Tag Archives: writing

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Friday Link Love

TONS of links this week!

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Grains of Sand Magnified 250 Times

Beautiful stuff. (see right, click the link for more)

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Five Ridiculously Easy Ways to Unblock Writer’s Block

I especially like “From A to B in 5 Semantic Fractures.”

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Soldier Leaves Much Bigger Legacy Than ‘He Was Gay’ — CNN

Lovely story about Andrew Wilfahrt, who is first known gay soldier killed in war since the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

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Anne Lamott: The Habit of Practice: Faith and Leadership

What do you do when perfectionism, vanity, self-loathing and projecting are wearing you down? The writer talks about what she has learned from tennis, faith and writing to deal with these “demons.”

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Looking Back and Moving Forward–Gathering Voices

I panicked in the middle of Puget Sound, breathing heavily, shaking erratically, shoveling warm pieces of salami and pecorino into my mouth before I passed out.

Erin’s post touches on a lot of the same stuff I was feeling/thinking on the mountain.

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And some audio/videos:

A “Modesty Manifesto”–David Brooks

Audio of Brooks at the Aspen Ideas Festival (how did you get that gig, BTW?). Brooks starts about 6 minutes in and deals with “modesty and how a lack of it is making it much more difficult to solve our nation’s problems.” I found myself quibbling with some of his ideas and stats but he makes a compelling case.

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Beautiful Oops–Barney Saltzberg (YouTube)

Love this whimsical book! Such a sweet way to think about the “oopses” in our lives.

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Taking Imagination Seriously: Janet Echelman (TED)

Janet’s art is luminous and beautiful and (in keeping with the link above) came out of an “oops.”

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Pete Rollins at the Wild Goose Festival

“I would love to see communities which are more like the singer-songwriter, where the liturgical space reflects our suffering in a way that we can confront our brokenness, confront our darkness, work through it, and give it the space to breathe. Because if we do not give it space, it will come out in other ways. It will come out in hatred of ourselves or hatred of others.”

We missed this presentation Sunday morning because we got on the road early. Nice to have a chance to see it. I am a hopeless Rollins groupie.

 

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Ten on Tuesday

A rich lather of lateral thought, all wrapped up in a top ten list:

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1. Click here for my first byline with Religion Dispatches! (And welcome to any RD readers clicking over here.) We Presbyterians were even the lead story for a brief shining moment, but alas, that Michele Bachmann is an unstoppable force of nature!

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2. I’m also excited to be writing the Fellowship of Prayer for Lent 2012 for Chalice Press, my publisher for The Sabbath Year. I’m thankful for the opportunity to get my name out there just a few months before the book will be released… because I know that people are very attuned to the authors of those things, aren’t they? Aren’t they?!

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3. We had no water in the house when we got home from our vacation. This was the second time in less than a week that I’ve gone without water (the pump that services several cottages in Maine was hit by lightning and had to be replaced). It really is a gratitude reset. Even when we were without water last night, we were better off than a significant percentage of the planet: we have a great plumber, and neighbors who let us fill our camping jugs during the meantime.

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4. I’m going to follow up Mt. Washington with Old Rag this fall.

There’s something very powerful about climbing up something tall and finishing a book manuscript in the months leading up to my 40th birthday, coming up in January.

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5. What kids of different ages do upon coming home from a long trip:

three year old: gets reacquainted with the cars and trucks he left at home

five year old: goes with her dad to liberate the cat from the vet

eight year old: calls BFF, plays piano

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6. I finished three books during my trip:

Bossypants by Tina Fey: So, so funny. So, so good. Here’s a great review.

Jesus, My Father, the CIA and Me by Ian Morgan Cron. A funny, touching and exceedingly well written memoir about the author’s father, who lived a double life as a CIA agent and was a raging alcoholic to boot—as is Cron himself, though now in recovery and an Episcopal priest.

Angels at the Table: A Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat by Yvette Alt Miller. I’ll be reviewing this for the Englewood Review of Books.

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7. Yesterday morning I discovered in my Google Reader two distinct posts about fear, from Seth Godin and Donald Miller. I’ve been thinking about fear ever since my hike. Going up Mt. Washington is a pretty minor thing on the fear scale, but there definitely is some danger involved. Tuckerman’s Ravine is rather steep and many of the rocks were slippery from a recent rain. I found it easy to get into a fearful place, especially as I plodded up the mountain while people lightly picked their way through the rocks all around me, breathing easily as they told each other their life stories. (Seriously. VERY little heavy breathing from the tanned and toned set. We hate them.) About ten minutes after my boot self-destructed on the way up, we ran into a family with a ten year old girl coming down, and the girl had just bruised her leg scrambling down one of the steep, slippery sections. She was crying in that “I am DONE” sort of way. I hear ya sister.

But you can’t stop.

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8. I sure would love Google+ to really take off so I can get off of Facebook once and for all. Here’s a slogan I proposed last week: “Google+. For people who want 47% less sleaze in their social networking company.”

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9. The fear thing is powerful on many levels right now, because our congregation is discerning what to do with our manse, and one of the options is to renovate it for use as affordable housing as part of the campaign to prevent and end homelessness in Fairfax County. This feels like one of those heck-yeah-Jesus things and is SO much more compelling and life-giving than simply fixing it up and renting it out for $2500 to help us pay our bills. In terms of living a good story, a gospel story, there’s no contest in my mind. But it’s hard. And the anxiety and fear over money may be too great. Or it may not be ours to do for reasons having nothing to do with fear. So it’s feeling a bit like picking our way over Tuckerman’s Ravine.

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10. I leave Sunday morning for Minnesota, where I will spend a week writing at the Collegeville Institute. Again I am filled with gratitude—thankful for the opportunity to return to that lovely place for a second year, grateful to my spouse for supporting me in these damn fool idealistic crusades, and heck, grateful to the inventors of Skype and FaceTime so I can see my kids’ beautiful faces each day.

Photo: the view from my apartment in Collegeville last summer.

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Writing to God: 40 Days of Praying with My Pen: Book Review

Writing to God: 40 Days of Praying with My Pen by Rachel Hackenberg

I’ve only dipped into this book briefly—I figured I’d do it during Lent—but it looks promising and manageable as a daily exercise. My life just isn’t configured for daily meditations that are long and cumbersome. This book, I can do.

Hackenberg provides an original daily prayer, followed by a scripture passage and a prompt for your own written response. The material is thoughtfully presented, and just plain thoughtful. One of the prompts is to write words of affirmation to oneself as if from God. That’s a nice twist and was a holy experience for me.

Hackenberg is a pastor in the United Church of Christ and a mother. Her blog gives you a good sense of what to expect in the book. Her writing is clean, declarative and free of churchy pretense. (For example, the first day’s entry is called “Caffeine.” Nice.)

This book comes from Paraclete Press, and I’m very excited about their “Active Prayer Series,” which includes this book and Sybil MacBeth’s Praying in Color. More, more!

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Friday Link Love

A few choice tidbits I ran across this week:

Why You Should Use Emoticons in Your E-mails

Until keyboards can actually perceive the emotional content of our digital messages (not so far off!), emoticons may be the simplest method of clarifying tone. I’ve had to let go of my own perception that emoticons are silly. They may currently be our best tool for elevating the emotional clarity of digital messages.

Do you agree? Hmm, let me think… :-\

The Science of Heartlessness

We’ve all encountered people with such divergent attitudes toward suffering — and it often brings up a rather prickly question: Why are some of us bleeding hearts while others have hearts of stone? Science actually provides us with a number of clues.

I blogged some time ago about the ways that religious communities might encourage deeper generosity. This article is a different spin on a related topic, but looking from the point of view of brain chemistry and evolution. Fascinating stuff.

Are Goals Necessary?

The author, Chris Guillebeau, asked this question on his Facebook page. My favorite response from one of his readers:

I’m reminded of Spike Milligan’s snippet of wisdom: “We haven’t got a plan so nothing can go wrong!”

That will preach, my friends.

Guillebeau’s conclusion:

I’d never say that everyone needs to set goals, but I do notice that some of the objections to goal-setting always focus on “living in the present” and not letting life pass you by due to being too focused on goals.

My view is that the odds of life passing you by are much higher if you have no plan for life itself—which is why I like Barbara’s analogy [see the original post]. You’re not going to miss anything! In fact, you’ll probably have the opportunity to give and receive more than you would otherwise.

Agreed.

13 Writing Tips from Chuck Palahniuk

I don’t write fiction so it doesn’t all apply to me, and I’m not sure I agree with it all anyway, but an interesting read nonetheless… and a good sendoff for next week. Speaking of which…

So, before Christmas I wrote a blogpost about gift-giving and the fact that experiences often make people happier than the accumulation more stuff. Apparently Robert took that to heart because for my birthday he presented me with a “coupon” for a writing retreat at a place he found on the James River. There is something in it for Robert, of course—as he put it, “It’s in my interest to help you get a good start on this book, so as to minimize the craziness around deadline time.”

I just laughed.

Still, I am elated… and filled with gratitude to have a spouse who is so supportive of the stuff I do.

I might toss some stuff up here to prime the pump next week, but otherwise… see you in a while.

Image: Where I’ll be. Gratitude…

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What’s Your Preaching/Worship Planning Process? Here’s Mine

Yeah. Right.

I love hearing how other pastors put sermons together. Advance planning or seat of the pants? Or something in between? Writing on Thursday or Saturday night? It’s all good.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me to hear that I have a process. I don’t follow it slavishly and it probably works as I intend it to less than half the time. But the Spirit works as much through intentional planning as the spontaneous lightbulb moment. This I believe. (In fact, I think planning makes space for the lightbulb moment to happen, but hey, I’m a J on the Myers-Briggs, I would think that.)

I’m doing a lot more series these days, and about 6 weeks to 2 months before the series begins, I’ll set aside a few hours or a half-day to plan. I put together a packet of papers with one page for each Sunday/topic/text. There is space on the paper for me to brainstorm specific items:

  • resources I already have for this text (papers from the Well preaching group I’m in, maybe a sermon from the last time I preached the scripture)
  • images
  • quotes (e.g. for the bulletin cover)
  • spiritual practice/insert—I’ve been doing half-page study guides for people to take with them and use the following week. These include questions, things to try, additional quotes. I’m not sure how sustainable this is long-term, and I don’t do them for every series/season… but I think they add a lot. They also give me a place to put stuff that didn’t make it into the sermon :-\
  • liturgy
  • hymns

I keep this with me at all times, so as I read stuff in the news, or ideas occur to me, I can capture them on the sheet. I also look through my Evernote files to see if there is material there that I can use.

Then this is what I do each week… ideally. *ahem*

  • Tuesday is a big sermon/worship day. I read the scripture text, jot down some notes, and figure out what is stirring within me. I re-familiarize myself with what’s in the planning packet. I also write the order of worship, but hopefully I’m not starting from scratch, thanks (again) to my planning packet. Lately I’m also writing the bulletin insert, called the GPS (grow pray study), on Tuesday. Getting it done on Tuesday means our part-time administrative assistant can copy and collate it in the bulletin, so it saves me time to get it done early, but this makes for a very full day.
  • Wednesday: I create a .doc for the sermon. That’s all I do that day for worship. But having a document ready, with the header and the text and all that jazz, is the equivalent of parking downhill when it comes to actually writing on Thursday. I will also do a little reading based on the previous day’s work—commentaries, Well papers, etc. But no writing. This is a blatant psychological trick I play: I don’t usually feel like sermonating on Wednesday, but Surely I can get the document set up in Microsoft Word! That takes five minutes! And read this article? No problem!
  • Thursday: I write a sermon draft. My goal is not necessarily to have it done, but to reach a place that if [random cataclysmic occurrence] happened over the weekend, the sermon is basically preachable.
  • Friday I finish the draft and write the prayers of the people. I also choose the hymns for the following week, which I give to my organist on Sunday so he has a week to prepare.
  • Saturday is our family’s Sabbath day so I do my level best to have the sermon done on Friday. That makes for some late Friday nights sometimes, but I prefer those to late Saturday nights.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook today that she’s “getting it all done 30 minutes at a time” (paraphrased). I say Amen to that. Preaching is a huge task and a humbling responsibility. The perfectionism and the immensity of this weekly task can be crippling for me. So that’s why I break it into chunks. And I know I’m not alone.

So how do you do it? Non-preachers, how do you “chunk” your work?

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I’m in Catapult

A friend turned me on to catapult magazine several months ago, and I’ve enjoyed their take on intriguing topics such as “branded,” “reset,” and “legacy.”

From their website: catapult magazine is an online publication that releases biweekly thematic issues on the implications of following Christ in and through all aspects of culture.

Good stuff.

I’m very pleased to have a piece in their latest issue, Staying In. It’s an elaboration on something I blogged about a few weeks ago—that meeting I missed.

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Reverb #18-20

I’m way behind, so I’m going to be quick.

December 18 – Try. What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it?

Like a friend of mine, I feel I’m starting to repeat myself.

Big answer I’ve already addressed: writing a book.

Smaller answer: I really wanted to take a dance class at the rec center, and had it narrowed down to belly dancing and salsa. (Why not?) But the schedules and locations were not ideal. I’d still like to do this, and Tiny Church is light enough on evening meetings that I think I could pull it off, but it’s a disruption to the family rhythms. I do a lot of self-care stuff already; I don’t feel a lack of me-time. So maybe it’s a matter of letting some more intellectual me-stuff go to make room for a more embodied experience.

December 19 – Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?

I wrote a lot about my dad this year, and that was healing. Dad died suddenly almost 8 years ago, and I have always felt cheated out of saying goodbye. I think I’d convinced myself that the long goodbye was better, because at least there could be closure.

Well, I still think the sudden death sucks in a lot of ways, but I’ve walked with enough people this year to see how very agonizing it is to see someone linger for a long time. The truth is, the human body is damn stubborn, and sometimes keeps on trying to live past the point of mercy. I also think I had put more faith in the power of palliative care than is really appropriate.

Maybe the best we can do is to live as if each day could end with a goodbye. I’m not saying we tearfully pour our hearts out to our loved ones—every day—but that we live and love such that, if the unthinkable happened, we would at least have the peace of knowing that our dear one knew he or she was deeply loved.

In 2011 I would like to do my best to avoid drama and rank negativity, whether it’s in Internet blog comments, cable news (which I don’t watch anyway) or in person.

December 20 – Beyond Avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

Aside from the dance classes, I actually can’t think of anything I avoided… which may say less about my courage and more about the modest nature of my dreams.

This is a little off-topic to the question, but I’m going to do a lot more writing on paper next year, as opposed to the computer. I’m curious to see how the experience of writing is different this way. I’ve bought a couple of journals for specific purposes. One is for Sabbath book stuff. The other is a new thing I’m trying in which I’m going to write one sentence about each of the kids each day. Just one sentence. I’ve already started this and it’s very fun. It takes five minutes before bed and I think it’ll be fascinating to look at the course of a year. (Like many of my ideas these days, this one comes from Gretchen Rubin.)

It’s also a place to put my kid one-liners so that Facebook doesn’t have to be the default.

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Reverb—December 1 and 2

I’ll be reverbing this month—find out more here. I’m a day behind so here’s two days’ worth.

December 1′s prompt: One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

  • 2010: Adventure. I made it through my first year in a new call and visited some new countries; that’s plenty of adventure there. Also, our family weathered a significant job change for Robert. I became a swim team mom, I let go of several writing commitments and created a huge empty space (some might call it a vacuum), which is a scary unknown space for me… and that space got filled up with a book contract.
  • 2011: Fruitful. I like that word better than productive—more organic, more process-oriented. Now that I have the contract, I have to write the darn book, so 2011 better be fruitful! Also, next year we will pass several kid milestones: two children in elementary school, getting rid of our last carseat and stroller, and finally finishing up with diapers, which have been with us for eight long years. (Yikes.) We’re also beginning a visioning/transformation process at our congregation, which will bear lots of fruit, I think.

December 2′s prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

Random Internetting, and not easily. But I am working on these boundaries all the time.

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Blue Room Miscellany

1. I decided to decline the invitation. I composed the same note that I did yesterday, and for whatever reason, today it felt right to hit ‘send.’ I passed along some names of folks who I thought would be good for the project, which felt like a small way of living more abundantly.

Also, I have realized in this process and not articulated adequately, what a ‘quality problem’ this is to have. It’s very humbling to have people solicit your ideas on a project. I’m always a bit flummoxed by it. I mean, I’m just this gal…

2. The Writing Revs met today at Starbucks, and in case I had time to kill before or after, I brought the book Stealing Jesus, which our church book group is reading this month. While in line I began thinking about how with Kindle, we won’t be able to see what one another is reading, in coffee shops, on the Metro, etc. Kindle and other e-readers will give us some privacy, but will it come at the expense of the serendipitous encounter?

I have a friend who is always meeting interesting people simply by bringing her Bible or other religious books to the local coffee shop—people are curious and will strike up a conversation. I admire this friend for her ability to collect stories and interactions—she is a magnet for quirkiness. I am not, for whatever reason—temperament, a more reserved vibe—but sometimes I’d like to be. I feel like I’m shutting myself off from some cool stuff by projecting an “in my own little world” vibe. (Other times, I rationalize that I live an accessible life as a pastor and a mother of young children, so I’m entitled to be left alone at Starbucks.)

Not more than two minutes after having this thought, a woman came up to me, curious about my book. She’s a clergywoman in the UCC who does a lot at Washington National Cathedral. We struck up a short conversation and she gave me her card. How about that! A small bit of succulence in the stodgy old ‘burbs of DC.

3. Just as I admire my friend the story magnet, I also admire those neighborhood mothers who leave enough margin in their schedules that they can let their kids linger at the playground following preschool, or collect random neighborhood kids at their house. I aspire to be one of those women with the open door and the sauntering gait, who give their children an unhurried childhood. The best I can do is to try not to shoo and nudge them too much as we chuff along from place to place.

Today I got a glimpse of a different way. I picked up Margaret and her friend A from preschool and arrived at A’s house per my carpool duties… but his mother had been detained and was 20 minutes away. “Whatever works for you,” she said apologetically when I called her, “You can wait there, or go to your house, whatever.” I’d been in meetings all day and was feeling pressed, but I made a decision not to be bothered. I wish I could say that mental adjustment was easy. But we came back to our house for an impromptu play date, and by the time she arrived, we were playing on the porch with the bubble machine.

Each of these small events gave me a frisson of energy. Have you experienced delight in something small, today or recently? Share in the comments.

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The Spirit Catches You (Book Review)

I attended a writing conference/retreat at the Collegeville Institute in Minnesota this summer, and our writing tutor handed out a list of recommended books called “Why Pick Up That Book and Read It?” The books were organized into categories such as “to be transported to a new world” or “to realize you’re not alone.” Anne Fadiman’s 1998 book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down was under the heading “to see the world in a new way,” and it certainly fulfills that promise.

I had read Fadiman’s book of “familiar essays” called At Large and At Small and was enchanted by her precise, winsome prose. She takes on topics as diverse as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and ice cream in a charming blend of memoir and research-based journalism. It works. In The Spirit Catches You, Fadiman tells the story of a Hmong family living in California who have a daughter, Lia, who has life-threatening epilepsy and the battle between the American doctors who are treating her and her Hmong parents, who have their own understanding about the disease and cultural norms.

Fadiman’s strength is the ability to toggle between detailed medical information about Lia and a sweeping history of the Hmong people in a deft, artful way. She clearly cares about everyone involved and lets their humanity shine through, both in their mistakes and their triumphs. I found myself rooting for whomever she was focusing on at the time; when offering the doctors’ perspective I would think, of course they need to do everything they can for Lia, whether her parents fully understand or approve of what is going on or not. This is a life-or-death situation. Then in the next section I would feel her parents’ intense frustration at not being fully informed of what is going on, their own great wisdom and pride which are rooted in their culture, and their obvious intense love for Lia. The ending testifies to that love and is both inspiring and heartbreaking.

These folks have a poster that features this quote:

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.”

-Wade Davis

Fadiman’s book embodies that idea in a deeply complex way. There are no pat answers here. This is a tough topic and a sad book in many ways, but well worth a read.

Photo: Lia and her mother.