Those in Hell Can Come to Heaven

Bonnie ponders C. S. Lewis' question of what would happen if people sent to hell could visit heaven. C.S. Lewis’ controversial novella, The Great Divorce, offers a unique view of heaven and hell. In the opening of the story the narrator is standing in line for a bus in Gray Town. It is a dreary place that is perpetually twilight and raining. When the bus comes, it takes them to heaven, a bright and colorful place, totally opposite of Gray Town. The premise is that anyone who wants to stay in heaven can, but they have to speak to a person from their past that they knew on earth.

Three interactions between visitors from Gray Town and residents from heaven are examples Lewis’ social commentary of our culture.

The Apostate and the Spirit After they great each other, they begin to discuss their friendship on earth and their current locations. The Apostate asks, “Do you really think that people are penalized for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.” The Spirit asserts that they followed the academic fads of the times, stating that, “we were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes… Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, un-praying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires we reached a point where we no longer believed in the Faith…The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.” They continue to talk and the Spirit asks his friend to repent and believe in God, the eternal fact. The Apostate returns to Gray Town unable to repent.

The Man in Sexual Sin There is a man, like a ghost but dark and oily stumbling through Heaven. He carries on his shoulder a red lizard that whispers in his ear. An Angel approaches him and asks him if he would like him to quiet the lizard and the ghost replies that he would. The Angel states that to silence the lizard, he will have to kill him. The lizard’s voice becomes louder as the Angel continues to offer to kill it. He says, “I know there are no real pleasure now, only dreams. But aren’t they better than nothing? And I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams-all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent…” The man agrees to let the Angel kill the lizard and out of it comes a beautiful man restored to his sexuality embodied in the form of a great stallion. He stays in heaven to live as a resident of heaven.

Sarah Smith and the Tragedian A woman from Heaven, whose name was Sarah Smith, comes to meet her husband, whose self pity has split his soul in two. The man is now a dwarf, leading a tragedian, which is the embodiment of his self-pity. Even as his wife meets him, his is upset that she didn’t miss him since their death and separation. His wife asks for his forgiveness for all that happened when they were on earth and asks him to let go of the chain connecting him to his self-pity. Unable to let go, eventually his soul disappears and ceases to exist at all.

These three encounters lead us to ponder some interesting questions about our culture today. In the first one, the Apostate is in Hell because though he had sincere beliefs and opinions they were wrong and he was sent to Hell. Would a loving God send us to Hell just because our opinions are wrong?

In the second case, a man who struggles with sexual sin – be it homosexuality, adultery, pornography etc. be redeemed and stay in heaven?

In the third case the man’s self-pity consumes his soul so that he ceases to exist. Does self pity keep us from living?

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

There’s No Crying in Starbucks!

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skulls and Bones and Skeletons

A few years ago I spent a weekend at JPUSA, the community of Christians in Chicago who live together in the old Chelsea Hotel and call themselves “Jesus People.” And during my time there, I saw a lot of skulls.

Skulls adorn the hallways, the door frames, and the forearms of the people who inhabit them.  Five doors down from my room there was an unapologetic mural of a skeleton, squarely behind a baby gate and next to a sign that warned in loud purple Crayola, “Nursing Urijiah! Piz come back. ” All over the community, there were instances of this odd juxtaposition of life and death.

I wondered if the skulls were some kind of talisman, like some cultures have to ward off evil spirits, but when I asked one of the women on staff about their significance, she laughed. “Well,” she said, “People here are kind of obsessed with death.”

She explained to me, “The skulls and skeletons are representative of the knowledge that there’s more.  We anticipate death, in a way, because we are eager for our new bodies and the new life ahead with Christ.  We are living in a dichotomy between this world and the next, and we are very aware of that.”  So there are skulls: a reminder of our mortal decay.  She also told me that people at JPUSA tend to live in the awareness that, in the city, they are surrounded by the living dead.  They are among the spiritually destitute and dying.

I’ve often felt this restlessness, of living in the cracks between Eden and Heaven, which some call the age of the in-between, the already-not-yet of the kingdom.  It can be exasperating: is the kingdom here, or is it to come? Christ has come into our world and has promised victory over sin and death, but we still live under its affects while we wait for His return. And it can make us impatient in the waiting, while we see the world around us in such need of redemption.  We were created for eternal life, to bear divine image and have a face-to-face relationship with our Maker, but sin ruptured this paradise and now we live in the imbalance, caught between what was supposed to be and what is now utterly broken. Even the earth is a victim of this tension, “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22).  Even the earth and the roots of mountains straddle this gap between the kingdoms.

There is a dichotomy at hand. We are finite beings with eternal life or death at stake. Perhaps the reminder of our mortal frame, whether skulls and bones or just knowing that there is more to come, can lend urgency to our days to live well, to reach out to the dying, and to eagerly await the life ahead.

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

Coffee with an Old Friend

Bonnie wonders if Anne of Green Gables has anything to offer readers today. Recently I picked up Anne of Green Gables and I felt as though I went to get coffee with an old friend.  Her story is inspiring and refreshing.  Her constant upbeat attitude and imagination-run-wild made me smile as I remembered my own childhood imaginations and adventures. I feel as though such uplifting stories are harder to find these days.  Surrounded by self-help books and seminars; conferences for people to learn how to become better people and more organized in a weekend.  We are inundated with so much to remind us what we need to become.  Anne Shirley blunders throughout the story, growing up and often learning difficult lessons about love and friendship and romance.  So often we just want to find a quick fix in a self-help book.  How to date, how to be a good friend, finding romance - all these 12 step solutions.  As Montgomery comments, "We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement."  So I wonder is Montgomery right in saying that self-denial leads to things worth having in life?  Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908 and the times were different from our hectic schedules and I wonder at the relevance of this coming of age story.  As much as it is positive and uplifting I find myself wondering if I should put away my self-help books and take the hard road of life or keep seeking a better solution.

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

Love Wins: Unless God Decides You're Evil

Travis Griffith discusses the implications of Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins. Will it define a new Christianity or destroy those who believe him?

To an outsider, the Christian religion can look awfully intimidating.

Between the constant threats of judgment and the, forgive me in advance here, fanciful stories that dot the Christian landscape, it's really no surprise to hear that modern Christianity is struggling a bit.

Seriously, why would a non-Christian voluntarily join a religion where he or she risks eternal damnation in hell come Judgement Day?  Oh, right. They'd do it for the reward of a blissful eternal life in heaven sitting next to the great Mr. Christ.

Well what if damnation was removed from the equation, along with the requirement to devote life to Jesus? Or even know his name?

Whoa. That'll get some attention!

And it has, in the form of a new book from megachurch pastor Rob Bell called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne).

Followers of the Christian faith have no doubt heard of him. I have to admit the first I heard his name was earlier this week while reading a newspaper article while on an airplane coming home from a particularly sinful weekend in San Diego. The article laid out a couple of Bell's claims:

• God gives humans the choice to either live with him or without him.
• Death doesn't cut off the ability to repent and there is no infinite torment for things humans did in their finite lifetimes.
• Jesus makes salvation possible, even for those who have never even heard his name.

There are plenty of folks in the Christian world writing Bell off as a heretic and false teacher of Jesus, which of course they have every right to believe.

From the perspective of those in a situation like mine, though, Bell's vision is an incredibly refreshing, loving and accepting message that will appeal to legions of lost young people searching for some kind of spirituality.

In the trailer for his book (which you can watch here), Bell discusses a moment when a church-member said "Gandhi is in hell." That is exactly the kind of close-minded statement  that turns people off to Christianity. Gandhi, the "Great Soul" himself, is as likely to be in hell as Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a believer in the Universe and a fierce proponent of the power of love and acceptance of all humans, I believe Bell's message could be an interpretation of Christianity the world can embrace in the future: a world where everyone can go to heaven and hell simply doesn't exist.

What do you think: is Rob Bell about to become irrelevant or will his message resonate with a new generation of Christians?

***

Travis Griffith, Relief's Blog Manager, is a former atheist now exploring what a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, was published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. Travis works from his home in Spokane, WA as a professional writer.

The Inconvenience of Lent

In our American culture of drive-through coffee, instant Twitter feeds, and video on demand, we prize immediacy. We like to check our email on our touchscreen phone as soon as it hits our inbox, grab lunch to-go, and download live-streaming news. We are a nation of busy professionals, parents, and students living under the banner of “carpe diem,” driven by the idea that there’s no time like the present.

This “now” syndrome certainly has advantages, motivating us to work hard and invest fully in whatever we’re doing, but what happens when we apply our instant-culture values to spirituality?

Last month, I had a bizarre experience with communion that made me consider this question. After months of exhausting church-searching, my husband and I finally found a church where we wanted to stay. It’s a contemporary kind of church, the kind that has a graphic designer on staff and a coffee bar out in the hall, and we came because we like the teaching and the small groups. But you have to understand, the church we went to before we moved was a liturgical church, the kind with Kierkegaard quotes in every other sermon and weekly communion. So we knew we’d have to make some adjustments at our new church.

But this is what I did not expect: communion that is served before the service, an addendum tacked onto and separate from the worship service. So we set our alarms a little earlier, entered the sanctuary, and found only a fraction of the congregation had shown up. The pastor said a prayer for this handful of early-risers, and at his invitation we filed up front and received the elements, and then it was over. The whole ordeal took literally five minutes. There was no time of confession before receiving the sacrament. There was no benediction afterwards, charging us to go forth bearing Christ into the world. There was no community, only a faithful few. There was no ritual, no careful unfolding of holiness.

It was like grabbing Christ’s blood of the covenant, His outpouring for the world, in a Styrofoam to-go cup. It was a sacrament dictated by convenience, quickly squeezed in between other items on the agenda, and left out of the greater context of cosmic redemption.

The problem with an instant culture, and an instant church, is that a preoccupation with the present diminishes our ability to see seasons, to see story, to observe the unfolding of time. This is the pivotal idea of the sacrament of communion: Christ asks us to remember Him by taking the bread and wine (Luke 22:19), and to anticipate the future when we will eat and drink with Him face to face (Matt. 26:29).

As we now enter the season of Lent, we enter a time of waiting. There is no immediacy or convenience here. But there is a story of cosmic proportions unfolding, as we take the forty days of Lent to remember, to walk through the events of the life of Christ: the temptation in the desert, the agony of Good Friday, the silence and sorrow of Holy Saturday, and the joyful victory of Sunday morning.

It is often difficult for us to lay down our gadgets and agendas to just sit for a while, quiet our souls, and dwell with God. And yet, He laid down everything for us, making Himself “nothing” and emptying Himself to the point of death (Phil. 2:7-98). In his beautiful poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” John Updike writes of the agony of the cross, “Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience...” As we cross the threshold of Ash Wednesday, let us reflect sincerely and sorrowfully on Christ’s suffering for us, so that on Easter morning, our hearts will grasp the incredible joy in His resurrection.

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

A Philanthropic Mind

Bonnie talks about the history of Philanthropy. Philanthropy is not a new concept.  According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, charitable groups existed in ancient Rome and Greece.  Plato's Academy was supported by an endowment for 900 years.  Even the medieval Christian church began trusts to use for benevolent purposes. "Starting in the late 19th century, large personal fortunes led to the creation of private foundations that bequeathed gifts totaling millions and then billions in support of the arts, education, medical research, public policy, social services, environmental causes, and other special interests."

The ideas of charity and philanthropy are important in the history of humanity.  While everyone gives for different reasons, I think that people give to elevate society.  The arts, education and research all help to enrich our lives and raise our standard of living.

Charity comes from the Latin word "caritas" which means unconditional love.  Show Relief your unconditional love right now and give to a journal that is elevating the standards of Christian fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction!

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/philanthropy#ixzz1GAPib0QA

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

Relief News Tuesday 3.8.2011

#LoveRelief Update

So you may have already noticed, but our support raising campaign is really coming along. We're at 13% of our goal and feeling good about it. But do you know what would make us feel better? Giving to us if you haven't already so we can get that 13% over 20% by the end of this week.

If every person that visited our website last month gave us $1, we would have more than enough money to meet our campaign goal. If everyone who visited our website in the next two days gave us $1, we'd be over that 20% goal for this week. Just $1. That's a cup of cheap coffee. We're not asking you to donate the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee--though we wouldn't mind it. But maybe if you just gave up the cost of a cup of coffee that you'd order at that run-down diner you visit too late on Saturday nights. Really, that's all we need here.

So if you've got some spare change sitting around, think of the positive effect it would have if you gave it to your favorite edgy Christian literary journal. :)

Introducing Travis Griffith, Blog Manager

Relief is proud to announce the arrival of Travis Griffith as the new Blog Manager. Travis has blogged for Relief in the past, and we appreciate his willingness to conquer the tasks that are required in this new staff position. Travis is a Relief published author, and he has a book out called Your Father Forever. Please join me in welcoming Travis to the Relief staff.

An Encouraging Story

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

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

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

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

Relief News Tuesday 3.1.2011

#LoveRelief Update

As you can see by looking in that left sidebar, we currently have 10% of our goal met in the #LoveRelief campaign. We would like to thank those who have already given to us, but we still need more of you to step forward to help us out. Each dollar given to Relief will help us continue to put out the quality writing that we receive everyday. To chip-in, click on the button in the sidebar that says "ChipIn!"

Relief Submissions Closed; Diner Submissions Open

As of today, submissions to Relief are closed. The submission period will open up again on May 1. At the same time, submissions are now being accepted for the fourth volume of the Midnight Diner! The Midnight Diner, Relief's sister publication, is a hardboiled genre anthology with a Christian slant.  To submit or learn more, visit TheMidnightDiner.com.

Memoirs: Self-Obsessed or Sacramental?

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

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

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

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

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

The Church’s Response: Stories as Sacrament

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

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

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

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

Thankfulness

Bonnie Ponce reflects on being thankful. Thankfulness.  It is a word that we think of around Thanksgiving but recently I have been thinking a lot about being thankful.  The other day my husband and I were watching Veggie Tales, which may be strange since we don't have kids, but we were watching the episode with Madam Blueberry.  She is a very "blue" berry who is sad.  She is told that buying more stuff will make her happy but on her way to Stuff Mart she sees a less fortunate girl thanking her parents for a meager birthday dessert of apple pie.  Later she sees a little boy ask for a cool train set but is told no by his father and instead he gets a bouncy ball and he also says thank you, making an impression on Madam Blueberry, who learns to be thankful.

Seeing this short video made me think about my wish list - all the stuff I want and if I had money to burn I would probably begin to make a dent in my list.  It also made me think about what I am thankful for in my life.  Thankfulness is tough - it is so much easier to go through life, see stuff, and want it but to be thankful you have to use your brain and think of what you are thankful for.

Thankfulness is the language of love and joy.  It speaks from a heart overflowing with hope of good things to come.  With Relief I see many good things coming in the future and I hope that with the Love Relief campaign we can continue to bring great literature!

Just an ending thought on thankfulness:

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it. -unknown

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

Backwards Blogging

Pondering some realities of journal and blog. Recently I read through my physical journals. Again. Every year or so I get the urge, and usually I begin with the first journal I started since I haven't stopped. My initial post was on March 3, 1989. A Friday afternoon. We rented a house in the countryside, where log trucks woke us mornings and deer spied us from the lawn after dinner. My daughter was three, and my son wasn't quite yet conceived.

Nowadays it takes two or three weeks to finish my journals from '89 to the present. I tend to journal about reading them along the way. Always new insights shine from the book(s) about my years raising children (and a dog, cats, rats, snakes, and mice, plus one mallard duck). I wrote discouragement and joy. I penned creative ditties. I jotted a gazillion ideas, a few of which became published articles and essays.

Sometimes reading through I'm impatient with my entries on writing. Blah, blah, blah, waiting for an editor, blah, blah, this title's a winner!, blah, that rejection hurt, blah, I never expected such a nice response...

Other times I truly relish recalling the writerly process. I think it reflects the rest of my life journey well. Always the unexpected. New turns. Wow, I've really been through all that and lived to tell it.

I keep my journals in a metal file cabinet, and I imagine people reading them when I'm gone. In fact, I write with that in mind and don't share just everything (a girl's got to have some secrets). Rarely do I scratch things out. My basic post is one side of one page, and they aren't super regular. Consistently, though, they're there year to year.

After I started blogging nearly five years ago, my journal entries became fewer. Still, there have been weeks and months of needing only the grittier tools of expression: pen, ink, and welcoming blank pages.

I've enjoyed the similar yet different sensation of blogging, but I don't know how long I'll keep up my individual blog. With vague structure to my system, I find the best part of the experience reading other "journals" on the web when mine's in play. Many good words are out there.

What bugs me about blogging is the nature of review. Blogs were made to be current, newsy. Their top-down, last-first nature makes it difficult to read somebody's story from beginning to now. This may not bother anyone younger than 40. And I'm all for getting a sense of today's happenings. But I don't and won't own an I-Phone. I live without a laptop, even. Instead I stick with my journal and my even more portable Moleskine. I carry books. Blogs could give me that booky connection to other author-type people, if they were accessible from first post to last without archive manipulation. (Maybe there's an easy way to read a blog consecutively that I don't know of...? Would love to hear it.)

You're likely thinking, old woman, don't fret over the way things have become. We read the immediate, we update each other's thoughts all day, and what's wrong with that?

You're right, I'm sure. It's a preference. After all, in his day Plato complained about the new technology involving writing things down, because it would take away the experience of remembering long passages. It would make our brains lazy.

I consider, however, taking my lazy brain off the Internet, though I like the other minds I connect with. I just want to read stories from the beginning. I'd like the chance to see where some bloggers were years ago, follow the flow of their journey, and see the contrast with who they're becoming, to review and reflect on collections of the other me's I'm reading.

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.

Share a Story

Bonnie Ponce encourages Relief readers  to love Relief through donations. When I think about helping Relief through support raising, I think about my current job - support raising at a university.

Support raising, I think can have a negative stigma.  Asking for money, even for a really good cause like Relief Journal, can be awkward for people.  But the support raising process can lead to rewarding new friendships and shared stories.

Relief Journal allows authors to bare their souls through their writing and they reach a unique audience. Great questions are asked through poetry, fiction, and shared experiences. We support raise because we want people to continue to find their voice and share it with others.

I remember when I first heard about Relief.  I was a little confused by the name but after I read the mission statement, I understood that Relief was raising the bar on Christian literature and bringing a fresh new point of view.  I was thrilled to find like-minded people that wanted to write and read faith based fiction that dealt with the sinful and painful side of humanity but also the hope that we have in Jesus.  I knew that I wanted to be a part of this group, to help support raise so these stories could continue to be shared.

Women Who I Love

Stephen Swanson finally admits to loving women.  Surprise!

With this being near V-Day and the midst of the "Love Relief" campaign, I felt the need to write about something more pleasant than my anger with legislatures, both state and federal, or what's happening on the Bachelor.

I need to think positive, and you should too. Therefore, I want to write about my love for women. No, not THAT kind of love. Sure, I could talk about my wife or mom. I could write about my sisters. I could write about the wonderful, strong, and intelligent women who are my colleagues, both online and IRL.

However, there's a group of women that I respect more than any other at the moment: my students.

This is not to say that I do not have wonderful male students, friends, and colleagues. I do. They're great!

But, unfortunately for them this semester, I have some women in my classes that are not only dedicated, sharp students who make teaching fun and interesting on a daily basis but who have also overcome considerable obstacles to be there.

Take, for example, on of the students in my afternoon class. She is what we would call a non-traditional student, meaning that she is not 18-23, and I had the pleasure of teaching her in the prerequisite course. At the beginning of that term that I first had her, she struggled with everything. Not only was she frustrated with her own lack of experience with computers and word processors, she had a strong sense of self-criticism, that she just wasn't a very good writer.

This week, she not only led a discussion on her own but also takes time before class to help other students get their work formatted on the computer. She, like the rest of us, still struggles with self-doubt, but she does not let it stop her cold like it had.

I have a whole set of women with whom it is my pleasure to work as part of the dual-credit program which teaches high school students so that they get both high school and college credit for their work. They are not only smart, funny, and hardworking, but they have begun to take pride in the very value of intellectual pursuit in an environment where little value is placed, especially within their gender sub-culture, on thinking and consideration.

Now, I can only take a very small part of the credit for their evolution as students, but I can own the pride and affection that I have in them and a society where they can be what they are and become even better.

Therefore, in a new spirit of "Valentines", I urge you all to express your pride, encouragement, and...yes, love, to one another, as least for a few days in February.  We all need it.

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.

Relief News Tuesday 2.15.11

Relief 5.1 Editor's Choice Winners

Issue 5.1 is currently steaming down the line toward the first printing. This is going to be an issue to be remembered, and well worth the long wait. As promised, here is a list of our three Editor's Choice winners:

Editor's Choice for Fiction

"Catholics," by Margot Patterson

Editor's Choice for Creative Nonfiction

"Like a Spread-Eagled Cat Suspended," by Samuel Thomas Martin

Editor's Choice for Poetry

"Doubt," by David Holper

At the risk of sounding like doting parents, we are really proud of all the authors we're featuring in this issue. But a special congratulations is due to Margot, Samuel, and David. Leave a comment and make them feel extra special!

Don't Forget to Show Relief a Little Love

The LoveRelief support raising campaign kicked off yesterday, and we've had a lot of people peeking in here and on our Facebook and Twitter as a result. Unfortunately, though, we can't run a journal on website traffic alone. So please click on the "Chip In" widget to the right and help us fund Relief for Issue 5.2 and beyond!

Luci Shaw's Spiritual Erotics

A propos of our Love Relief campaign, Relief's Poetry Editor considers what it means to look with love at something while reviewing Luci Shaw's What the Light Was Like (Wordfarm, 2006). As a point of order, he wishes to say that he began this post well before Valentine's Day, but while it's become a propos of the occasion, it is notably about Shaw's "spiritual erotics" rather than, say, the canned greetings you'll get today from e-cards.

...To find some kind of essence-- the soul within the structure, taking my body in their eyes and fingers in a kind of lovemaking. I the love object.

As I read the above lines from "Life Drawing" in Luci Shaw's What the Light Was Like, I was struck by how they fly in the face of a line of postmodern thinking that is vexed by the power of the gaze. After all, seeing is almost the same as knowing in Western thought; we tend to act like seeing gives us essential information about people and things, when in fact we often see what we expect or desire to see - think of racism or sexism, but think also of your attitudes towards the elderly, or children, or liberals or conservatives. The gaze can be an extension of a mind anxious to avoid the surprises and risks of dealing with individual persons, a mind looking to see only iterations of what it already knows. The clichés of Valentine's Day come from the fossilization of our concept of love, from our inert and idealized notions of romance.

One might fault Shaw for being too complacent about her own looking in this book. One could accuse this gaze as being just as domineering and male ("They'd work to get beyond surfaces / to penetrate what lives / inside" [emphasis added]) as so many that have come before. But that would be to miss the point. As the book's title indicates, these poems are not about finding the same light everywhere she looks - about casting her gaze like a spotlight that turns all things one color - but describing "what the light was like" in specific places and persons. Shaw no doubt looks with an expectation of finding beauty, but it is a looking that at least tries to be open to the looked upon.

Thus she speaks of her looking as "loving," as "witness." These words put her looking in relationship to people and things rather than guarantee her authorial distance. In "Life Drawing," she puts herself in the object's place, imagining herself as a nude model in a drawing class. She calls the students' looking "a kind of lovemaking," and she, though naked and exposed to the ostensibly male gaze, is not merely object, nor sexual object, but "love object."

The challenge for a Christian reader and writer is to look with and bare oneself to this love. As Shaw models it, it is to believe that this love will discover the light without trying to trap it or own it.

At the same time, the co-creative capacities of art play a role in transforming the love object. In "The Redress," the speaker compares the other's gestures to a "too-large shirt" given her by someone else merely to cover her nakedness. Then she imagines undressing and redressing the other, performing a kind of makeover. But this makeover seeks to realize the fullness of the other, to provide her with "a silky second skin / that will keep growing as you grow."

If you've noticed the amount of sex and nudity, you'll appreciate my reference to a "spiritual erotics." Shaw's sexuality in these poems is as innocent and liberated as in Milton's Eden. Baptized by love, erotism becomes an electrifying pulse between and amongst people and things, truly part of our shared lives together. Its purity consists in its generosity; this love celebrates the other and seeks first to give of itself or to give honor and praise, rather than seeking sexual possession.

On this day when the word love is spoken with the casualness of a curse word, it's lovely and good to read Shaw as she luxuriates in her daughter-in-law's hospitality:

"I love the crisp word apple, with its hard and soft sounds, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the way light offers itself without measure, the way Christa reverses the Fall, slicing herself out to us-- her own tart sweetness--without reserve.

---

Brad Fruhauff is Poetry Editor with Relief. He holds a PhD in English from Loyola University Chicago and is currently an adjunct instructor in the Chicago area where he lives with his wife and 2-year old son. He has published fiction in The Ankeny Briefcase, poetry in Relief, Salt, and *catapult, and reviews in Burnside Writers’ Collective and The Englewood Review of Books.

Love Relief

<---love is... a want

We want to keep bringing you Relief Journal. In print. eBook. Hopefully in other eReader formats soon.

We want to keep publishing phenomenal new writers and fabulous established authors.

We want to remain on the radar of literary journals (with a Christian worldview.)

We want to keep offering an outlet for stories that paint a complete picture of Christ and life –- real, gritty, painful, wonderful, this-side-of-heaven life.

but

we have

a need...

Money.

We're not in (the negative.) We're thinking in proactive terms and anticipating financial needs for 2011.

We don't need a lot. Our goal is $1500.

...a want and a need brought together.

Love is--->

all about communication

If we could wildly spend unlimited amounts of cash, we'd be doing all dreamy things.

But the reality is we only have so much and it only goes so far. We are dedicated to being good stewards of the blessings we've received thus far. We're an all volunteer staff. No one gets rewarded with cash. We're rewarded with heavenly crowns. We do this because we LoveRelief. The mission, the people, and the hard work. From Valentine's Day to Tax Day, you'll be hearing from our volunteers. They'll tell you why they work so hard for so little.

The $1500 we're asking for will help to pay our printer. The US Post Office for shipping and the cost of our PO Box. Office Depot for shipping supplies. It will help pay for our web presence. Our e-junkie account so we can sell you copies online. Our bank fees. It will help pay our yearly fees to the government.

It will help us start 2011 in confidence. Knowing that we'll have fundage in the bank allows our staff to focus on what we consider the important thing: Excellent stories.

We're communicating our need.

We're hoping you LoveRelief enough give a little so that we can continue giving you what we love--this journal.

*Please use the Chip In widget above to show your support.

The Ideal Writing Spot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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