Our Light Burden
My friend Michael Bischoff gave a talk recently in which he publicly declared his participation in the “cult of personal development.” Like so many of us, Michael strives to be a better person, a better leader, and to help make the world a better place. What could be wrong with that? Of course, a lot of good springs from the effort to be good. But Michael illuminated some of its shadows: When we’re working hard to improve our selves or world, we don’t appreciate what is. As Michael’s daughter said, “Dad, you always try to change other people’s personalities.” Ouch, Michael responded. His daughter is perfect, and he knows it. Striving also traps us; there’s no end-point at which we’re finally good enough. When we try to address social ills through the lens of personal development, we address on our personal relationship to the problem rather than the problem itself. …
A Fresh Look at Writing as a Spiritual Practice
Karen Hering’s new book, Writing to Wake the Soul: Opening the Sacred Conversation Within, hits the bookstores next week, and I want to encourage everyone interested in writing as a spiritual practice to get a copy. In her role as literary minister at a Unitarian Universalist congregation, Hering developed what she calls Contemplative Correspondence, a practice of writing from prompts around theological themes like faith, prayer, sin, grace, and redemption. If this sounds heady or dull or too religious, hold your horses. This book is far more than what you might expect. Karen’s reflections and prompts are meant to exercise our metaphor muscles—our capacity to make connections between disparate images or ideas, and therefore our ability to communicate across differences, resolve paradoxical problems, and relate to mystery. Her choice of tough theological terms is deliberate. We need to reclaim the language of mystery; we need to remember language’s capacity to…
Communal Faith and Climate Change
Every day I become more convinced that the pressing social justice issue of our times, the single most important problem that individuals and congregations and governments need to address, is our warming planet. And every day I’m more convinced that an essential (perhaps the essential) source of a solution rests in our faith—not necessarily the Christian faith, although that will do, but humanity’s faith in the sacred wholeness of creation. Since my brand of faith is Christian, look with me through one Christian lens at one solution. Krista Tippett recently interviewed Nadia Bolz-Weber, the pastor at The Church of All Sinners and Saints, an emergent Lutheran congregation in Denver, Colorado. Bolz-Weber said, “I don’t think faith is given in sufficient quantity to individuals… I think it’s given in sufficient quantity to communities.” She gave a few examples: Some people think they can’t say the Apostles’ Creed because they don’t believe…
The Story about the Story
I’ve known for a while and repeatedly told my students that writing continues to offer us invitations to spiritual and personal growth even after we’re finished. Publishing and publicity can become opportunities to deepen our integrity, expand our communities, and understand the world more accurately. Of course in the mess of book production and the exhaustion of marketing, it’s easy to lose sight of this. That’s why I keep returning to Seth Godin, who manages to stay steady, full of integrity, and intent on doing good in the world. The idea of his I’ve been chewing on lately is that marketers do best to create a story around their product, and to connect that story with the community that most needs it and is most willing to talk about it. We authors usually flinch when someone refers to our work as a product, but, hey—once a book is in the…
Write, or Be Written
Here’s what excites me about our climate crisis: It invites us to change. “We face a choice that is starkly simple: We must change or be changed,” writes Wendell Berry. “If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse.” Okay, so the alternatives are either exciting or terrifying, but still: Dire circumstances give humans the opportunity to create something new, and this fills me with hope. Berry’s words remind me of a novelist friend who signs her books, “Write, or be written.” I don’t think Elissa’s trying to make authors out of her readers; rather, she’s suggesting that everyone has the choice to accept the stories our culture tells about us or create our own. The climate story our culture has written is dictated by consumption and profit at the expense of the earth and the poor who live close to it. It’s…
The New Market–with thanks to Seth Godin
Because I’m gearing up to market my first novel, Hannah, Delivered, in a bit less than a year, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what it means to put creative work into the world. Most writers I know, myself included, assume their job is to write. Writing is where we’re creative. Writing is what we love. Once done, we “succeed” by landing a publisher, we’re rejected by or we reject the publishers and print it ourselves, or we contentedly or discontentedly stow the manuscript under the bed. Because I’m gearing up to market my first novel, Hannah, Delivered, in a bit less than a year, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what it means to put creative work into the world. Most writers I know, myself included, assume their job is to write. Writing is where we’re creative. Writing is what we love. Once done, we “succeed” by…
Metamorphosis
Three weeks ago, our neighbor brought Gwyn a tiny monarch caterpillar crawling on a milkweed leaf. We made a home for the little guy with an ice cream bucket and mosquito net, and watched in amazement as the leaf got gnawed and caterpillar poop appeared. In no time flat our very hungry caterpillar was huge with gorgeous yellow and black stripes. Then, overnight, it was gone. A stunning emerald chrysalis hung from the net. This whole transformation feels tender and critical given the fact that the monarch population was decimated this year by heat in Mexico—that is, by global warming. We’re careful with our little fellow. And it’s got me thinking about change. Why is change so hard? Of course, the caterpillar’s transformation is a natural process, just like Gwyn’s growing up and my growing old, but real change, the kind that can stop global warming or sober us up…
A Midwestern Identity
What does it mean to be a Minnesotan writer? In this age of placelessness—sitting in a Starbucks or Motel 6 or airport lounge or on a Facebook page, you could be anywhere—even our literature is without landscape or regional identity. Especially literature from the Midwest, which, when compared with New York City writing or the work of Southern writers seems bland in its vernacular and hard to locate. “There is nothing worse than the writer who doesn’t use the gifts of the region, but wallows in them,” wrote Flannery O’Connor, the ultimate advocate for regional voices. “An idiom characterizes a society, and when you ignore the idiom, you are very likely ignoring the whole social fabric that could make a meaningful character.” What is Minnesota’s idiom, our social fabric? Many years ago I read an essay by David Mura in The View from the Loft; it struck me so much,…
Peeling the Onion
So I’m happily reading the Land Stewardship Project newsletter when I come across this passage, about a tribally supported agricultural organization: Growing food in the community and getting people to consume it are different things. That’s why Wozupi provides classes for the public throughout the year on not only food production, but preparation and preserving. “We’re recognizing that a lot of our TSA members may not have ever peeled an onion before,” says Yoshino. I feel punched in the gut, not unlike receiving the news that the monarch butterfly population was decimated by hot weather this year, or an earlier LSP article that mentioned how many grade school kids are surprised to learn that carrots come out of the ground. Never peeled an onion?! This is tragedy of an order I can barely comprehend. Because if you’re an adult who’s never peeled an onion, chances are good you eat a…