Stories like Fine Beer and Cheese: The Importance of Texture (Part 1)

The following is part 1 of 3 from Robert Garbacz.

[Author’s Note: This is part one of a three-part series discussing the importance of a rich texture in fiction.  Here, I discuss the way Greg Mitchell used contrasting genres and perspectives to earn “Flowers for Shelly” a place in the second Diner. Next week, I will take a more literary turn with Michael Snyder’s “Normal People” from Relief 3.1. I will conclude on a practical note, with hints for how to create a sense of texture and a promise of the rewards of taking risks.]

One of the greatest little pleasures of living in Austin is to visit Whole Foods, sampling the cheeses, wines and beer that are available for free.  There is something almost magical about the blend of flavors in a good cheese or ale; a sea of competing tastes, textures and sensations that changes as it trickles across the tongue.  A good beer might start with a soft, fruity taste and then kick in later with a bitter aftertaste.  A good cheese will often be uneven, with a delicious, organic texture as it slides across the tongue.

I hate processed “American cheese” and “light beer.”  Sure, they’re smooth, easy to eat, and they’re focused on their goal.  But they lack the complexity and texture of the good stuff.  In comparison, they’re crap.

The same thing is true of short stories.  Reading through a slush pile, nothing will make me sit up and take note about a story than a sense that it has a really good, complicated texture; that it goes in multiple directions at once, instead of trotting straight at its target.  And while nothing will guarantee acceptance, a story with the rich, variegated texture of a Trappist ale or Irish cheese will make me perk up, and at the least make me want the story to be good enough for acceptance.

But enough about foods, before I get hungry.  Let’s look at our first story, and the way it uses contrasting thoughts and “flavors”  to make something better than the sum of its parts.  (Minor spoilers, it should be noted, are a given.)

“Flowers for Shelly,” from the second Diner, started with the solid, earthy basis of a good character drama.  The narrator is obviously in love with his wife, and wants nothing more than to stay in bed with her all day.  His responsible wife wants him to get up and go to work.  The scene is cute, a bit saccharine, but already somewhat textured thanks to the narrator’s self-deprecating wit.  The wit is understated, but at least engaging:

“Work sucks.  It’s 9:30 a.m. and I want to go home, lie in bed, and wait for Shelly to return with less pressures.  And, preferably, less clothes.”

So far, it’s more textured than processed cheese, but not much.  Maybe Kraft mild cheddar, with a slight kick of humor and marital tension.

Then the narrator’s friend and co-worker gets slaughtered by zombie-police and the story takes on a different tone:

“Suddenly, I feel a cold sensation around my ankle and see a bloody hand reaching out from underneath the car.  Pulling.  Yanking.  Moans rise up like phantoms from the depths of hell and I look into the still teary eyes of Kevin as he lures me in.  At first, I think he’s somehow survived, but then it hits me.  He’s dead, too.”

All of a sudden, this story is beginning to feel more like the sort of solid, hand-crafted cheese that is worth shipping over oceans.  What are the dead doing coming to life?  How will our hero survive?  And what the hell does this have to do with his decision to give flowers to his wife Shelly?  It’s interesting, uneven, and because I have such dissonant tones I don’t know what’s going to happen next.  I like it.

Nor is the combination of two genres all that Greg Mitchell does in his story.  In addition to the gruesome descriptions of zombie mayhem, we have the narrator’s often incoherent thoughts, his gun-nut friends’ insane euphoria at the fact that they’re actually shooting zombies, a thoroughgoing sense of humor, and a mad quest to give pretty flowers to the beautiful Shelly.  I’m not much into zombie stories, but Mitchell’s ability to pile on a hundred different flavors and cram them into a small space made this a fun romp through death and mayhem that I won’t soon forget.

The moral: even with straight-forward, zombie killing genre fiction, odd combinations and unexpected, off-kilter happenings are key.

***

Robert Garbacz, when in his natural habitat, can frequently be seen arguing theology, politics, and art over ale with often excessive volume, haranguing his friends repeatedly with obscure but fascinating facts about Medieval literature, or staring cloyingly into the eyes of his beloved wife Hannah. Unfortunately, his natural habitat is Oxford in the period from 1930-1950. This is a bit awkward for someone born in Tulsa in 1983, but he is studying towards his Doctoral at the University of Texas in Austin and feels this is a firm step in the proper direction. His short story, "The Salvation of Sancho," appeared in the previous Diner anthology, inducting him into this peculiar world of horror, bloodshed, and merciless ravagement of grammatical missteps.

Damascus, February 1990

Lisa Ohlen Harris provides us with a short passage that didn't make it into her forthcoming book Through the Veil. The post first appeared on her website LisaOhlenHarris.com.

We bumped suitcases up a set of stone stairs, and into the narrow pathway of the Old City. Along with the eleven other Americans in my research group, I followed our team leader, Steve, through a maze of stone and dust, of small doorways and little children. I could not imagine finding my way in or out of these corridors every day for three months, but Steve assured us, "Everyone will know where the foreigners are living. If you get lost, just stop and ask." Two boys playing soccer with a grubby ball stopped their game to stare at our strange procession of suitcases and foreigners. I thought I heard one of them whisper the name of our Syrian host, Abu Mousa.

Steve smiled in triumph as we rounded the turn leading to Abu Mousa's doorway. One by one we passed through the front door and into a wide atrium garden, where Um Mousa had prepared a welcome feast—chicken over rice, with vegetables and pine nuts. We were jet-lagged and hungry, and the chicken was so good. We sat together and ate. A lot.

I remember it was cold in Syria in February in a hundreds-of-years-old stone house with no heat. I remember sneaking up to the rooftop to meet Todd after a day of ethnographic research. I remember weeping three months later when it was time to leave Damascus, the city I had learned in such a short time to love.

Twenty years ago. For every detail I remember there are dozens I’ve forgotten. And for every chapter inThrough the Veil there are memories that didn’t make it into the book. In these last months before the book releases (summer 2010) I’m going to post “deleted scenes” from Through the Veil. By sharing these memories I hope to serve up an appetizer for the forthcoming book as well as commemorating the twenty-year anniversary of our time living in Damascus.

***

Lisa Ohlen Harris is Relief's Creative Nonfiction editor. Her Middle East memoir, Through the Veil, will be published by Canon Press in 2010. Lisa's essays have appeared in journals like River Teeth, Arts & Letters, and The Laurel Review, and have received special mention in Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses (2009) and in Best American Spiritual Writing (2008 and 2010). Lisa enjoys mentoring and editing the work of emerging writers through her critique service.

Pilgrim's Ingress: The Fiction of Faith

I was instant messaging with a student of mine from a few years back and he asked me about a book I’m working on. When I described the main character – a guy named Diego who wants to destroy himself but can’t because the people he meets keep waylaying his problems with their own – my former student said, “Wow, that book sounds like me.”

Unfortunately, I don’t think he’d say the same thing about the vast majority of Christian fiction.

In its earliest form, Christian fiction was allegorical. Novels like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress were built on the biblical model of the parable. The style persisted, finding a more modern version in Charles M. Sheldon’s 1896 sermon-as-novel, In His Steps. These stories, and the many like them, were merely vehicles for the lesson behind them – conduct instruction wrapped in a transparent story.

Sometime later, in general terms and by my estimation the mid-1980s, the pilgrim’s progress became the pilgrim’s egress (which, coincidentally, was an alternate title for Peter Kreeft’s 1996 book The Journey). This happened in a Christian culture increasingly alarmed by the idea that their beliefs were no longer valued and their stories followed. They are embodiments of the desire to flee from culture, reach the safety of the conversion moment, and escape into the light. And there it ends. In conjunction, the Christian fiction market grew as people looked for “safe” stories of belief and publishers increasingly focused on providing such middle-of-the-road fare. At this point, I don’t believe Flannery O’Connor’s classic Wise Blood would get out of the slush pile at most Christian houses given how “unsafe” a novel about a man’s desire to found the Church of God Without Christ would be considered.

This reminds me of a common description of the difference between the Victorian novel (which I would liken to a great deal of mainstream Christian fiction) and the Modern novel. The Victorian narrative ends with the wedding, a symbol of the achievement of the highest aims of that set of cultural norms. The Modern novel begins with the wedding because “reality” only happens when people move beyond the ceremony to the (often ugly) work that comes when you live (or fail to live) a life together. In a sense, the majority of mainstream Christian fiction sells short the day-to-day reality of living out beliefs in a sinful world by building most of its narratives around the conversion moment and failing to address the very real struggles of those who believe (which I would say is everyone).

The fiction of faith should instead be the pilgrim’s ingress, a daring genre considerably more focused on Christians in culture than believers escaping it. It should present pictures of faith in the ugliness, doubt, and circumstances of life outside the walls of assumed belief. Instead, we’ve raised those walls even higher to keep that same ugliness, doubt and circumstance out.

In essence, Christian literature needs an emergent movement just like the mainstream evangelical church needed (and still needs). Otherwise, how will nonbelievers see themselves inside Christian art? And more importantly, how will Christian artists and readers remember that their art should emulate their Savior – by addressing those who need the gospel most in a form that meets them where they are?

***

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and is in the final stages of 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.

Worshiping Nature, Exorcisms, and a Retort… of sorts.

Clare Gajkowski-Zajicek responds to Travis Griffith's post "Avatar: What's the Big Deal?"

May I begin by saying that I have never seen Avatar nor heard about the Vatican’s remarks on the film before reading Travis Griffith’s blog post. Though I agree with Travis’ overall theme of love and embracing those of other faiths, races, religions, etc., let’s not hate on the Vatican, just to hate on the Vatican, shall we? What if they have… dare I say… their reasons?

Since people are so eager to talk about their spirituality these days, let’s talk about the spiritual realm on this Earth. There are believed to be two parts to this realm, the supernatural and preternatural. The supernatural is manifested by visible acts and the preternatural is manifested by unseen acts and forces. Miracles can fall under both categories. Evil, however, also falls under both.

“Not to believe in evil is not to be armed against it. To disbelieve is to be disarmed. If your will does not accept the existence of evil, you are rendered incapable of resisting evil. Those with no capacity of resistance become prime targets for Possession.” –Malachi Martin

When was the last time you heard about an exorcism? Do you think they don’t occur? Do you believe that people are just mentally ill and it’s just another crazy old Catholic ritual? (That argument never really made sense; the possessed has to go through a thorough examination and agree to the exorcism. It cannot be forced upon them.)

Dr. Malachi Martin is one of the hundreds of priests who have witnessed an exorcism- but he also wrote one of the most profound books on the issue: Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans. He followed and studied other priests who had performed exorcisms, finding them years later as broken and hollow shells of human beings from the stress of the ritual. Most of the occurrences had themes or similarities - the subjects who became possessed were obsessed with the Earth and its elements, “the mystery of nature,” they were cynical of religion, or they attempted to “transcend” this Earthy realm. In one way or another they opened themselves up to the supernatural and the preternatural. In their particular cases, evil snuck in.

During my years at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I finished my major early and studied Comparative Literature with a Franciscan priest. It was around this time I read Malachi Martin’s book, after randomly picking it up at a used bookstore. I mentioned this book to the Franciscan, and he became extremely somber. He told me to be careful, and that he himself had performed three exorcisms in his lifetime. (It took him months to actually explain these events, and when I heard them I understood why. This is also a man who has probably never told a lie in his life.)

“Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other and us to the Earth.” – James Cameron

An excerpt from Malachi Martin’s book, the case of a young priest being possessed in 1964:

His yielding [control] at Mass had immediate and far-reaching effects. In baptizing infants, he changed the Latin words, which were unintelligible to the parents and bystanders. When he was supposed to say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” he said, “I baptize you in the name of the Sky, the Earth, and Water.” In Confession, he stopped saying “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”; instead, he said, “I confirm you in your natural wishes, in the name of Sky, Earth, and Water.”

My first point is: I don’t think the Vatican was only worried about the worship of nature and neo-paganism in Avatar- they’re worried about what those practices can lead to.

“As long as beliefs are based on love, who’s to say who gets to claim the correct one?” –Travis Griffith

My second point is: let’s be careful what we worship. I agree we need to embrace everyone, of every faith, with love. But it’s a fine line when worshiping the Earth- we need to see the danger in this. Jesus came to this world to build the Kingdom of God. Since that was impossible here, why worship such a place?

***

Clare Gajkowski-Zajicek is a graphic designer and videographer who graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a degree in Communication. She currently resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and pet snapping turtle, Roger. She spends most of her time watching movies and eating starchy foods. (Mostly potatoes.)  Clare's poem "Church Fathers" can be found in Relief Issue 3.2.

All That Glitters

Deanna Hershiser recalls the "joy" of being humbled. Even melancholy writers like me can have a positive morning. At such times everything shines like my golden ideas.

But I’ve learned to feel suspicious of their glow. I guess we all have to do that. Bask for the moment, sure, but later test new paragraphs, stanzas, or stories for actual quality. Why is it, the more fantastic they seem when they arrive, the clunkier they can rattle out of my brain? I don’t often comprehend this until I receive negative feedback or continued rejection, or both.

An essay I once started had all the markings of a hit. My daughter and I ran through the neighborhood for the first time at her request. Who could fail to tug heartstrings, I thought, describing their child’s interest in exercise? I read a rough draft sometime later to my critique group, and one lady asked what I was trying to say.

An innocent question, and a good one. But I felt derailed. I talked back (something our rules said not to do), defensive. Maybe it was the way she framed her question. Maybe I had eaten too much chocolate after lunch. Anyway, I returned to my essay, and what once had been golden felt like lead. I slogged through editing the piece and sent it out to face the inevitable—it was never published.

My next attempt grew from scraps jotted in my journal about running with my little dog. I tried writing it different ways, wary of sharing it anywhere. If no one appreciated my mother-daughter bonding tale, who would like this motley adventure?

In my humbled state I found some encouragement. While I considered doggy jogging mundane, I saw I was writing a more genuine anecdote. I liked running. So did my dog. My daughter hadn’t wanted to do it again after her first try. She had been the one to suggest I run with our pooch to start with, and so I mentioned my gratefulness to her in the essay. Finally, I arrived at an opening image for the story, based on what I had learned about myself. If only my dog and I could voice our imaginings, we would rather be an Amazon-type athlete racing her Malamute in the Iditarod, than a 30-something woman out circling the sewage treatment plant with her raccoon-sized dog.

This lowly image sold my essay. I had discovered how to smile at my own shabby efforts and see beauty in ordinary moments. Readers related to this story and contacted me to share some of theirs. It was an honor to have struck a nerve.

Since then I try to remember, when writing, running, or falling down, there’s no shame in not shining all the time.

***

These days Deanna Hershiser jogs on her treadmill when not out fishing with her dad. She has had work published in Runner's World, Relief, and Long Story Short. She blogs here.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 2.10.2010

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!

Photo courtesy of Michelle Pendergrass.

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday? Get ready! Starting next week, you'll be able to submit your photos to Michelle.

Directions:

1. Enjoy

2. Write a haiku inspired by what you see

3. Post the haiku in the comments for chance to enter

For extra chances to win:

4. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

5. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

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

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

Relief News Tuesday 2.9.2010

A Note from the Web Editor

Normally I don't write the news blogs in a personal way, but with all of the great (or not so great) speeches that have been given in the last couple weeks, I'm now giving a State of the Website address. (Not to be confused with a State of the Website Address address where I mention changing our web address from ReliefJournal.com to StressJournal.com so we can advertise anti-depressants in the margins.  It is at this point that I would like to apologize for my unnecessary digression.)

Settled In

For the last four months, we've been calling what you are looking at right now "The New Website."  But as of right now, I am forever changing it to "The Website."  "The Olde Websyte" will always be the old site, but this format is no longer new to us.

Why does that matter?

Since we are no longer considering this a "new" website, we are very welcome to any suggestions to changes or corrections that can be made.  Before now, we were still testing things out to see what we liked.  We will always be trying new things, but we're pretty happy with what we've got right now.

Also, since this isn't new, we will be doing our best to develop the site by creating a Staff page, a Blogger Columnist page, and by updating the donation page and our shop.

With that said, we do need some feedback.  We don't plan on changing the colors or our logo, but making sure the site is easy enough to navigate is very important to us.  If you've got a suggestion, leave it in the comments.

Enjoyment, Experience, and Reading

Stephen Swanson, prompted by a recent colleague's sharing of the "Read a Book" rap and expressing a desire to show it to their students.  Without getting into issues of race and class, what is the problem with the "reading issue" a bit more broadly?

Nothing New...

There's nothing new about a general frustration of an older generation of educators complaining about the lack of preparation of the future generation and a fear of a disappearance of books or quality books or the right books, and so on.  It seems that every year a cycle of e-mails make the teaching rounds of century-old quotes that sound just like our feelings of today.

It's Not that I Don't Like to Read, but...

What I've noticed might be changing is that while my students (both young and old) have less experience reading things on their own, they often express a desire to read more and learn to read for pleasure.

In fact, this week, one of my lit students commented during break, "I really like how we are thinking differently about this book, but I also wish that we could take time to enjoy it.  I don't even know how to do that anymore."  At first, my hackles raised, and I wanted to reply, "Well, that's because you're learning to REALLY look into a book and figure out how it means."  Fortunately, I stopped myself and thought for a second.

Why shouldn't we take time to teach/give credit for reading just for enrichment or pleasure?

Part of it is probably because the people teaching are often the one's who already love reading and take that as a given.  As can be seen by the launch of the iPad, an understanding of contemporary society must take on the growing assumption that things should "fit me".  On a certain level, this is pure hubris and entitlement, but "it is what it is", as they say.  Like it or not, people have less time for traditional "reading" and when one is not introduced to reading very early in life (Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone advocates that an interest in books should happen in the first 3 years), then where else will you get it?

It's Important, Really, but Don't Make It Too Important.

An NEA study from 2007 found all the usual suspects.  Reading is falling, and it is becoming more important for work.  However, what really gave me pause when this student asked her question was that the immediate assumption that emerged that one must justify reading in terms of educational, and primarily economic, reasons.

Would reading really not be something to teach if it only offered another way of enjoying oneself and connecting to other people, ideas, times, and places?  Looking at the books and movies selected for awards or even just for small, local book groups, one would assume that loving books means loving stories about the deaths of young girls, loss of innocence, or big, historical epics.

In writing this, I've often devolved into a screed against the focus on quantitative educational goals, but I need to keep deleting them and move on to the bigger points.  Reading is more than enjoyment, as I teach in my literature and rhetoric classes.  Reading is also more than analysis and critique, which is not really taught or encouraged anywhere, and I think it needs to be.

Why Can't I Stop Being Serious?

I'll give you a personal example of how difficult this is for me to accomplish.  A couple weeks ago, I was meeting a friend at my favorite bar, and I brought in the genre novel that I was reading at the time (Bounty-hunter Witch Lives with Vampire and Struggles for Her Identity).  After a while of sitting at the bar, a patron asked me, "What are you reading?"  I turned the cover so that she could read the title and author.  She inquired, "What's it about?" "Well,...[confused retelling of backstory]," and I immediately felt the need to point out, "Well, I study genre narratives, especially those about detectives and detective-like characters, and especially about individual morality and ethics."

Immediately after the addendum, she smiled and said, "Cool.  That's awesome that you study something that you love."  It was to this moment that my mind jumped just this last week when the student asked about reading for pleasure.  I do love the literature that I teach, well most of it, but I've loved it for so long that I forget what it is like to learn to love something.  That "learning to love" is a slow process, just ask my wife about onions, but it is a worthwhile process to learn, just ask my wife about onions.  It is something worth putting some time, effort, and reward into sharing with others, if for society in general, then at least for individual, selfish reasons.   While I am loath to say it, learning to love something might even prove useful for one's future life and career, but don't tell anyone I said so.

***

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  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and depiction of ethics in detective narratives.

Sightings

1983: In the third grade, my religion teacher, Mrs. Brandstetter, tells me a story during Tuesday night CCD class about a  woman in Mexico whose taco meat, after falling out of her tortilla at lunch, miraculously formed itself into a silhouette of the Virgin Mary. The image my young mind instantly created: small individual crumbly rounds of ground beef mysteriously and reverently moving themselves across a piece of Mexican hand-painted ceramic ware, one grainy chunk of meat at a time coalescing into feet, a robe, veil, nose and eyes. On the side table by the couch in the living room of my childhood, a small, engraved photo album. On the first page, a photograph of oil-stained window panels on an office building in Clearwater , Florida, that looked remarkably like a profile of the Blessed Virgin. A miracle on display wasn’t at all strange to my devoutly Catholic and generally superstitious family—why shouldn’t heaven and earth somewhere converge?

Once a year, we made it a family pilgrimage to gather with hundreds of people at the Holy Spirit Center just off the Norwood lateral about twenty minutes from our house to say the Rosary from lawn chairs on a hill while waiting for Our Lady of Light to make her midnight appearance.

Skeptic’s Dictionary: Apophenia (n): the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data, the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness." May be linked to psychosis or creativity.

2005: Hundreds gather at the Fullerton Avenue underpass on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago. They’ve come to see the Virgin Mary in the salt run-off. That same year, a pregnant couple sees the face of Jesus during their ultrasound at a hospital in Toledo. A concession clerk sees him in a nacho pan. He also appeared on the tinted windows at a hardware store in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, and, shortly before that, in a pecan tree to a Louisiana man who was barbecuing in his backyard.

We are programmed, Carl Sagan says, born with a propensity to identify the human face. It’s for evolution’s sake, so that we can make out faces from a distance using only minimal details. This is why we can recognize faces before putting in our contacts in the morning.

At the stroke of twelve, church bells rang, cameras flashed, we waited and waited.

But I saw nothing.

Type I Psychological error: (false positive, false alarm, caused by an excess in sensitivity): Often used as an explanation of some paranormal and religious claims, and can also be used to explain the tendency of humans to believe pseudoscience.

I saw nothing but the moon.

I saw nothing but the moon hanging heavy in the sky, so full that it made a glow behind the backs of the pine trees on the horizon.

*          *          *

Michelle Metcalf does believe in miracles, especially moonlight illuminating the trees. She lives in Cincinnati, OH and sometimes still prays Hail Marys out of habit, even though she is no longer a practicing Catholic.

The Psalms as Poetry

Heather Cadenhead unravels Psalm 77 and looks closely for the all of the great poetic bits within it.  She also examines her own personal poetry for the same "beautiful truth" she has found in the psalmists verses.

The first time I heard someone refer to the Psalms as a book of poetry, I was considerably moved.  As a creative writer living under the grace of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the idea of God speaking to me through a book of poems was an altogether beautiful notion.  I imagine that it's the same sort of feeling that Johan Huibers, a Dutch contractor, got when he was able to recreate Noah's ark using the exact measurements given in the Old Testament.  There is a sense of wonder in meshing God's perfect truth with the things we most love to make with our hands, whether that is something functional like an ark or aesthetic like a poem.

As of late, I've loved the poetry in Psalm 77 because it seamlessly weaves together three elements of poetry that I believe to be crucial to any completed work of verse.

• It uses metaphor skillfully: "The waters saw You, O God; / The waters saw You, they were afraid; / The depths also trembled" (Psalm 77:16, NKJV).  Water, as an inhuman thing, cannot feel the human emotion of fear; however, water is at the mercy of God's hand.  Knowledge of God's mercy over us creates a fear of the Lord, making the line "The waters saw You, they were afraid" an appropriate and beautiful metaphor.
• It uses beautiful imagery and shows a strong command of language: "Your way was in the sea, / Your path in the great waters, / And Your footsteps were not known" (Psalm 77:19, NKJV).  The sea imagery here is not only lovely, but succinct: the Psalmist's verse isn't wordy and he doesn't use unnecessary adjectives or adverbs. In fact, the only adjective in this verse is the word "great" to describe "waters."  The phrase "great waters" serves as a synonym for "sea" here. So, the adjective isn't meant to be flowery.  It's a necessary description.
• It conveys truth in a chilling way: "Your path was in the great waters, / And Your footsteps were not known" (Psalm 77:19b, NKJV).  I discussed this verse in the last point, while talking about imagery, but it also conveys a bone-rattling truth: God can perform the greatest of miracles without even being seen.  If He chooses, He may roam the sea without leaving a single footprint. It's an entirely chilling and beautiful truth conveyed skillfully in the Psalmist's verse.

As a Christian writer, my goal should be to write beautiful truth. By beautiful, I don't mean to imply that our poems should read like textual versions of Thomas Kinkade paintings.  Far from it.  I mean that we should write poems that sound good; we ought to choose strong words (not necessarily concrete words over abstract words, but concrete words to convey abstract ideas).  A well-written poem is, to me, a beautiful poem. It isn't related to the content. Psalm 77, in fact, has a few bleak moments: "Has His mercy ceased forever? / Has His promise failed forevermore?" (Psalm 77:8, NKJV).  It has moments that stop you dead in your tracks: "I remembered God, and was troubled; / I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed" (Psalm 77:3, NKJV).

By truth, I mean that our poems as Christians should convey what is true, what is real.  In Psalm 77, I find two truths: one is the truth of man's frailty ("My hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing; / My soul refused to be comforted" [Psalm 77:2b, NKJV]); the other is the truth of God's sovereign grace ("Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary; / Who is so great a God as our God?" [Psalm 77:13, NKJV]).

***

Heather Cadenhead’s poems "Embalming" and "Bone Collection" were published in Relief Issue 3.2.  Her work has been featured in Illuminations, Arbor Vitae, The Ampersand Review, Boston Literary Magazine, and other publications.  She recently won the Editor’s Prize for an upcoming issue of New Plains Review.  Heather lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with her husband, Tyson, and their dog, Arthur.  She is the senior editor of The Basilica Review.

The Intersection of Faith and Art

Jeanne Damoff joins the blog as a guest looking into the union of Faith and Art. When Chris Fisher first suggested I write a guest post for Relief, I asked if he had a topic in mind. He said, “Anything you want, really. Some kind of faith/art angle would be good.”

(Aside: I wanted to insert an “angle” joke here--maybe something about my being too “obtuse” to understand what he wanted--but I couldn’t come up with wording I liked. Feel free to give it a shot. And remember, if you make me laugh, you’ll earn valuable points.)

As I pondered what I might write, the phrase that kept coming to mind was “the intersection of faith and art.” The more I thought about it, the more I liked the images that phrase conjured. An intersection is a place where two distinct things collide or cross and, for a defined space, become one. Where any two roads intersect, that square of pavement is as much one as it is the other. My perception of it depends entirely on the direction I’m heading.

Who Are You?

Suppose you’re creating a personal profile for some networking site, and you’re given the prompt, “I am a ___________.” Most of us could answer that question in numerous ways. Relationally, I am a wife, mom, daughter, friend, aunt, mother-in-law, etc. Vocationally, I am a writer, speaker, musician, choreographer, photographer. Philosophically, I am a Christian, a creature, an eternal soul. I’m also a cook, maid, laundress. Mentor, counselor, confidante. Fitness nut, dancing fool, laugh-aholic. You get the idea. But what if I have to prioritize? Which identity should come first? I have no problem with folks who choose the Sunday School answer. But I also have no problem believing faith can be as much a part of a person as their humanity, and as such, needs no name tag. Perhaps I’m an artist who recognizes my gifts are just that--gifts. They were given to me by One who delights in my embracing and using them, and I delight in being who I was created to be. To call myself “Artist” is to accept my Creator’s design for my life and therefore one of the highest compliments I can give Him. To insist that I always use the “Christian” qualifier--or, for that matter, that all my art deals with overtly Christian subject matter--is to greatly limit the scope of the gift.

I’m going to assume that many of this blog’s readers consider themselves both Christians and artists. I also assume you’ve most likely encountered some incarnation of the “Christian artist” or “Artist who happens to be a Christian” debate. Some folks get their bloomers in a pretty tight wad over this, but I can’t help wondering if it ultimately boils down to which road you’re driving on when the two collide. And does it even matter? Either way, the intersection makes them one.

Where do Faith and Art Intersect?

Main Street and First Avenue intersect in cities and towns all over the world. Likewise, the intersection of Faith and Art is found everywhere. And, if you’re like me, it often sneaks up on you. You may be worshiping God with no thought to your art, when a glimpse of His goodness, mercy, intimacy, or grace inspires you to create. Or you may be playing the piano, photographing nature, ballet dancing, or painting a portrait of your child, when suddenly God feels nearer to you than you ever thought possible.

Those times may take us by surprise, but they’re not particularly surprising. Wherever beauty is found, faith and art commonly intersect. But sometimes the two collide in unexpected places.

Sorrow.

Injustice.

Tragedy.

Betrayal.

Faith is stretched to its limits, and art seeks to understand.

Art depicts darkness, and faith cries out to God in response.

These intersections can be full of potholes and blockades. The way is slippery, steep, and full of shadows. When we finally come out on the other side, we’re older and wiser. Our faith purified. Our art refined.

It makes no difference if we approach the intersection on Artist Avenue or Faith Lane. Once we enter it, the two become one. And that’s where the magic happens. Whoever you are and whatever identity you claim, I hope your road leads you to that intersection again and again. I hope the same for me.

***

Jeanne Damoff is the author of Parting the Waters: A True Story: Finding Beauty in Brokenness and her work can also be found in Relief Number 2.  You can visit her website at jeannedamoff.com and her blog at jeannedamoff.wordpress.com.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 2.3.2010

It's Photo Haiku Wednesday!  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.

Photo courtesy of Michelle Pendergrass.

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday? Get ready! Starting next week, you'll be able to submit your photos to Michelle.

Directions:

1. Enjoy

2. Write a haiku inspired by what you see

3. Post the haiku in the comments for chance to enter

For extra chances to win:

4. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

5. Follow Quo Vadis on Twitter

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

* * *

Winner will be announce 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 single week for Twitter Super Bonus Points!

Relief News Tuesday 2.2.2010

Relief Panel at the Festival of Faith and Writing

In case you missed it in yesterday's post from Editor-in-Chief Chris Fisher, Relief will have a discussion panel at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing in addition to our booth.  It's just another reason to make it out to Grand Rapids, MI in April.  If you still need to sign up, click here.  If you are going and would like to volunteer to help Relief with our booth, please contact chris@reliefjournal.com.  Relief also needs to raise money to purchase prints of the last two issues to sell at Calvin.  If you feel that is something you would be interested in, contact Chris.

Photo Haiku to join Facebook

Starting tomorrow, we will be posting the Photo Haiku picture on our Facebook page as well as the blog.  This means that Facebook viewers that participate are open to receive the prizes associated with the Photo Haiku.  See you tomorrow!

Getting To Calvin, And How You Can Help

Your Typical Anecdotal Opening

This past December I discovered that, as with many high-tech toys and devices, I despise GPS navigation systems.

The university was closed for winter break and I didn’t have to teach again until mid-January, so Jen and I decided to take a short anniversary trip—our thirteenth. We chose Richmond, Virginia, for the Edgar Allan Poe museum, the many antique and book shops in Carytown, and because it’s close to Jen’s parents (in other words, free babysitting for our four kids). The in-laws’ Honda is much too small to carry our abundant progeny, so it seemed only natural that we would swap vehicles for the weekend. My father-in-law, being the considerate man that he is, even programmed his GPS to direct us to our hotel. “Just follow the directions,” he said. “You can’t miss it,” he said.

But after thirteen years, I guess he doesn’t know his son-in-law as well as he thinks. Coming into the city, I followed the sweetly feminine computerized voice, at the same time keeping a careful eye on the car’s odometer.

“Turn left 3.2 miles.”

Okay.

“Turn left onto I-95 North.”

Done.

“Exit point one miles.”

No problem.

“Recalculating. Recalculating.”

Wait a second. Didn’t she say---

“Recalculating.”

One wrong turn, and we were lost in downtown Richmond. And not the “good” side of town, either.

Now I’d looked at a map before we began the trip so, after half an hour of turns and double backs, we finally stumbled on Cary Street, and I had a vague idea where we were. I turned off the GPS and headed west. Ten minutes later we arrived at our destination, exhausted and completely stressed. All because I trusted that wicked computer wench.

Just thirty seconds with a map, and none of this would have happened. Thirty seconds with a map, and we’d have already been checked into our room and opening a bottle of wine.

The Real Point

All of the above is just to point out that I'm the type of person who likes—no, needs—to plan ahead. To me, the phrase “fly by the seat of your pants” has never sounded remotely fun or adventurous but…well, quite painful. I won’t even sit down to write the first sentence of a book or a short story until I’ve worked out the ending in my head. I may not know every detail of the journey (whether literal or narrative), but I know I’m wasting my time if I don’t at least know where I’m going before I start trying to get there. So though it is not until this coming April, the staff at Relief has been for the past six months making preparations for quite a showing at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. And these preparations are really starting to speed up.

This year we will have a booth in the exhibition hall to sell recent and back issues of the journal. With some help from Midnight Diner Editor, Michelle Pendergrass, and authors Michael Snyder and J. Mark Bertrand, we’ll also be presenting a panel discussion during the concurrent sessions. There will be lots of games and giveaways and a circus monkey performing Glenn Beck impersonations. (Okay, I lied about that last part, but if we find one, we’ll make it happen.)

What Does This Have To Do With You?

And yet, all our careful planning aside, there are three specific things we need to get to Calvin. First, as I’ve learned since taking the Editor’s chair, what Relief and probably any journal needs more than anything is people who are willing to actually do things. In this case, that would be little things like helping to man a book table, or passing out flyers, or just spreading the word about the journal. So if you’re going to the Calvin Festival and you’re interested in being a Relief volunteer, please contact me at chris@reliefjournal.com.

Second—and this one is tough for me to even bring up—the Calvin Festival is, essentially, a book fair, so Relief will obviously need books to sell. And books cost money. The last year has been hard on businesses nationwide. Much more so for non-profit Christian literary journals, many of which have folded since the last Calvin Festival in 2008. Relief is fortunate to even still be around, and more fortunate to have completely sold out of Issues 3.1 and 3.2. But that good luck leaves us now with no inventory of our most recent books, and Issue 4.1 may not be complete by April. In short, we need to print another run of 3.2 before Calvin, and we’ll have to get on that very soon. If you are interested in helping to support Relief by donating to put a few books on our table, email me at the address above for details. Your donation will go much further than you may realize, and we will welcome and appreciate any gift, no matter how small.

Third and final, I’d like to ask you to pray for the Relief staff over the next couple months. We are volunteers ourselves, most of us working full-time jobs and then some, and then putting many extra hours of our precious little free time into this journal simply because we love it and the authors we publish. Prepping for a conference like this is a big undertaking, and it only heaps more onto a very tall mountain of things to be done. So please mention us to the Father when you can.

A Tough Few Months for Populists: The Loss of Howard Zinn and Ray Browne

Stephen Swanson departs from initial post on the meaning of “union” and various queries into whether it has “a state” regardless of speeches in order to highlight the passing of some ones who have been vitally important in shaping his beliefs about voice, art, and culture: Ray Browne and Howard Zinn.

The losses of Ray Browne, who died last October, and Howard Zinn, who died on Wednesday, provide me with a chance to write something that’s been on my mind for three months. Zinn and Browne shared a view of America starting at the bottom and working up, rather than the more traditional top-down. It’s so often that we highlight the fastest, biggest, richest, most beautiful, and most powerful things as the best, but these men made their lives’ work emphasizing the popular, average, and normal, and turning those words in assets not reasons for derision.

Ray Browne, it’s Ok to Study the Popular…

Calling Browne the founder of popular culture is a misnomer. People have been interested in and examined popular things for some time, but Browne, at least in the American academic system, pushed for the acceptance and respect for popular culture in academics and criticism. For example, his book on Lincoln, Lincoln-Lore: Lincoln in the Popular Mind, argues that understanding Abraham Lincoln as a literal, real person limits the citizen’s understanding of the role that Lincoln has come to hold in American minds, words, and ideals. And that one must examine thing of Lincoln that reach beyond facts and words of him as a man. His work and the works of those who he influenced have spread to the point to almost make what was once unthinkable, almost normal, that we can and should think about our common world and the things we “like” as a part of our intellectual lives.

Howard Zinn, We Must Listen to the Popular…

I am in no way the most devoted to Zinn of my friends, in fact one of my cohort literally made the movie, and so must leave detailed discussions to them. In almost everything Zinn wrote over the past 30-plus years, he emphasizes the need for citizens of America to seek out and actively listen to the voices of the average Americans from throughout our history and through all points on the political spectrum. During the times of my post-secondary education (1997-2007), American popular culture has trended toward the assumption of a nearly blind acceptance of authority that we agree with and rejection of those with whom our beliefs conflict. This period has shown increased reliance on pundit/mediators to break down and keep the gates of our physical, intellectual and spiritual lives, and regardless of whether one agrees with Zinn’s politics, the need for a citizenry to educate themselves on the realities of our collective histories and current place presses on my mind daily as I encounter students with huge gaps in the most basic geographical, historical, and cultural knowledge necessary to make even basic political opinions.

To Me…

The underlying assumptions in Browne and Zinn’s works revolve around a respect and need to understand those that have been labeled mundane or ordinary. These days it grows harder and harder to convince my students, and even my peers, that they have something worthwhile to learn, consider, evaluate, and express, and that they should not also look to the simple or obvious sources for these knowledges but should dig deeply and sift carefully, testing themselves and their environments throughout their daily lives and into their futures.

***

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  aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. 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.

The Old Blog Is Back and Coach Retires

The Old Blog Lives Again!

For those of you who were pining for the days of old, for the old Relief blog, I have good news: it's alive again. You can click on this picture of it to jump over there:

Sorry it took so long. I think Ian The Web Editor will be starting to move content from the old one to this site before too awful long.

Coach Retires from Relief and The Diner

So most of you already know that the Diner is good hands with the new Editor-In-Chief, Michelle Pendergrass, and I'm also retiring from Relief as well. Oh sure, I'll still be around in case something blows up, but Relief is in good hands with the crew we've built.

I'm going on to other ventures, and you can watch those ventures unfold over at CoachCulbertson.com. and TheBasisCourse.com . I'm moving into the public speaking world, and into the apologetics world, giving Christians and pre-Christians answers to their biggest questions from a more logical, philosophical, and sometimes even scientific perspective. Should be big fun.

And oh yeah, I'm still refining the Write A Book in 30 Days Video Coaching Course over at WriteABookIn30days.com.

It's been a good run, and I've learned a HUGE amount of stuff, and made connections with amazing people that I never would have been able to know otherwise. I'm deeply grateful to all of you, our staff, readers, and authors, for allowing this radically different approach to Christian publishing to exist.

Keep the dream alive, gang!

Your friendly neighborhood tech guy, Coach Culbertson

Photo Haiku Wednesday 1.27.2010

Photo Haiku Wednesday is back and there's good news! 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.

Photo courtesy of Michelle Pendergrass.

Directions:

1. Enjoy

2. Write a haiku inspired by what you see

3. Post the haiku in the comments for chance to enter

For extra chances to win:

4. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

5. Follow Quo Vadis on Twitter

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

* * *

Winner will be announce 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 single week for Twitter Super Bonus Points!

Avatar: What's the Big Deal?

Travis Griffith finally buckles under pressure to see Avatar, and shares his reaction to the film and its implications on spirituality.

My brother called it a "life changing experience."

My mom said it was "an amazing insight into spirituality."

A friend said it was just "a remake of Dances With Wolves."

The pope called it "simplistic and sappy."

The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said the film "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature."

Then Avatar won for best drama at the Golden Globes and now is a favorite at the Oscars, so I decided I had to experience the film for myself, make up my own mind and then share my thoughts with all my Relief friends. The overall take away: What's the big deal?

James Cameron, the film's director, said,

Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other and us to the Earth. And if you have to go four and a half light years to another, made-up planet to appreciate the miracle of the world that we have right here, well, you know what, that's the wonder of cinema right there, that's the magic.

Of course, that's why the Vatican says the film supports a worship of nature and neo-paganism (which obviously is bad for business).

Here's the deal: Avatar does indeed support a worship of nature. It also supports a love for one another and the importance of not judging other people, regardless of race or beliefs. In the movie, the Na'vi people have developed a vibrant, complex, and sophisticated culture based on a profound spiritual connection to their planet, one another and the encompassing spirit they call Eywa. The operative concept for the Na'vi is balance. Their lives express this balance in body, mind and spirit.

A review at movieguide.org said,

In reality, you are connected to the earth by gravity, not by spirit. The Bible tells us the earth will be burned up and there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness reigns. We are stewards of the earth and its creatures, not brothers. We are accountable to God for what we do with the resources He's given us.

The spirit world is not something in need of balance. It is a war zone where evil spirits want to drag you into lust, greed, anger, and depression while the Spirit of God seeks to rescue you from darkness.

So the hard-line Christians blast the spirit world with their "reality" of fire, fear and brimstone while lauding heaven as God's Kingdom. Pagans reject heaven and revel in the universal energy of the spirit world. Who is right?

What if the Christian heaven and the pagan spirit world turned out to be the same place behind the veil, just with different marketing here on Earth?

Yet, the Vatican tries to protect its stake in religion while belittling messages like the one in Avatar. It would have been great to see the Vatican lead a discussion towards a more loving and accepting version of spirituality instead of calling the film's relevant message "simplistic." Some might even call the type of spirituality portrayed in Avatar as more advanced when compared to the archaic beliefs and practices of Catholicism.

In the end, all Avatar asks us to do is love each other and our planet so humanity can evolve into a place of unconditional bliss. That, after all, is the same ultimate goal many of the world's religions have, they just all seem to call it something different. Catholics call it the Kingdom of God. Buddhists call it Nirvana. Avatar called it Pandora. Same damn thing, just with different paths that lead there, all as valid as the other.

As long as beliefs are based on love, who's to say who gets to claim the correct one? I say choose what feels right to you, without fear of being judged for your beliefs by someone else.

If you've seen the movie and want to share your thoughts, or care to challenge anything I've said here, I'd love to have a discussion with you.

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.

Relief News Tuesday 1.26.2010

Blog going double time in February

Starting next week, the Relief blog will be attempting to update two new posts every weekday.  One will go up around midday and the other will go up in the evening.  These new posts will feature the blogger columnists you've come to know and love--like Deanna Hershiser and Stephen Swanson--as well as guest bloggers--like Heather Cadenhead and Michael Snyder.  So be ready for double the material with the same insight and quality that you've come to expect from Relief.

Special Message

Coach "Coach" Culbertson will be putting an update on the site very soon.  It's got a couple surprises in it, so be sure to check back to see what Coach has been up to!