not sure I'm following Don's advice in this sentence.

Thoughts? How do you, as a creator, wrestle your anger? Do you agree with Don's advice?

The New Cover

One of my favorite parts of putting together an issue of Relief is working with the photographers and graphic artists who help the outside of our journal look as good as the work we publish inside. You see, I'm well aware that, while we all know that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, we're all prone to do it anyway. Fortunately, Relief has developed great relationships with gifted visual artists who contribute to covers that are as original as our vision for a Christian literature that is both true-to-life and beautiful, gritty and wonderful. The cover of our current issue is a composite of two images. The central image (the tree and sunrise in the doorway) is cropped from a landscape taken by J. Brisbin, a former Relief author and photographer whose work we featured on our last cover. Like his last, this image demonstrates the high dynamic range (HDR) technique, which is a favorite form of Brisbin's. As he explains it:

HDR is simply a way to capture an image that pretends it has more dynamic range than it actually has. The eye can see about 15000:1 contrast ratio, while photography can usually only capture 300:1 to 500:1. Highs get overexposed, lows get lost in shadow. HDR algorithms seek to compress multiple exposures of an image that expose various parts of that 15000:1 contrast ratio in "slices" by altering the exposure, then combining those images (3-12) using special software. What makes HDR cool, in my opinion, isn't this technical side of it, but the artistic result of the tone mapping software. Different algorithms produce different results and a vast range of effects can be produced by manipulating the knobs and switches in the tone mapping software. It can be time-consuming and takes a lot of trial-and-error but with the right composition, the effects can be stunning.

The second -- and much less technical -- image of the dark foreground, was taken by my wife, my youngest son, Josiah, and myself during a hike at a nearby abandoned and run-down house. (Actually, I took the picture from inside while they stayed safely outside and prayed the roof would not collapse on my head).  With some clever arranging by Harriet Brewster, who also designed the cover for our last issue, the result is an image we're calling "Lazarus, Come Forth" for its juxtaposition of  desolation with hope and beauty, and to hint at this issue's themes of isolation and communion.

And now that you've seen the cover, click on over to our store and pre-order a copy of your very own!

It All Began with a Picture

I have a question for all you writers out there: how do your stories begin?

Do they begin inside you, with a striking thought, image, or scene? Do you observe something in the world that makes you want to put in onto paper? Do you imagine your characters to life, or do you see them on the street, at the Farmer's Market, the corner coffee shop?

Many of my favorite authors, it seems, birth their stories like this: a curious image arises in their mind, an image they see and cannot forget, and they write to discover the story behind the image.

Beloved author C.S. Lewis says that his enchanted world of Narnia began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella in a snowy wood.  "This picture had been in my mind since I was sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.'”

Kate DiCamillo was lying in bed one morning, her life in a state of depression, when she suddenly saw a magician, joined by an elephant.  They looked as real to her as anyone, and this curious introduction gave her the motivation to get out of bed and start writing again. The tale of these two characters entwine in what became The Magician's Elephant, a whimsical story about magic, homecoming, and belonging.

Sue Monk Kidd's award-winning novel, The Secret Life of Bees, began with an image of a girl going to sleep in her room amidst a swarm of hovering bees.  Right now I'm reading Traveling with Pomegranates, the author's memoir which gives the reader the backstory behind the creation of her bee novel. I find myself fascinated with the way Sue Monk Kidd collects the smallest of details and finds a home for them in her book.  Simple things like a pink house she saw in a magazine, a childhood memory of bees that hummed through the walls of her old house, and a story about a black Madonna struck something in her and she wove them into her novel.

As much as I love reading fiction, this genre has always been the hardest thing for me to write.  Characters do not appear to me in dreams, or start talking to me in the shower, or hover over my bed in the form of circus animals.  But I do often see images in real life that I pause over and tuck away for later, for a story that will be woven with bits and pieces of things in the world that catch my curiosity.

Here are some of them:

A man sitting on a porch that is covered with wind chimes.

The way a book in my hand vibrates with the live music of a cello playing in a bookstore.

A snippet of overheard conversation, “Once when I was seventeen and wild, I cut off all my hair.”

What sparks your stories into life?

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at insidepages.net.

Micro-Journaling

I've been struggling recently with finding time to journal. It's not that I even care much about chronicalling my life. I just love it when I put my pen to paper and get something out. Instead, I've been using Google Docs to write. And there's a lot of positive things about holding my writing in a place I can access anywhere I have a computer--which is everywhere recently--but it's just not the same.

But recently, I found an answer in "9 Lists to Keep Updated, and Keep Handy." Actually, I stumbled across it...on StumbleUpon. (It seems everything cool I've found recently is because of that site.) I call it micro-journaling, and it's started to change my life.

Basically, the author had a journal he wasn't using, so he started making different sections in the journal to list out things like "Things I Want," "Gift Ideas," etc. The list that has been my favorite so far is  "BHAGs" (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Maybe it's because I just entered the grownup world and I'm about get married, but the pages have been filling up quickly.

What lists do you keep in your journals?

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Ian David Philpot is the Web Editor for ccPublishing and the Web Content Developer for Willow Creek Community Church. He recently received his Bachelor's in English at Northern Illinois University and spent one year in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing program. He writes fiction, poetry, and music. Ian prefers black to white, vanilla to chocolate, and only eats yellow cake.

Our Deepest Thanks to Lisa Ohlen Harris

Founding Editor Kimberly Culbertson pays tribute to one of Relief's finest.

As we enter our fifth volume, it is with sadness that we announce that Lisa Ohlen Harris will be no longer be serving as our Creative Nonfiction Editor. The upcoming issue, available for pre-sales now, will end her amazing run at the helm of all things CNF. For years she has lent us her talent and her heart, and we are deeply grateful.

Lisa began editing creative nonfiction for  Volume 1, Issue 4, and her presence has marked Relief's journey over the years since, including doubling as CNF Editor and Assistant Editor for most of Volume 2. She has consistently shaped and crafted this fantastic genre, and we are proud that creative nonfiction has become such an integral part of Relief.

In the time I served as Editor-In-Chief, Lisa was a profound encouragement to me personally. She not only served on my team as a genre editor, but she shared her wisdom, provided a sounding board, challenged me when I started walking questionable paths, critiqued and sharpened my editorial statements, and reminded me of my strengths when I wondered if this whole adventure was just a little crazy (It is, by the way, which is why you need good people around you for the most perplexing of moments).

While we're dismayed to see her go, we are enjoying watching from the sidelines as she continues to flourish as a writer. Her first book, Through the Veil, was recently released from Canon Press, and has already been nominated for the Oregon Book Awards "Sarah Winnemucca Award For Creative Nonfiction" (the winner will be announced in April). Deanna Hershiser, a Relief author and blogger interviewed Lisa before the book was released, and recapped some of its journey quite nicely:

Sometimes editors edit because writing just hasn’t worked well for them. Not so with Lisa. Her first book, Through the Veil, will soon be released by Canon Press. Its offerings include an essay which was listed under “Notable Essays of 2008″ in Best American Essays 2009, along with two others that have made the Notable lists in volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing. Another of the book’s essays was shortlisted for a Pushcart Prize and received special mention in Pushcart XXXIII.

In fact, one of the essays Deanna refers to here, "Torn Veil" was published in Relief's Volume 1, Issue 4. Her success, both as an author and an editor, has helped Relief to become the journal that it is today. And so, as she moves on to new adventures, we at Relief will miss her dearly, but we'll be cheering her on as rabid fans.

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Kimberly Culbertson is the Founding Editor of Relief. These days serves on the board of ccPublishing, NFP (the company that publishes Relief and The Midnight Diner), alongside many other adventures. She and her husband live in Bloomingdale, Illinois, with their dog Latte. Their family-by-choice daughter, son, and godson now reside in California, and they are expecting their first biological child in February 2011.

The Word and words

Editorial Assistant Stephanie S. Smith meditates on the relationship between the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, and the writer, the wordsmith. I often wonder why, out of all the ways to describe the miracle of God-made-Man, the writer of the gospel of John chose to call it “The Word.”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” –John 1:1

He says it three times; he really doesn’t want you to miss this: This Jesus? He’s the Word. As a writer who lives and breathes words, this intrigues me.

If the Incarnation is composed of the Word given skin, of theology given a body, lungs, hands, sweat glands and elbows, what do my creative words translate into? If the Word became flesh and brought Life to the world, can my words, fragile and human as they are, become something more than ink on a page? Can they also bring life?

As writers, I believe that our words wield powerful weapons of influence, for better or for worse. And as Christians, I believe we are entrusted with language to point to redemption, by faithfully articulating the brokenness of our world and the wholeness of the gospel. The written word, as creatively communicated in story, poetry, and prose can help us to interpret our lives in light of the greater, eternal context.

Flannery O’Connor affirms this, “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” Good writing connects the regular details of our lives with eternal reality and puts them on the same plane.

The response of the Christian to the revelation of God should be that of Mary’s, who said to the angel Gabriel, “May it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:39).  Mary, who Scripture describes as a woman in God’s favor, invited the divine word to manifest itself in her very life, which was fulfilled literally in the Incarnation.  In the same way, we invite the Incarnation into our lives when we obey God’s Word.  We give our faith a face when we love the widow, feed the hungry, visit the sick.

Madeleine L’Engle, in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, says our writing should reflect the response of Mary, “who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command.” L’Engle remarks, “I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am.  Enflesh me.  Give birth to me.’”

In the creative process, the writer-artist responds to each idea like Mary to the angel’s revelation: Yes, manifest yourself in my very flesh, that I may nurture you, cultivate you to grow, and pour you into the world for men to see. The Christian writer uses language as a frame, clothing the abstractness of idea in the flesh of syllables, sentences and words, and then presenting it to the world as a bright and shining advent.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.insidepages.net.

Bobbing a Bit

It's a question of responsibility. My employers recently held a training day for our nonprofit group's volunteers and staff, during which we reviewed the right attitudes to strive for with clients. One of our manual's pages reminded me there's a difference between feeling responsible to someone and thinking I'm responsible for someone.

The first is possible and desirable, the second, not so much. Obviously, another adult has charge of her own decisions. I can choose to be there to listen, to empathize, to suggest options. But I must release the other person's outcome to be what they make it, or, if you will, what God makes it in their reality.

I've been considering this responsibility concept in other areas. One that strikes me is my writing. Here's a good question, I hope: How can I best be responsible to my gift as opposed to laboring under the delusion I'm solely responsible for my gift?

Writing, as we know, treats the humans involved in fickle ways. There can be wonderful, short-lived moments of recognition. I love a sentence from an essay by Poe Ballantine. He describes receiving notice that something he wrote was selected for Best American Short Stories. He hadn't been sure his writing was going anywhere special. "But," he says, "I figured that much of what happens in the literary world is a lottery, and I had been plugging away for a while, so maybe it was time for my head to bob to the surface of the sea of drowning writers, if only for a few minutes." **

Ballantine's quip makes me smile and sigh. On the one hand, I'm glad I'm not the only one "drowning" a lot of the time. A little voice in my head will often lament that if I'd only do more of this or that, my work would become...something. Recognized by more people. Helpful in more "real" places. Better than I've imagined it could be. So it's good to hear that even if the voice is wrong and I'm doing everything I can, I don't have control over the realities of 21st century writing.

On the other side of my brain, I've pondered Ballantine and nibbled my nails over whether or not to quit. Just quit. Shouldn't I be responsible for my work with words and discern when it's not going anywhere? Soon I may find I have plugged away at this stuff till life is next to over.

But there's always been this ancestor on my dad's side. His journals were found, long after he died. In the 1800s he pioneered with his family across the midwest. With pen he scratched beauty onto rough pages, sharing wonder at rock formations and the hue of prairie sky. He enjoyed his gift of writing and didn't worry what ultimately happened with it. Unless he lay awake by dying campfires, chewing his nails in his bedroll. If so he didn't say.

My point is I continue to be given a view of my lack of control over outcomes. And yet I decide again I will keep writing, taking steps each day on the journey. Being responsible to it. I may not get to choose which generation of readers ultimately finds and enjoys my words. I'm not in bad company. And the reality taking shape may contain a surprise or two more for this little head bobbing in the sea.

** (Ballantine's full essay, Blessed Meadows For Minor Poets, is part of his collection, 501 Minutes to Christ.)

Deanna Hershiser's essays have appeared in Runner's World, BackHome Magazine, Relief, and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com/stories-glimmer.

Beauty, Any Beauty

Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff read two things about beauty today and couldn't help but put them together.

Mark Jarman in "Tea Fire"* tells of driving toward a forest fire one evening, "seduced / like night moths," to witness its terrible beauty. He and his unnamed, unnumbered companion(s) are in awe of the way the smoke turns silver as it passes over the moon and the way the "red body" of the fire seems to desire to follow the waves of "ashy cumulus" into the sky. Then, however, they come upon homes threatened by the fire and turn back "embarrased--"

Not moths at all but dazzled lovers of beauty, any beauty.

The poem works because Jarman convinces us as readers of the beauty of the fire just as the "we" of the poem saw it, but then we share, too, in the abashment of realizing that this beauty comes at the cost of people's homes. It is immaterial whether the homes are the extravagant vacation cottages of the wealthy which, when we hear of them, we often want to think were extraneous and expendable anyways; for Jarman, they are still homes - "doomed homes," in fact. The valence of the poem is that the dazzling beauty of the fire momentarily dislocated the speaker from the heaviness of this world of responsibility and care.

"Not moths at all" could be read as "not drawn to the fire by a morbid fascination with death - our own or others," for it is the threat of destruction by fire that embarrasses the travelers. But "dazzled lovers" does seem to suggest that their difference from moths is not in their volition but in the object. They are drawn by beauty rather than destruction, but they are drawn just the same. As "lovers," they exist in a timeless, even exclusive state - the state of early passion familiar from our adolescence that, we must admit, while pleasant is not without blame. Yet the poem affirms that what they pursued was, indeed beauty - any beauty, beauty wherever it can be found when it is so rare a thing.

I've been thinking about beauty ever since I started studying the sublime. Beauty is often figured as the pacific, angelic counterpart to the dark, excessive sublime - roughly the attributes of Blake's Heaven and Hell, respectively. Suffice to say that Hell and the sublime are quite chic these days, while beauty is trite at best (think Snow White) and dangerous at worst (something like her wicked step-mother). Classical beauty, after all, entailed an ability of the viewer to perceive it adequately, which we nowadays recognize as the road to violence.

Enter David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003). There are a number of bold and counterintuitive aspects to this title, but suffice to say Hart does not find beauty violent or trite. Instead, he attributes to beauty a "gratuity" and a "prodigality" that gives of itself - sometimes in startling and disturbing ways: "a village ravaged by pestilence may lie in the shadow of a magnificent mountain ridge . . . ; Cambodian killing fields were often lushly flowered." Beauty is saved from the violence of abstraction precisely by its particularity, its inherence in just such a arrangement of things. Christian beauty, he argues, inheres in the unavoidable and often offensive narratives of the gospels; most centrally, of course, in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

In "Tea Fire" Jarman registers our modern ambivalence about beauty - something we're drawn to but also embarrassed about. It's a tension also present in "The Heronry." Seeking the solace of a forest preserve, he reflects on his own processes as he sits quietly observing a pond and its many birds. Among his many reflections are these final ones, which I hope I'm okay in quoting at length:

I almost think I could write about it forever, Adding word to word like coral in a reef, An excess of language like the genetic code, an extravagance like all the stars, Too much ever to be needed except By the need for there always to be more, That need which, when the end comes, looks past it For woods and hills and ocean, For fields and streets and houses and horizon, Repelled by blankness, expecting beyond sleep The dream country and its population.

Here he finds himself caught between beauty, language, and desire. Is his experience a projection of his own need "for there always to be something more"? (And if so, what?) Or does it inhere, as Hart would argue, somehow in the world itself, if not in any precise way? Or is it a function of language, words that spring up in the mind as a coral reef?

Jarman's poems may lack the confidence that faith ostensibly offers, but they are nonetheless compelling meditations on beauty because they are full of the desire that faith, in many ways, is - desire for there to be more than what is given and at the same time desire for the given to be "given," as a gift, as what is not labored for or dubiously "earned." Sometimes the challenge for the (American) Christian is to clear away the screen of faith to see - really see - the manifestations of glory that so many have pointed us toward without knowing their name.

* Jarman's poems can be found in the Autumn 2010 edition of The Hudson Review.

What Can I Do With Writing?

Stephen Swanson grows tired of the continual questioning of the power of communication, especially from students.  "Why would I need to write essays," has become a standard of expressing frustration, and even veteran writers feel that way sometimes.  So, he offers this micro-blog...

Why Writing Matters (Vol. 1):

It Pushes Me to Care

("Vol. 1" in no way implies that additional volumes will certainly come in the future, although they might.)

This week, I read this (http://blog.sojo.net/2010/04/21/arizonas-immigration-bill-is-a-social-and-racial-sin/), and it renewed my faith that writing can accomplish the task of informing and motivating in ways that stem from fundamental desires to congregate rather than divide.

Palabras, Parabolas, and the Perception of Flaws

This is the fourth and final installment in a series on “being” a writer. You can find the first three here, here, and here.

I suck at math. Just thought I’d start with that. I was alright until people started adding letters to numbers and then the unknowns won. Kicked my butt is more like it. My geometry teacher rounded up my 69.45 percent to a 70 so she wouldn’t have to oversee my repeating the class. Lucky her, she got me two years later in my second trip through Algebra II (a trip that ended in a gift B-). Tutors didn’t help. Calculators were useless.

The one thing that made sense to me was parabolas. I loved drawing parabolas. Still do. There’s just something spiritual about an infinite curve that meets at the base of its own horseshoe and while simultaneously angling up and away from itself forever. It was, for some reason, a more attainable idea than any Pythagoras ever came up with.

I’ve often wondered why I have this love affair with a diagram, as I’m sure you’re wondering why I feel the need to share my sickness with you. And yes, I do remember this is a column about writing. So let me attempt to make a little sense. When I was in college, I saw a 3-D rendering of a parabola in space. It was a simple computer image, basically turned to provide the depth lacking in the 2-D versions of my high school textbooks. I wanted to hug it. Now, I know why. That’s how stories should be.

In grad school we talk a lot about our “aesthetic.” When I talk to normal people, I call it “what matters to me when I tell a story.” Now I’ll tell both groups this – good stories operate in that three dimensional parabolic space.

First, I want my stories to operate along a vertical plane in which my characters do what I do – wrestle with a God who can be difficult to pin down or even feel at times. This does not mean all of my characters are Christian or even spiritual.But they are all confronted with divinity and respond in the variety of ways people do everyday. Without that vertical component, I see no point in telling stories.

But, just as the lines of a parabola move away from each other, so do many of the horizontal relationships of my characters. Life is hard. Love is harder. And people fall away from each other. Inherent in all of this are pain and hope and trauma and grace. But what I’m most concerned with is the continued presence of that point of connection, the joining of lives that would otherwise continue on, one moving gradually east while the other goes west. And that bond only really happens in the scope of a vertical and horizontal space.

And then there’s the third dimension – what I’ll call depth. For the first few years I flirted with the parabola, she was just a flat, u-shaped thing. But that slight shift of the picture opened up a possibility of growth and change that I want my characters to possess. Our culture trains us to judge people visually and immediately. We size up and reject or accept as soon as we can take in their hair, features, and clothes. Sometimes we make that choice sooner. But sometimes, if we wait, we experience something else about that person. And the experience opens us up to the possibility that our perceptions are flawed; that we are flawed. As a writer, I am possessed by the desire to communicate that our flaws are neither permanent, nor outside the healing influence of change.

So being a writer is about the depth of our flaws, the space between ourselves and the people around us, and the heights to which we are willing to climb or depths we will fall to find what is outside of ourselves. In other words, I’m still drawing parabolas, just without the numbers that might mistakenly make people think my fiction assumes certainty in and of itself.

***

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and now an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He is also mere inches from earning a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin. His work is set primarily in his hometown of San Diego and has been known to include pimps in diapers, heroin-addicted pastors who suffer from OCD, and possibly the chupacabra.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 4.21.10

Photo courtesy of Elaina Avalos. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

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The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

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Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

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Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!