{Lyle Enright reflects on Paul’s message and how it applies to writing about emotion and truth.}

Recently, during a lengthy car trip, my girlfriend and I decided to pass the time listening through Argue With A Tree, an album by American rock band Blue October. More accurately, I suppose I was conducting an experiment – my better half has a Master’s degree in mental health counseling, and I wanted to see how she would respond to music that is largely an outlet for Blue October’s clinically bipolar frontman, Justin Furstenfeld.

Blue October is an interesting artistic animal. Many of the songs on that album are what Furstenfeld refers to as “scary love songs,” intense confessions and explorations of human brokenness with some of the most jarring juxtapositions of beauty and revulsion I’ve ever heard. The question at the end of the night … Read More »

when you picture someone reading 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?

I write for the wounded ones and for the wounded places in my own heart.

When I began writing my memoir at Hamline University, I was very angry with Christians, with “the church people,” as I called them then. They had hurt me in deep ways, failed me in my darkest moments, and as I wrote about it, I found that every single person in my classes could relate. Everyone has an old hurt from a person of faith, everyone has a story.

I hope my writing appeals across the board, but the people that are the closest to my heart are … Read More »

I don’t know how to live as a writer.  I mean sure, I’ve lived almost thirty years and studied poetry, but I often find myself teaching and not writing, serving coffee and not writing, playing Settlers of Catan, eating ice cream, attending church and not writing.  Some days I think I should just be happy with these things– some days I am– but then the unrest returns, and I can’t sleep because I’m a terrible person, my life is meaningless, and I’ll fail at everything I care about.  Once I’ve stopped exaggerating, I think, “Maybe the unrest is legitimate; maybe I need to write.” I love Madeleine L’Engle because she feels a similar unrest, and as she writes through hope and doubt, she gives me courage to try.

I call her my friend Madeleine and speak of her in present tense, … Read More »