antler

A Reflection on Berry

nicholas — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:12:25 +0000

I hadn’t read Boethius or Petrarch in 1967. If I had, I may not have been so taken, when one late spring afternoon, I read Wendell Berry’s two-sentence poem “To Think of the Life of a Man.” I read it standing alongside the shelf of literary journals in the Johns Hopkins bookstore. I had come to be there by a circuitous route. I had dropped out of college, been rejected by the draft, returned to college, married and with my wife risked all we had to attend the Hopkins Writing Seminars on the chance that I might become a poet and novelist. Each morning my wife went to her job and I went to my desk. Afternoons I went to the library or the bookstore where I read but rarely bought. In nearby Washington, the first protests against the Vietnam War disturbing the public and the Johnson administration, but their immediate effect on me they might have occurred a continent away. Still, because my fellow students were often involved, I was aware of the violence of the feelings, and when I read:

In a time that breaks
In cutting pieces all around,
When men, voiceless,
Against thing ridden men,
Set themselves on fire

I saw in my mind the flaming Buddhists monks and cringed at the reminder of the recent self-immolation of a young Catholic CO. These self-destructive actions seemed to me a strange way to call for peace. I was sure that though the way to peace might require sacrifice, it did not require violence against the self. What was needed was then (and is still needed in this the age of Afghanistan) is an example of wholeness, a better way of living.

I stood to attention as I continued through the first sentence, which Berry completed with a thought similar to mine. (Or is mine similar to his having grown out of my having lived over forty years with his poem in my imagination?) He wrote of the difficulty imaging a whole person at place in the world.

As much as I resonated with the first sentence, it was the second that burned itself into my mind so that I later found I had without any conscious effort memorized the poem. Berry set down a simple declarative statement:

…having thought of it [the life of a whole person]
I am beyond the time
I might have sold my…
…voice and mind
to the arguments of power…

I knew, standing there in the bookstore, that I had stepped across some divide. Still, for many years, recognizing the force of the poem, I struggled with the movement from the thought of wholeness to an obligation to seek it. I did not understand the source of my sense of moral obligation. Some years later I asked Berry about that movement. He answered, “I don’t think my use of the word “whole” in that poem was fully conscious—as, of course, it isn’t yet. Now it seems a matter of wonder to me that we humans, in our fragmentariness and imperfection, could have conceived the desire to become whole. Or that, troubled and violent as we are, we could have imagined peace. We have heard, anyway, on good authority, that we are made whole by faith and that our peace is in God’s will—which means that we can’t by our own doing, be whole or at peace. And so… I was defining myself as a human being in terms stricter probably than I realized. But the terms, and the direction, were right. And the change the poem records, I still think, is the right change.” Berry’s answer deflected me from my inclination to read the poem as an argument. I read it now as a testimony.

Recently, however, I’ve been rereading Francis Petrarch’s My Secret Book. In that imaginary dialogue with St. Augustine, Petrarch laments his unhappiness and is told in no uncertain terms by Augustine that his unhappiness is his own fault, that he is unhappy because he prefers unhappiness to change. Over three days of conversation Augustine slowly strips Petrarch of his treasured self-deceptions. At the beginning of the third day, Augustine tells Petrarch, “Anyone who wants a certain result, but is quite happy with the absence of what would bring it about, has obviously no understanding of either causes or effect” (translator, J.G. Nichols). Desire itself is the cause. Desire for wholeness is built into the human character.

If we are to realize the fullness of our nature as beings created in the image of God, then the obligation is clear. We must begin the work of wholeness. The alternative is to cease to exist as Boethius argues in book IV of The Consolations of Philosophy. Lady Philosophy tells Boethius “It seems puzzling, perhaps, to say that we should say of evil men—who are the majority of mankind—that they do not exist. But that is how it is. The evil are, indeed, evil and I can’t deny that, but I do deny that they are purely and simply evil. You would say of a corpse, for instance, that it was a dead man, but you could not call it simply a man. And for evil men, the same thing holds, that they are evil, but not simply evil. Those things exist that maintain their order and nature, and whatever falls away from this abandons its existence, which depends on its nature” (translator, David R. Slavitt).

Berry’s little poem stands in a long tradition. It is both testimony and argument. The movement from its first to second sentence is faith. It source is nothing less the desire of the Creator to know us as he made us.

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Info about John Leax can be found at wonderful Image Journal‘s website. His newest book is “Recluse Freedom” available from WordFarm.

making manifest round-up #1

dave — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:55:10 +0000

in case you’ve missed the buzz, here’s just a few things being said about “making manifest: on faith, creativity, and the kingdom at hand”…

posts by bloggers…

teddy ray

glynn young’s ‘faith, fiction, and friends’

addie zierman’s ‘how to talk evangelical’

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interviews with harrity…

sojourn arts + culture

rock & sling

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posts by harrity…

five rules for believing writers at forma

Harrod & Funck

nicholas — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:35:00 +0000

The now disbanded songwriting duo Harrod & Funck played in a now defunct coffee shop called The One Way Café in Morgantown, West Virginia.

These days I would avoid an establishment called the One Way Café, preferring the Everyway Café or Leave My Theology Out of It And Just Make Me Some Damn Coffee Café.

I’d heard of Harrod & Funck from my friend Jessie, who’d heard about them from her sister, Michaelanne. Jessie also turned me on to Radiohead. She got me to read The Brothers K and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Jessie and I lived with two other girls in an old, carved-up house on Willey Street. Yellow-orange carpet covered the wall by the stairs, as though it had crossed the floor with such gusto that it just couldn’t stop.

It was 1997, the year that Joshua Harris published his crazy popular book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I had not properly kissed dating hello (Lo, my path to virtue was made straight!)

Campus Crusade for Christ was not only the hub of my spiritual life but my social life in college.

In Crusade circles, it was perfectly acceptable to say things like “I’m dating God right now.” It was a kind way to let someone down easy or to justify one’s lack of prospects. I was busy writing papers in my overalls. I didn’t drink. I knew nothing much of dating, save a few chaste outings with a pastor’s son.

But I was good at crushes. I had a crush on my creative writing prof. On my Victorian poetry prof. On the lead singer in the praise band who wore hemp necklaces and spent long hours in the pottery studio.

Jason Harrod & Brian Funck played a dynamite show at One Way, to an audience that was both full and intimate. In the middle of the set, Harrod asked, “If you don’t leave your room, what good does it do you?”

That question became a catchphrase for me, something I’d repeat if I felt too vulnerable to do what I was expected to do, if I felt like checking out instead of showing up.

I’d liked Harrod & Funck as I listened to Jessie’s CD on my boom box. Is it any surprise that after the show, I had a certifiable crush?

Bonus: as a reporter for the student newspaper’s Arts & Entertainment section, I interviewed Harrod & Funck. I wanted to send them a copy of the piece when it ran, but I chickened out, and then I forgot.

How can I say what Harrod & Funck’s tender, gritty, stripped down, jazzed up, Neil Youngish, coffee house music has meant to me? I’ve listened to their live CD so many times that I’ve almost worn a groove on it.

I like to listen to this album start to finish, including the jokes (Funck: “My last name is Funck. It means ‘spark’ in German.” Harrod: “My name’s Harrod. It means ‘department store’ in English.”)

I like to listen to songs on repeat, like “Carolina,” throwing my harmonies in the mix, a Harrod & Funck & Sheets who play gigs only in my car (sometimes the kitchen.)

I savor the double-take delight, like sesame ice cream, of “I Will Find Jill C”: “You inspire me to climb trees, and to kiss the bark and to kiss the leaves.” Reader, I dare you not to swoon.

I brace myself for the bittersweet tenderness of “Lion Song,” the first dance at a friend’s first wedding.

“If you don’t leave your room, what good does it do you?” Maybe it was just an offhand remark between songs, a goofy rhetorical question. But Harrod’s words are a koan I’ve carried all these years. Maybe I’m jamming with my writing, or a rogue prayer, or a decent idea, or a kind intention, but if I keep them to myself, what good does it do?

The words that nourish us, those words of life, creep in sometimes where we least expect them.

I listen to songs, and the spaces between. I’ll keep listening.

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Nicole Sheets is an assistant professor of English at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. Her work has appeared in Image, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Western Humanities Review, Geez, and other journals. She blogs about travel and style at http://wanderlustandlipstick.com/blogs/wanderchic/ Nicole has also started a podcast series, Rambunctious Vernacular, in the vein of This American Life at http://rambunctiousvernacular.com/ She’s awaiting Jason Harrod’s forthcoming third solo album, Outposts (more info at http://jasonharrod.com/)

The Loosened Tongue: Silence in Practice

nicholas — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:55:45 +0000

In my previous post I talked about the importance of silent waiting. While I hold that adding regular intervals of waiting worship to one’s religious life is optimal, I realize not everyone will go that route. So in terms of practical application I’d like to focus on a method that combines verbal queries with intervals of expectant silence. One such method is Rex Ambler’s Experiments in the Light, which has proved a powerful method for many people. As it is most commonly practiced, an individual—alone or in a group—reads the following prompts aloud with five to six minutes of silence between each prompt.

1. Relax body and mind. Make yourself comfortable….Be relaxed, but alert. Let yourself become wholly receptive.

2. In this receptive state of mind, let the real concerns of your life emerge. Ask yourself, ‘What is really going on in my life?’, but do not try to answer the question. Let the answer come. You can be specific: ‘What is happening in my relationships, my work, my Meeting, in my own heart and mind?’

3. Now focus on one issue that presents itself, one thing that gives you a sense of unease. Try to get a sense of this thing as a whole. Deep down you know what it is all about, but you don’t normally allow yourself to take it all in and absorb the reality of it. Now is the time to do so. You don’t have to get involved in it again, or get entangled with the feelings around it. Keep a little distance, so that you can see it clearly. Let the light show you what is really going on here.

4. Now ask yourself what makes it like that. Don’t try to explain it. Just wait in the light till you can see what it is. Let the full truth reveal itself, or as much truth as you are able to take at this moment.

5. When the answer comes welcome it. It may be painful or difficult to believe with your normal conscious mind, but if it is the truth you will recognize it immediately. You will realise that it is something that you need to know. Trust the light. Say yes to it.

6. As soon as you accept what is being revealed to you, you will begin to feel different. Accepting truth about yourself is like making peace.

(I have shortened the above prompts in order to save space, anyone interested in the full text should refer to Seeing, Hearing, Knowing: Reflections on Experiment with Light, edited by John Lampen. Resources and full audio recordings of this and other prompts based on Ambler’s work are also available at this link.

Hopefully it will be apparent to readers how the above can be easily adjusted to fit the specific needs of a writer. For example, rather than asking in the second question what is going on with my life, ask: Where are you taking me, Lord, with this poem? What is the significance of such and such line or image that keeps echoing in my mind? You need not go through all six prompts. A single query will suffice, e.g., what is missing from this draft? What is crucial is to ask the question, wait for the answer to come, and accept where that answer leads you.

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rod dixon is a member of the religious society of friends (quaker), though he often gets mistaken for an old order mennonite. his short-stories have appeared in several journals, most recently red rock review, euphony, and edge. for fun he is the non-fiction editor of ontologica: a journal of art and thought. for money, he researches and develops manufacturing procedures for a non-profit serving the blind and visually impaired. he lives in kentucky with his wife and two children.

Parallelism & The Beauty of Hebrew Poetry

nicholas — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:37:48 +0000

One of the most mysterious things about Christian poets today is how little we talk about the poetry of the Bible. We have… It’s true we might sprinkle Bible-y stuff here or there in our poems, but we have yet to explore how the very structures and techniques of Hebrew poetry could inspire our work on a more fundamental, craft level.

I think there may be a few reasons for our timidity:

1) Some writers already feel conflicted about either their faith or their faith in their writing. It’s both a personal struggle and a cultural one. How do we speak authentically about our own faith experience (and what do we even mean by that?)—and in a way that is comprehensible (acceptable?) to the world at large? So we attempt to keep it light by using the Bible in ironic or literary ways that let the reader know there’s some distance between us and all that religious stuff.

2) Many (though certainly not all) of the poems in the Bible are devotional. Religious poets today, I think, are particularly jumpy around devotion. There are many Christians who write religious poems, but few who write devotional ones. We are wary of the ‘sentimental death trap’ that seems to be an eternal red line of poetry, although it’s a relatively modern invention.

3) Perhaps most likely, the poetry of the Bible confuses us just as much as it does everyone else. It can strike us, at times, as overly redundant and belabored. It can seem rather plain and abstract in parts. And it requires some understanding of a whole historical background that many of us don’t have.

So to inspire some discussion on this point, I would like to share two examples of what I see as master touches of Biblical poetry as poems.

I think we are often blinded to the artistry of these poems because they are at once both too familiar and too strange.

They permeate our language and metaphoric atmosphere, but we also don’t have much experience interpreting them as works of art.

Psalm 58

In his book The Art of Biblical Poetry, Robert Alter argues that what on the surface seems overly redundant in Biblical poetry, is actually quite subtle and expansive. Parallelism always suggests forward movement, either as an elaboration, qualification, emphasis, or as cause and effect. And the larger structural arcs of the poems move in these same patterns as well. The poems are never static; they are always vibrating, expanding, swelling.

The truly masterful dynamics of Biblical poetry come when the expectation of the parallel structure challenges the reader to bring together two very different images, almost super-imposing them upon each other. One graphic example of this comes in Psalm 58, in which the poet is begging God to stop the advance of powerful manipulators:

“O God, break the teeth in their mouths;
tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!

Let them vanish like water that runs away;
like grass let them be trodden down and wither.

Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime;
like the untimely birth that never sees the sun.

In the first parallel, the second line vivifies the first with sharper detail. In the second pair there is a parallel of metaphor, but also a movement between disappearing water followed by withering grass. But what about the third? A snail dissolving into slime, then a stillborn child. The juxtaposition is jarring. The structure of the poem pushes us to read these on top of each other, simultaneously. The image of snail slime and that of a dead fetus.

This kind of move is similar to that often used by Milton, in which two opposed or unresolvable ideas are crammed together. In one famous example in “Lycidas,” Milton is decrying the abuse of priests in his age and he cries out, “Blind mouthes!” The linking of these two words is startling, and it cannot be resolved logically, though it can be understood. The phrase seems to capture entirely the total moral vacancy of the preachers of his day.

Job 29

My favorite example of this technique is Job 29. The book of Job is, in my opinion, the most masterful book of poetry in the Bible. Its moves and patterns and shapes are some of the finest works in all of literature, rich with philosophical, psychological, and emotional texture. The final response from God is not just an argument; it is a panorama, a massive mural of images that showcases all of existence in it sublimity. The answer to Job is not a list of reasons but a work of art.

In Job 29 Job is looking back longingly at his old life, in which he was rich, powerful, and respected. And yet what fills Job’s thoughts most of all was how he was able to use his power to aid the powerless:

O that I were as in the months of old,
as in the days when God watched over me;

…

When the ear heard, it commended me,
and when the eye saw, it approved;

Because I delivered the poor who cried,
and the orphan who had no helper.

The blessing of the wretched came upon me,
and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.

I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;
my justice was like a robe and a turban.

I was eyes to the blind,
and feet to the lame.

I was father to the needy,
and I championed the cause of the stranger.

I broke the fangs of the unrighteous,
and made them drop their prey from their teeth.

…

They waited for me as for the rain;
they opened their mouths as for the spring rain.

I smiled on them when they had no confidence;
and the light of my countenance they did not extinguish.

I chose their way, and sat as chief,
and I lived like a king among his troops,
like one who comforts mourners.

The final line here is so sweet, so exceedingly tender, and if we aren’t following closely we might miss it: “I lived like a king among his troops, / like one who comforts mourners.” Job paints a scene of his entering the city. (The scene is never set up explicitly, only in that particularly Biblical way does the scene emerge from the individual couplets.) When he arrives all the people of the city look to him with hope, hanging on his every word. Job is basically describing his former life as a superhero. When Job enters the city, the widows, the beggars, the suffering look up and smile, “Here comes our savior, Job. Here comes our hero.”

Job pictures himself like a warlord, surrounded by his army, perhaps cheering him on, lifting him up on their shoulders, all kneeling down before him, as he rouses them to battle. But who is his army? Who are his faithful warriors? The blind, the lame, the starving, the stranger, the widow, the orphan. He enters the city, takes his noble seat, and pours out his compassion upon the weak.

This very simple pairing, which I argue should be read as a simultaneous and unresolving image, calls into question what we mean by goodness. Our modern idea of “righteousness” is much too thin. When we read Job we hear he was “blameless and upright,” and we think he didn’t swear too often, or he didn’t yell at people. Mostly we think it’s about stuff he didn’t do. And yet I wonder for myself, when I enter the city who looks with joy at my arrival? Who looks up and says, “Thank God, Ryan is here. Now I know everything’s going to be okay?” When I am old will the oppressed of my city carry me through the streets, singing my praises?

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Ryan Pendell received his MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. His collection of poems, Say To These Bones, Live!, was published by Ice Box Press in 2008. His poems have recently appeared in Saint Katherine Review and are forthcoming in Anglican Theological Review. Ryan currently teaches at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa.

A Worker’s Prayer: Perfectionism: A Personal History

nicholas — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:07:17 +0000

I became a perfectionist sometime in middle school. This was when I started to read the Bible on my own, and discovered the verse “Whatsoever you do, do it wholeheartedly unto The Lord.” Until then, I only tried when I felt like it; when the task seemed fun or interesting. After reading this verse, however, I felt compelled to vacuum under every piece of furniture, be sure every dish I washed was spotless, and never say anything mean to anyone. I became a much better worker, but work also became weighty. For one thing, vacuuming thoroughly took a lot more time and effort, and for another, it mattered. If I didn’t do well, I was failing God. I didn’t believe God would reject me if I didn’t do things perfectly, but I believed He’d be disappointed, which would be almost as bad.

It was also sometime in middle school that I began to feel, more consciously at least, that my self worth depended on work. I knew that I would never be the fairest of all, and what beauty I attained would be short-lived. I also knew that I would never be the smartest of all, but that intelligence is long-lasting, more distinctly individual, and, in its own way, more beautiful than beauty. So I set out to be intelligent and perfect.

The goal is absurd when recorded in matter-of-fact language, but even as I write these things in past tense, I want to be intelligent and perfect, and my greatest fear is of failing. This fear was very mild when I was younger, probably because my goals and schoolwork were easier, and because perfectionism is selective– as long as I did well in humanities and everyday tasks, it was ok to just pass math and science. When I began grad school, however, the thing I cared about most– poetry– became more and more difficult, and the thing I had to do to pay for it– teaching– proved also to be difficult. Whenever I thought about it much, I was terrified. My poems were not perfect and my teaching was worse than my poems, and I would surely fail at life.

On bad days, I am still convinced of this– I will fail God, myself, and those I love; why even try? Reading Psalms helps a lot, because the psalmists are afraid of failing too: “O God, you know my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from you. Don’t let those who wait on you, O Lord of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: don’t let those that seek you be confounded for my sake” (69:5-6), but the psalmists also know that there is hope in failure: “My body and my heart fail: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever” (73:26). I am trying to accept that failure is inevitable, and that it can help me look outside of myself, to see how much I depend on God and others, and this is a good thing.

Perfectionism is an insidious fault. It takes a good desire; the desire to do well and live a worthwhile life; and twists it into prideful fear. Instead of working for joy, for food, and for God’s glory, you work to prove you are good enough. I like how Thomas Merton says it in a letter to a friend:

“You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work and your witness. You are using it so to speak to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more, and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself…. The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand.”

The “right use of our work,” then, is not to make something of ourselves and prove we have worth, but to give our everyday lives to God, looking to His perfection instead of our imperfection, and believing that He will make something of us, though we may not “know all about it beforehand.”

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Deanna Boulard lives in Louisville, and delights in windows, Bach, and marmalade. She has her MFA from the University of Maryland and worked as a language assistant in southern France. Sometimes she has flashbacks of her favorite views, which make it hard to see what’s in front of her. She would like to live every day aware that “the present is the point at which time touches eternity.”

Interview: David Ebenbach

nicholas — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:07:53 +0000

{an interview with writer, David Ebenbach}

when you picture someone reading your writing, how do you see them? what do they think about, wear, and do? or, maybe a better way to say it: who do you write for? and how do you see your writing nourishing others?

Well, when I’m in the midst of writing, I try not to picture anyone—except my characters, anyway. Otherwise it’s like I’m sitting at my computer while a roomful of people stares awkwardly at me. Once I’m done writing, however, I do think about readers. I somewhat sympathize with Mary Oliver, who wrote, “I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now.” In other words, I like to think that my work touches enough of the universal that it can be meaningful to people in widely different cultural and historical circumstances. Generally those universals come out through particulars—attention to particular people and moments—and that can mean that sometimes my audience focuses a bit. For example, my book of short stories Into the Wilderness, is all about parenting, and so I suppose parents might be more likely to gravitate to them. Or there’s some of my more explicitly Jewish work, which might be more attractive to Jewish people. But the hope is that anyone who encounters the work will be moved by it, and will experience the primary effect of literature, which I think is to have our sense of empathy expanded.

how do you use writing as a practice for spiritual exploration, discipline, or growth? can you offer any practical advice or sure-fire practices for folks interested in allowing writing to inform their spiritual discipline?

Answering this question right would probably require hundreds of pages. When I wrote The Artist’s Torah, my guide to the creative process, I did exactly that—spent hundreds of pages articulating the spiritual nature of creativity. But I suppose it boils down to one thing: when we do our work, we are co-participants in the divine act of creation, and we do it for the same reason that the divine does: to give particular form to the great truths of the universe. The key is to always make sure we tell the truth, even (especially) in our fiction, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, no matter how hard it is to express.

when you approach your desk, journal, computer—where ever it is you tend to create—what are some of the processes you use? what’s going through your mind? tell us about your habits of writing, no matter how quirky, mundane, strange, or small.

If I’m in the middle of a piece of work—a poem or a story—and I’m coming back to it, I sit down and read it over closely from the beginning, working on things all the way through. By the time I get to my last stopping point, I’m pretty immersed in the work again and I tend to know what’s got to come next. If, on the other hand, I’m starting totally fresh, with nothing currently in-progress, I tend to run into trouble if I just throw myself at the screen. Instead I read for a while—poems if I’m trying to write poems, stories if I’m trying to write stories. After a while, if I’ve been reading something good, I find myself itching to write my own stuff.

when you go to revise work, how do you typically go about it? are there best practices you follow? give some wise instruction for those of us ready to get cracking on revision!

Oh, I hate revising. I hate, hate, hate it. Revising makes me want to cry. I’d avoid it completely except that I like my revised work much, much better than my first drafts.

So for me revision is an absolutely necessary but unpleasant experience, and I just have to be willing to do absolutely anything the piece requires, no matter how small or big. The key is to be much more interested in the well-being of the work than in your own comfort level.

(That’s true at every stage of the writing process, I find.) A few possibly helpful ideas:

(1) Always save new drafts as new files, so that you can take radical risks without worrying about losing the strengths of earlier drafts.

(2) Be willing to retype your work from scratch (sometimes without looking at the original) to free yourself from your initial choices.

(3) Read your work aloud to catch issues with sentences and voice.

(4) Ask yourself why this piece matters to you, and pursue that matter doggedly.

(5) Make some very smart and trustworthy friends and seek their advice on your work.

what’s the best advice you can give to a person just beginning to write, struggling to write, or feeling stuck? what’s something you wish someone had told you starting out?

The advice I always give is the advice my six-year-old son gave me before I did a writing retreat this last summer, because it’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten: “Don’t worry about getting it right. Just don’t give up. Don’t give up. Never give up.”

would you like to share a poem you’re working on or have recently finished and comment on how it was written in light of the comments above? if so, please do so below…

City of Weather

It’s all we talk about here the way the sky

lazy after a hot bath

lies on us with all its weight

We change only to find ourselves damp again

Some weeks the rain comes and stays and leaves

only to circle back again

as though looking for lost keys

You’ll never find what you’re looking for that way

I think

But the rain persists interested in lost keys

but not advice

The ground forgets what it’s for

starts to wander off downstream

There’s nothing to hold the sidewalk in place

We close our umbrellas when we can

But here even the sun is a liquid

sweat on the glass buildings

The night pools around our homes

The night weighs against the apartment windows

And in the morning

We wake as though nothing

has yet been decided

“City of Weather,” which first appeared in the Thrush Poetry Journal in 2012, started out as a much more conversational poem. There was an intro stanza where a person a lot like me talks about how the trees have all lost their leaves overnight. I attributed this jarringly rough voice to the trees—“Oh, shit!/ Get rid of these goddamn leaves!”—and only after that did I get into a stanza with a lot of the same images as the final draft, but much talkier, much more my voice, in a very orderly stanza with lines of equal length. I didn’t even finish that draft because I was so uninterested in hearing myself talk. I realized that this poem wasn’t supposed to be about me, directly. In later drafts I dumped the intro stanza and got right into the heavy weather, and the lines got much more jagged and uneven, as you see in the final draft. Once I had the basic shape for the poem, and knew it was a single stanza, revision was generally about pushing myself into the background and paring down, about saying more with less—a goal I came to partly by consulting my friend, the fantastic poet Jaimee Kuperman. I condensed lines, cut lines. I honed and sharpened. And I stopped when I felt I’d said what I needed to say.

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David Ebenbach is the author of two books of short stories—Between Camelots (University of Pittsburgh Press), and Into the Wilderness (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) — plus a chapbook of poetry entitled Autogeography (Finishing Line Press), and a non-fiction guide to creativity called The Artist’s Torah (Cascade Books). He has been awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Ebenbach teaches at Georgetown University. Find out more at www.davidebenbach.com or http://davidebenbach.com/recent-writing/.

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Kempis’ Warning

nicholas — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:51:56 +0000

{Tania Runyan reflects on the problems of gossip}

Diane is a stay-at-home mom. Every afternoon, her toddler naps for two hours, during which time Diane texts the twenty-something server she met at Red Lobster:

How r u

Same old

Get em nice & steamy for me

U know i will

;)

One day, he stops by on break, just to say hello in person. She puts Chloe in her crib, turns on the white noise machine in the nursery, and unfastens the top two buttons on her blouse as she heads downstairs.

Did you feel your pulse quicken? What did you want to happen next? For Diane to come to her senses and kick the punk to the curb?

Sin is fun. We like to enter into its colorful mysteries, especially when someone else is doing it.

Thomas à Kempis writes in Book 1, Chapter 4, in The Imitation of Christ, “But alas! Such is our weakness, that we often rather believe and speak evil of others than good.” I read that statement and immediately consented to its truth. What is wrong with people — all their reality shows and nasty talk, even gossiping in church! But under my manifold layers, my gracious smiles and self-deprecation, I fool myself. A few hours after reading Kempis, I found myself (but of course hadn’t intended) chatting with a friend on Facebook about some people I thought had mistreated me. I believed the worst about them and let him know. Dare I say I enjoyed it, that it alleviated my boredom for a moment to type those words then watch the ellipsis on the chat screen as I awaited his juicy reply?

A few chapters later, Kempis writes about “Avoiding Superfluity in Words.” He reminds us that discussing worldly affairs overmuch can be a hindrance, for even Jesus ran up to the mountains several times: “Why do we so willingly speak and talk one with the other, when we seldom return to silence before we have hurt our conscience? The cause why we so willingly talk, is that by discoursing one with another, we seek to receive comfort of one another, and desire to ease our mind over-wearied with thoughts.”

In other words, we often flap our jaws, giving “too much liberty to inconsiderate speech,” for nothing more than pure diversion when we’re feeling stressed out. We may have heard and repeated the theory that people tear each other down just to build themselves up. Could it be even baser than that? Are we just so simultaneously busy and bored that we aren’t imaginative enough to edify—or just shut up?

My chat friend didn’t take the bait. In fact, he put an end to my fun by pointing out something good and lovely about these people. In turn, I typed something sweetly humble, then left the conversation feeling pretty low. Not so much that I had bad-mouthed my friends, but that I had been caught.

I’ve been working on keeping my mouth closed. (Try not to laugh, people who know me.) I’ve been trying to suppress that almost imperceptible flash that passes between two people when the odd one enters the room. I’ve been trying to filter my knee-jerk criticisms and sneering remarks, “for this outward comfort is the cause of no small loss of inward and divine consolation.” Pray this today. Let the divine work in his drab, quiet habit of goodness, like the stay-at-home mom who shuts off her phone at nap time, makes a cup of tea, and stares out her window at the small brown birds.

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Tania Runyan is the author of A Thousand Vessels (WordFarm), Simple Weight (FutureCycle Press) and Delicious Air (Finishing Line Press), which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature in 2007. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including Poetry, Image, Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, The Christian Century, Willow Springs, Nimrod, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, and the anthology A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare. She was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011.

Messy As Hell: Inner Silencing

nicholas — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:20:01 +0000

Whenever I find myself in any kind of slump — whether it be in writing, exercising, or praying — I try to resist my first natural inclination toward giving up entirely. One of the best remedies I’ve found to combat my defeatist tendencies has been to gain a new perspective, and I suppose that’s what I was searching for when I found myself signing up for meditation classes at the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center a couple months ago. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I know I couldn’t have been the only one in my class who had scenes from Eat, Pray, Love flash to mind. In search of a renewed perspective and needing to find balance amidst demands from work and school, I thought that this might bring a sense of serenity and calm to my otherwise chaotic schedule. I must admit, though, I was skeptical about the notion of someone instructing me on how to sit still and how to breathe.

“Christians are sometimes thrown by the suggestion that the breath can make a significant contribution to interior silencing. This must be a Hindu or Buddhist concern that is creeping,’” writes Martin Laird in his book, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. He says, “While it is indeed true that working with the breath is a component of some Hindu and Buddhist contemplative disciplines, there is also a Christian tradition that advocates simple attention to the breath as an aid to deepening stillness.” In order to undertake the practice of meditation for the purposes of inner silence and deepening stillness, I had to first get past my own unfounded biases.

There’s this pervasive myth that only those living behind monastery walls have the endurance or spiritual discipline necessary for meditation. My own initial thought was that it would be impossible for me to sit still for 30 minutes straight, eyes closed and not moving a muscle.

When you have papers to write, emails to answer, projects to be finished, it seems counterproductive to just sit and swat away thoughts that come to mind. Yet, when I began to notice the content of my thoughts, I realized just how frenzied and fleeting so many of them were.

My meditation instructor, a humorous and wise Passionist priest, calls these thoughts “rats of rumination.” Most of us, he says, when we closely examine our thoughts find that we are either simply rehashing past events or feelings or rehearsing for events in the future. It takes practice and discipline to move past the rehashing and rehearsing, particularly if your brain is on constant overdrive.

Thomas Keating, author of Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel writes about the difficulty of beginning the contemplative practice: “When the unloading of the unconscious begins in earnest, many people feel that they are going backwards, that contemplative prayer is just impossible for them because all they experience when they start to pray is an unending flow of distractions. Actually, there are no distractions in contemplative prayer unless you really want to be distracted or you get up and leave.”

I still get distracted, intimidated, overwhelmed and sometimes even annoyed when I think about sitting down for 30 minutes to meditate. But there are other smaller ways of beginning to enter into moments of sacred silence throughout the day, if at first it seems cumbersome. It can be as small as waking up, touching your feet to the ground and taking five full, deep breaths before you allow your daily checklist to come rushing in to consume your mind. We have the ability to grasp hold of these sacred moments at any time — sitting at a red light, waiting for the coffee to finish, turning on your computer or before answering the phone. If you don’t know when or where or how to begin, close your eyes. Start. Now.

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Stephanie Kornexl lives in Louisville, KY. In addition to being an antler intern, she works in ministry and studies theology at St. Meinrad.

The Hound of Heaven

nicholas — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:12:02 +0000

{writer and archivist, D.S. Martin, reflects on his calling to poetry by “The Hound of Heaven.”}

Often, we hardly realize how much something is influencing us until much later, and even then we may not understand its impact. When I was in high school, I was not much of a student, and I certainly didn’t have any thought that I could, or should, or would become a poet. Looking back now, I think one of the first steps in the process of my calling was the reading of Francis Thompson’s 1893 poem “The Hound of Heaven”. When I first heard that poem, I read it over and over – despite its considerable length (182 lines!).

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears…

It grabbed me. Not merely because of its complex patterns or Thompson’s accomplishment at getting at something unique about the character of God. What impacted me most was simply that a poet of significant reputation was best known for such a spiritual poem; and what a poem!

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat — and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet

“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”…

What next hit me, was that the character in the poem – the poet himself – wasn’t seeking God like anyone I knew who thought they wanted to be godly, or like the psalmist, lamenting the way the Divine One hides. This guy would have been pleased to have God mind his own business — except he was on the run from a God who was making it his business to chase him down. Here was a poet who wrote with passion about things that matter, and in such an unexpected manner! How cool it was to read such exciting lines!

Across the margent of the world I fled,

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,

Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;

Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.

I said to Dawn: Be sudden — to Eve: Be soon;

With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over

From this tremendous Lover —

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit…

It didn’t put me off that Thompson’s language was so archaic. That was part of its charm. I envisioned this wild-eyed madman, in ancient rags, running through crumbling ruins, pursued by a relentless, unseen force — and that force was God himself.

I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,

I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years —

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap…

Of course, I thought it was about some unsaved guy who didn’t want anything to do with God. I assumed the poet was only playing the role of this Jonah on the run. At the time I didn’t know that some of what Thompson was describing came from his real life, living with addiction on the streets of London. I also didn’t know, in quite a different way, that the poem was at the same time about me.

I now see how God was pursuing me so that I would become what he desired, even though I didn’t realize I was running.

My youth was being wasted by my inability to listen, and now “lies dead beneath the heap”. Even so, through the process comes redemption — not just of my soul, but of all my wasted years.

Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

This poem comes to such a provocative conclusion…if only I could figure out what “dravest” means.

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D.S. Martin is a Canadian, known for his growing internet archive of Christian poetry: www.kingdompoets.blogspot.com He has had two poetry collections published, So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon) and Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and is Series Editor for the new Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. His forthcoming collection, Conspiracy of Light, is inspired by the legacy of C.S. Lewis. www.dsmartin.ca