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.

Hope Springs Eternal (from the Superficial)

Stephen Swanson relishes this time of year: a time of awards, good intentions, and hope.  He believes that shows, like the Golden Globes, the Miss America Pageant, and the Bachelor not only fill our time but also our lives.

Amid controversy about Ricky Gervais' hosting of The Golden Globes, the possibly worst set of "talents" ever displayed on the Miss America Pageant, resulting in the crowning of the youngest Miss America ever, and perhaps the dumbest Bachelor ever (or are they the dumbest Bachelorettes?), it would be easy to give up on things.

If I add to this the new book out showing that I might be devoting my life to a complete waste of time, as students learn mostly nothing at college, then it might be even easier to just say...pooh!

But I can't.  I just can't.  I know that this season of American Idol will be a complete debacle without anyone Simon-ish to reign in the Hollywood dream factory, but I want to watch the train steadily ignoring the "Bridge Out Ahead" signage.

What's my secret?  Well, there are a couple of things.  First, there is a hope built into this sort of cycle.  There is a realization that sometimes things can surprise you.  Steven Tyler might come out tonight and tell contestants to stop dreaming and grow up.  I doubt it, but it'd be cool if he did.

The hope comes from two main sources.  First, hope comes from the succession of exciting things coming up.  We've got the playoffs in the NFL, Valentines, the Oscars, March Madness, Easter, opening day of baseball, mid-terms, and a new dedication to trying to at least work out twice a week.

There is not time to give up.  One can shift from hope to hope like when video gamers desperately lean to try to get Mario over the gap that he jumped just a pixel or two too early.  We can lean a long way before we collapse around July.  We can keep moving forward in an effort to maintain momentum.  And, sometimes it works!

Secondly, and perhaps more powerfully in the long-term, there is the comraderie of watching the oncoming, impending doom.  You can turn to the person beside you and give a look that says, "This is REALLY happening!"  The look also says, "Thank goodness we're not on that train."  And, for a second before the horror hits, we find comfort together.

I do not, obviously, mean to imply that Miss America or The Bachelor is like a train going off a cliff.  It's nothing like that at all, but it takes so much more time to explain to students and people around you about what's going on in Haiti or Tunisia than why Brad does not deserve to "win" anyone, even these women who've asked for it.  It's so much easier to give the context of Hollywood wheeling and dealing around the yearly awards than to discuss the federal budget, healthcare, or education.

Therefore, I take momentary hope and relief from the grind towards the lowest common denominators of disorganization, incivility, and violence to just complain about the sparkly, red rose on Natalie Portman's dress and gossip about how it could be that we didn't know she was pregnant. It's just easier to keep with the flow and to hit only the most recent and superficial of information, to go with the "gut".  The brain and logic only get in the way of fun and living.

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 approaches to analyzing detective narratives in terms of ethical responsibility.

Poetry Games

Can poetry be fun? Um... you do read Relief, right? Check out this post about Tweet Speak Poetry from the Books & Culture online newsletter.

Relief News Tuesday, 1.18.11

Upcoming Issue of Relief

Our new issue is really coming together. Today we're happy to give you a preview of the cover art. We'll be announcing this issue's authors and opening pre-sales next Monday, so get ready for some excellent reading!

Join the Relief Team

Yesterday Chris Fisher blogged about some open open positions on our Relief staff. If you're passionate about literature and the Relief mission resonates with you, perhaps you'd like to lend your talents to this project for a season. Click here to learn more.

New Developments (And Needs) at Relief

The Relief staff and I are happy to announce that we will soon be opening presales for our much anticipated and long awaited next issue. This issue features some wonderful new voices, as well as a few returning Relief authors, and I am truly thrilled to see it all finally coming together.

This one has been particularly challenging to bring to print, in part because we have a number of vacancies in our editorial and production staff, and it’s been something of a vicious cycle trying to fill those roles in the middle of a production phase: we’ve been working so hard to pick up the slack and keep things running that we haven’t had much time to train the new volunteers we so desperately need in those roles.

After the new issue’s release in the coming weeks, I expect to have a brief, but much needed lull, and at the top of my list of priorities for that time is to make sure Relief is fully staffed for the year 2011.

Think you might be interested in helping with Relief? Below are just a few of the positions we’re looking to fill.

Assistant Editor—will work with the Editor-in-Chief to develop production schedules and coordinate with other staff to ensure that deadlines are being met. The Assistant Editor will also have creative input on content, design, author promotion and networking, etc.

Copy Editor—edits all content for spelling, grammar, and to ensure that it is consistent with our house style guide before sending to the Layout Editor.

Relief Blog Manager—works with the Web Editor to set the weekly blog posting schedule and coordinates with Blog Contributors to ensure that deadlines are met. The Blog Manager may also be expected to write occasional blog posts and assist with building and maintaining our presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Blog Contributor (several openings)—writes on timely, writing-related topics, especially pertaining to the intersection of faith and art. Blog Contributors must be willing and able to post on a regular schedule (either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly).

Please note that these are not paid positions. We're looking for people who are passionate about Relief's mission and the literary culture in general. If any of these positions look interesting to you, send a brief 1-page resume or cover letter in .doc, .rtf, or PDF format to jobs@reliefjournal.com, and we’ll be happy to give it a look.

Note: We also will soon need to fill some positions with our sister publication, The Midnight Diner, and the growth of Relief is always opening new and unexpected needs for talented and committed volunteers. So check back here from time to time to see if new openings have been announced.

I’ve Been Here, Right?

 

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

I spent a year writing a novel about my hometown because I was pretty convinced I’d never get back there again (other than on vacations). Then I moved onto another novel and another class to take and then another and then a degree. I applied to some schools wondering not where I would end up, but if I’d even get a callback.

And then I got a job offer in San Diego, a short drive south on the Coast Highway from where my novel/childhood took place. Not surprisingly, from the time I accepted the job (which happened on a day when Milwaukee’s high temperature was 32 degrees) to the moment I pulled into Ocean Beach, my mental slideshow of home was strangely blank.

Now that I’m back, however, I keep ending up in my book. I swing past the Self-Realization center at the Swami’s surf beach and I’m walking the reflection path with my character Shandy. I buy a Big Gulp at the D Street 7-Eleven and keep waiting for Marley Bob to walk in wearing his diaper and Birkenstocks. I go out of my way to wind up the hill past the park where Tommy Mac and Troy-boy meet before heading to the beach.

This doubling of life and writing only gets weird every time it happens. The field full of greenhouses in my mind and history is now empty awaiting tracts of homes that died off when the recession hit. Moonlight Beach now has an enormous plastic playground for little kids and paved footpaths down the sandstone hill from the parking lot. The bars on the 101 have updated their facades. There is a ridiculous statue of a “surfer” that wasn’t there before.

Mind you, I didn’t expect North County San Diego to remain unchanged while I was gone. But somehow, that first attempt to write this place cemented images in my mind that I’m now having a hard time letting go of those pictures. I guess I like the warm glow of nostalgia a bit more than I thought.

Michael Dean Clark is 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 2.9 children.

Don Miller on the Church's Effect on Literature

Don Miller has a great post up this week called "Is Church Life Stifling Your Creativity?"  Here at Relief, we've often had to carefully straddle the line between offending our Christian audience (people who keep Relief alive while asking many of the questions that Miller lists) and offending our sense of craft and Relief's mission to bring the authentic to light. So check out his post and let us know what you think--we're eager to hear.

http://donmilleris.com/2011/01/05/is-church-life-stifling-your-creativity/

Mad

Ian David Philpot shares a few things he found on StumbleUpon.

If you haven't discovered StumbleUpon, then let me give you a summary of how it works: 1) go to StumbleUpon.com, 2) signup or login, 3) hit the "Stumble" button on the top left, 4) wave goodbye to the next two hours. It basically sends you to random websites. You can setup your interests and it will send you to websites that fall into those categories.

So I found out about StumbleUpon almost a year ago, and there are a few things I've found that are interesting. One of those is oneword.com. It gives you one word and you write about it for sixty seconds. It's pretty awesome. There's also a cool graphic I found that explains the sleep levels in the movie Inception. Totally helped.

But on Monday, I found a cool blog post from Max Andrew Dubinsky's website, makeitmad.com. The post, "A Gentleman’s Guide to Staying Cool in the 21st Century," and it rocked my socks off. And as of yesterday, Max added a post titled "A Gentleman's Guide to the Holidays." Another winner, but it gets bonus points for being seasonal.

So, while I'm just copping out from writing a real blog by ungentlemaningly gushing about some guy whose blog I just started reading, seriously check him out. It's like my mom has told me since I was 12, "Good writers read good writers."

A Time of Year For...

The cycle of a student or a teacher is a tough one to break. There is the excitement of the new term with new classes and books. There are new faces and routines. This time there will not be any grammar errors in my syllabi, or the teacher will not be super mean but rather fun and interesting.

Unfortunately, I find myself at the end of that cycle right in the middle of Advent. It seems unfair. Someone needs to move Christmas to September or maybe February. It is hard to look at the faces of the shining kids, decked out in their best shirt or dress, and not to interrupt them in their "pitchy" rendition of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear".

I do not want to be the Grinch, but at the end of term, that is what I am. All the potential has been spent, and it is the end of the line. I must become the Dream-Crusher. I know that it is an oversimplification. My students get what they earned.

So, it is hard to not run up the aisle and say, "Stop! Stop being so hopeful. most of you will struggle your entire lives. Yes, toys are fun, but you will grow up and lose the excitement and curiosity (or have it tested or drugged out of you). You will become bored and sad."

But then that frustration and inclination relies on a misunderstanding. Unlike what I hear on the radio and TV, and often from a variety of pulpits, my faith is not a matter of making everything ok, at least not yet. The promise of the Messiah includes with the "Joy to the World" and "Gloooorrrrria"'s a promise of the suffering and victory of Good Friday and Easter.

So, just as my terms carry with them a certain amount of sadness, nativity scenes always carry a good deal of grief in my heart as well. I used to drive by a church with a Nativity creche right in front of the building, and right behind that small, plastic baby Jesus, with his entourage, was a looking cross the size of a building.

While I can find joy and excitement at the promise of the season, the reality of the life ahead of that small baby humbles me nearly to tears. Within the cries for food and warmth at his beginning on earth were the tears of "Jesus wept.". Those small hands and feet would be pierce with nails and left to hang as he struggled for breath on the cross. Those eyes, still bleary from birth, would greet Mary in the Garden on the morning of his resurrection and be surprised that she did not know him.

That is real potential, and I wish that I could give my students just a small fraction of that.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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.

Cold Comfort

This is the first in a series of thoughts on how place shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell.

In 1993, I left  Encinitas, California – a suburb of San Diego roughly 25 miles north of the city – for what I thought would be a quick four years of college in L.A. Then four years became 17 and I accepted the fact that my hometown would be merely a conversation point for the rest of my life.

In the process, I devised a way to keep San Diego present in my life - by writing about it. The concept came to me in the middle of my first Midwestern winter (which looked a little like the one they’re having now). I can almost pinpoint the moment I decided to make the Southern of Southern California my geographical muse.

It happened on a day when they cancelled school in Milwaukee. Because it was cold. Not a snow day. A cold day.

Coming from a place where I never once had to shovel the sunshine off my driveway, this was frightening to me. They actually shut down school because there was a strong possibility of children getting frostbite while waiting for the bus.

I’d never felt homesickness as actual nausea before. Actually, it was more like creative morning sickness (at least, it seemed to feel like my wife’s descriptions of the actual, baby-induced morning sickness she was having at the time). I found myself thinking about the beach, random snapshots of winter mornings with no clouds or snow, wearing shorts when I went Christmas caroling.

At first, these memories were anti-nostalgia. They mocked me with their warm breezes and complete disconnection from my reality. A quick visit to the coast during the Christmas break only made the feelings worse when I settled into the next three months of outdoor icebox conditions.

The memories continued with the cold and it wasn’t until a friend of mine inadvertently suggested a solution that I found productive use for them. Craig and I were in a writing workshop together and I told him a story about a guy who wore nothing but an adult diaper and Birkenstocks while sitting next to the convenience shop I frequented as a kid. Craig asked why I hadn’t written a story about him and, with no good answer, I set out to do so.

But to tell diaper guy’s story I had to tell a dozen others. And with each, the winter grew a bit shorter and the reason for my being there a bit clearer. By April, the snow had melted and left behind the shape of what would become my first book-length manuscript.

It seemed odd to me at the time that a story contained in a five-mile stretch of the Coast Highway in San Diego was the product of a Wisconsin winter. Now that I’ve moved back to the West Coast (something that seems more dreamlike than less the longer I am here), it feels only natural.

I left San Diego to find it; to discover how deeply ingrained this place is in me and how strongly I feel about sharing it with others. Living here again with that new perspective only makes that more apparent.  I don’t know if I’ll ever sell that first book, but maybe that wasn’t the point.     

Michael Dean Clark is 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 2.8 children. 

Relief News Tuesday 12.7.10

Announcing Our Pushcart Nominations

The Pushcart Prize anthology is a thick volume produced every year with literary work selected from the best literary journals and small presses. We're proud to honor the following works with this nomination:

Poetry "Doubt," David Holper, Relief 4.2 "Fleeting," Jeanne Murray Walker, Relief 4.1

Short Story "Requiem for a Daughter," John Matthew Fox, Relief 4.1 "The Ice," Kenneth Steven, Relief 4.1

Essay "The Art of Work," A.S. Peterson, Relief 4.2 "Like a Spread-Eagled Cat Suspended," Sam Martin, Relief 4.2

Personal Note

A few thoughts on writing very personal essays.

My own view is that, if anything, what is wrong with most memoirs and autobiographical poems is that they don't go far enough in their confessions; they myopically fudge the details, the close nitty-gritty of self-observation. ~ Phillip Lopate, Getting Personal

My essay "Memorial Day" first appeared in Relief Issue 2.3. Recently it was reprinted in the anthology Saying Goodbye, released by Dream of Things. It's a story that no doubt has confused some people -- the writing is likely fine, having been edited capably by Lisa Ohlen Harris, but I tend to get a certain reaction. "You are so brave," I will hear. Which translates in my mind to the unasked, "Why put this out there?" Or something closer to, "Could I, should I, share my greatest failures with the world?"

"Memorial Day" contains my tale of hurting my husband, Tim, in the worst way more than 25 years ago. The story of our near divorce is woven within a weekend of remembering in 2006, when Tim and I returned to the coastal town where our disaster had happened.

For better or worse I'm someone who tells these certain things -- not all of my life's private details, not even very many -- but the intense bits I believe I have learned from. Usually in person it's after I've known you a while. Doing so in writing is a long process; often it feels like bushwhacking a rough trail between my emotion-filled memories and the sense and sensibilities of readers' minds. As creative nonfiction expert Dinty W. Moore says in his book Crafting the Personal Essay, "The private essay hides the author. The personal essay reveals." I don't wish to blather about private issues no one can relate to. Rather, I want to reveal something of the deepest truths that have invaded my being.

The eyes of the me telling my "Memorial" story now view life with a spiritual appreciation that the early-1980s me could only spot as a glimmer. Part of my continuing closure became releasing the setting of my great drama, letting it sink, so to speak, into the ocean. But there's also a part of my ongoing way of life bound up in lessons from this past event. I'm a person of faith. For me that has come to mean putting together all the evidence I can regarding truth and seeing what it adds up to. Before I royally blew it that time in my twenties, I didn't understand what mercy might look like. While I could see others' need for forgiveness, I couldn't grasp my deficit. I was basically good; I made mistakes. But bring push to shove, and, hey, sure -- it's me, remember? -- I always chose the right path, the godly way. Until, of course, I didn't. Excuses no longer held up in my own mind for my actions. I reached a clear fork in the road and to go forward with belief meant accepting that I needed something more.

Would I recommend this form of writing for very many? Not really. I should likely say run from the awkwardness. Turn to fiction; find some creative alternative. It's certainly not a mandate for Christians. The style of "confessional" writing I'm striving to do isn't bound to particular theological perspectives. Though it tends to be about finding wisdom and truth, its focus is individual, existential.

If you can go there, and if you have to, then read and write the very personal. You may find yourself involved in what the amazing nonfictionist Phillip Lopate speaks of when he says, "I am endlessly interested in the wormy thoughts and regrets and excuses and explanations that people have for their behavior. 'Confessional' is, to me, a descriptive term, not a derogatory one....Honesty has been, for me, the one lodestar to which I never stop aspiring in print. I don't say I attain 'honesty,' but the very fact that I try to reach it gives my work, at least to my own eyes, a formal thrust, a dynamic, a topography."

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.

Winter Reading

While it's not officially winter yet, December is a winter month, so it's time to consider Winter Reading. Usually I set very lofty goals for myself that I rarely achieve, but I think my winter reading is much more attainable than my 2009 Summer Reading list. It may help that I've already started reading both.

Love Without Agenda: My Journey Out of Consumer Christianity by Jimmy Spencer Jr. Some of you may remember that I mentioned Love Without Agenda (LWA) twice before--once about a wedding and once announcing that Jimmy Spencer had just released the first chapter of his LWA book online for free. Well, not the whole thing is available in eBook form. For free.

It's not just free though. It's honest. The first creative words that Spencer gets on the page, even before the preface, are, "I didn't write this book to prove to you that I'm right. I wrote this book to share with you that...you are valuable and beautiful just as you are." Immediately after that, Spencer introduces himself and the book very matter-of-factly. You know what you're getting into before the first chapter. I like that.

Oh, and it's interactive. The eBook has links to discussions, videos, and other websites. It's truly a book for the 21st century.

To download it for free, go to ebook.lovewithoutagenda.com.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger Everyone talked about this book when the movie came out. I did see the movie and thought it was good, but there was a close friend who kept urging me to read the book. And so I started it last week. And it's incredible.

What's been surprising so far is the amount of conversation about God. I'm less than 100 pages in, but there has been a lot of discussion between the main characters about free will and the role that God plays in the universe. Niffenegger seems as if these are all thoughts she's had in the past, and it reads as if she really has no answer for any of the questions that arise, only a series of steps that allow the reader to make his or her own conclusion.

Follow Up Be sure to expect a follow up blog when I've completed my reading. With my Winter Reading list so much shorter than usual, I will also see if there is more I can do with the books I have read. So expect to see a Relief Recommends in the near future along with a possible interview with one of the authors. (And by "one of the authors" I mean Jimmy Spencer.)

So what books are on your Winter Reading list?

---

Ian David Philpot is the Web Editor for ccPublishing and the Web Content Developer for Willow Creek Community Church. He recently receive 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.

Diner Recommends: Kevin Lucia

The revamped Diner blog is not quite ready for the public yet, so until then, I'll continue to post Diner related content here! * * *

The Diner recommends: Diner alumni Kevin Lucia's novel Hiram Grange and The Chosen One: The Scandalous Misadventures of Hiram Grange.

I'll admit. I didn't understand Hiram Grange at first. The fact is, he's a super cool dude with a bunch of flaws who doesn't necessarily want to do the right thing, but is kind of forced into it. (and which one of us doesn't understand that?!)  Each novel in the series is a stand-alone and Kevin's is a great (and sometimes gross) read. A little bit Lovecraft, a little bit allegory, and a lot of tension, the payoff at the end is superb.

Hiram Grange doesn't believe in fate. He makes his own destiny. That's a good thing, because Queen Mab of Faerie has foreseen the destruction of the world, and as usual... it's all Hiram's fault. He must choose: kill an innocent girl and save the universe... or rescue her and watch all else burn. Just another day on the job for Hiram Grange.

Kevin is giving a copy away here or you can purchase a copy here.

CNF in the Making

Relief reader Deanna Hershiser talks about the creative nonfiction coming in issue 4.2. One of my favorite parts of reading submissions is being swept along. Writing that lifts me is writing with a view to a room of my heart's experience, even when (as is usually the case) I haven't been through what the author is describing. I'm drawn to reading and writing essays for the joy of absorbing works made by wordy tools and lyrical recipes.

I was pleased this go-round that Relief's editors chose pieces I really like. They're stories of building boats and baking bread and attempting rehab. Seemingly insignificant facets of days -- a morning walk, an evening on the beach -- carry me into meaning, because they were recorded with patience and skill. Repeated returns to the work must have happened for each essay to become finished, ready. Such is the nature of our task. The same is true in "The Art of Work," where A. S. Peterson's craft-ful description reminds me that early in a process "it is easy to think the work nearly done. This is a deception."

As with the best writing anywhere, "finished" doesn't mean everything's tied up with a bow by the end. These essays retain questions. Their problems are ancient ones: What is art? Why strive in light of painful separations? What does perfection taste like? They give fodder for our processes, for the spiritual work each of us does to find meaning in our own little spaces and times.

I'll finish this post with a Cyber Monday notice, fitting because Leslie Leyland Field's essay for 4.2, "Making the Perfect Loaf of Bread," is already available in the artful anthology, The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God. Leslie is the book's editor, as well, and she has gathered delectables (each essay includes a recipe) from the likes of Wendell Berry, Luci Shaw, and Nancy J. Nordenson.

Here's to making our way through Monday and into a month of attempts at meaning.

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.

Your Life Story in Six Words

A tenative tweeter takes a new look at condensed modes of communication after discovering SMITH Magazine's Six-Word Memoir Project.

As a freelance book publicist, I spend a lot of time using social media to get the word out about new titles, but I have to say: I am not a fan of Twitter.  I'm the kind of person who loves thick novels like Jane Eyre, excuses run-on sentences, and had to be taught the meaning of "succinct" by my 9th grade English teacher. So 140 character "tweets" are just not my thing.

Twitter offers a wealth of information for those who wish to seek it out, but to me it feels like an overwhelming sea of data, a roar of white noise. I also can't help but feel like it's a "short-cut", a way to cut creative corners and at the same time cater to our distracted attention spans.  140 characters is just long enough to snag our interest and just short enough to amuse us but not commit us.

But this past week I discovered a project in succinctness that impressed me.  Instead of 140 characters, try six words! The Six-Word Memoir, an initiative of SMITH Magazine, challenges writers to publish their abbreviated life story on their website.  Inspired by the belief that everyone has a story and deserves a forum in which to tell it, SMITH editors created the Six-Word Memoir Project to give people that opportunity.  With a click, anyone can publish their memoir on the website.  I found myself fascinated with some of their entries...

"Never really finished anything, expect cake." -Carletta Perkins

"I still make coffee for two." -Zak Nelson

"Asked to quiet down, spoke louder." -Wendy Lee

In just six words, people all over the world are telling stories with their own unique voice.  I spent half an hour reading through these memoirs and was amazed that such creativity could be condensed into so small a space.  Some are profound, some humorous, some confessional or bittersweet, but all of them possess a genre and a plot of their own as intricate as any novel.

It takes enough skill to be able to articulate your life story, drawing out significant themes and symbols, but to boil it down to six words and still give the reader a lasting impression? It seems to me that is a craft in its own right.  Perhaps Twitter, a cousin endeavor in brevity, is a higher art than I imagined.

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.moodyfiction.com.

Friday I’m in Love

Happy Day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully you’re rested; that the Tryptophan has induced a good night (or half day and then full night) of sleep; that this Friday morning finds you anywhere but shopping at Target or Best Buy.

Don’t get me wrong: there are gifts to find. I’m just hoping you’ll find them outside the crowded box stores and teeming masses of mothers who will cut you for whatever toy is supposed to be worth its weight in violence this year.

This is no anti-capitalist statement. I’m not looking to end up on Glenn Beck’s socialist conspiracy chalkboard (though I’d wear that as a badge of honor and really be touched if he cried when he mentioned my name. I have attended churches that actively seek social justice, so I’m probably a candidate for his list, along with Olbermann’s Worst Person Ever distinction).

Actually, I’m more interested in encouraging people to go find something beautiful. Walk hand-in-hand with a spouse or partner they haven’t seen in awhile. Take their kids to the most beautiful part of the place they call home and actually stay still long enough to enjoy it. Be thankful in the ability we have, as fleeting as it may be, to spend a moment just spending a moment.

Recently, I attended a dinner with John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist and Anglican priest (and no, those are not mutually exclusive endeavors, but I digress…). Mostly, I spent the evening trying not to prove the academic stereotypes about creative writers true. But I was particularly intrigued by one of Polkinghorne’s assertions.

He said, to be a great scientist or clergyperson – and I read this as a great (fill in the blank) – one must “engage the aesthetic experience.”

In other words, really living means tasting the beautiful rather than gorging ourselves on material things that so rarely provide anything beyond the want of more material joy than they will ever provide. As a writer, these ideas are second nature. I’m just not used to hearing them from a guy who was talking about quarks in the next breath.

Which is why, I think, I’m writing this. Crass consumerism has got nothing on a sunset over the Pacific or snowfall on Lake Michigan. And while Money Never Sleeps (I’m told), it’s no substitute for the time we lose chasing and spending it.

Michael Dean Clark is 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 2.7 children.   

Happy Thanksgiving Friends

We're so grateful for you. Seriously, we couldn't do any of this without our subscribers and readers. Because of you, this adventure to bring "edgy" Christian literature into the world has meaning; these author's craft is not in vain because the work has an appreciative audience. We're all so grateful for you :)

My New Love...

Thanks to my participation in a faculty new media seminar, I have received a wonderful tool, a valuable gift to broaden my mind, an iPad. While I could write a great deal about how I benefit from the longer battery life and minimized weight, these traits do not approach the central question of the role of technology in our world and what would make me more able to provide a contribution to my communities, both large and small.

This reading for this week deals with the possibilities of rethinking how education looks and feels in the future. I know that Relief is not an education or technology venue, but as I think about the roles of writing and reading, I cannot but help to think about the impacts of these acts on those participating with informal education versus my students who engage in formal education towards unclear ends. The lack of motivation and direction of the "youth" has long been decried, but are things different now? Are there significant problems with the next generation of learning and learners, and if so, then what?

Well, in theory, the hope lies, for some, in technology, like online education, open universities, nontraditional education, and iPads, but the fears of thinkers like Jacques Ellul come to mind about the changes that the technologies work on us as we leave a "natural world" and more frequently inhabit a technological world of their own creation.

At least according to Ellul, this has a tendency to push us away from faith and spirituality, a connection to the transcendent because we become more connected with the Technique. I think that, to me, this becomes obvious in my use of the iPad. Sure, there are a lot of useful things that I do with it, including writing this post, but it tethers me while promising mobility.

I have an app for finding free Wifi spots wherever I am. We Rule and We Farm tether me in time and space as I ask, "Will I be able to harvest my eggplants and pet my llama?". I grow more and more "docked" with the technology, even as it promises freedom.

This week in my Graphic Novels as Literature class, we are discussing the graphic novel adaptation of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and what it is saying about consumption of media and the relationship between form, content, and the effect on the people engaged with form and content. This seemed, to me, to grow directly from the discussion we'd been having since we read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics at the beginning of term.

However, this is not what happened. The idea that form, content, and meaning might influence each other appeared anathema to them. "There's nothing wrong with Michael Bay films! I love them." "Yes," I answer, "There is nothing wrong with Bay as a singularity, but Bradbury is arguing about what happens when that's all there is, reaction and not contemplation." "But, what about Harry Potter?"

The fact that they struggle so much stems, to me, not so much from the ideas themselves but from the process of thought itself, and this lack of familiarity with depth, texture, and what Faber, in Fahrenheit 451, calls the "pores" in life comes from, at least in part, the technology and our assumptions about it. It will teach us, connect us, warm us, cool us, protect us, and solve our problems eventually in some lab somewhere. It's easy to see where Bradbury and Ellul might see this type of relationship between people and technology as a replacement of meaning, depth, and faith.

But, look at how cool my iPad looks on my desk with my monitor and laptop,

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain  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.