Faith & Writing Festival, 2024-Friday, April 12, 2024
Karen Swallow Prior
Building an Online Community
Anne Bogel
Readers
Online - lack of nuance. Have to notice.
Naming and framing things
Blog: The Modern Mrs. Darcy
Framing - Make it clear what and why you are writing/doing. “Reading and Writing Good Questions both alone and in community.”
Books are a springboard for the questions. Books offer a shortcut to talking to people about things that matter - death, PTSD, dysfunction
Question of: What’s a good book you can recommend?
Personal, reader’s advisory
Ask good questions
Look for patterns
Questions to help define your own reading taste:
What genres and sub-genres, specifically, do you enjoy?
Are you character- or plot-driven?
If character-driven, what make you like and dislike a character?
What kind of pacing do you like?
Do you prefer a strong plot or beautiful prose?
Who are your favorite characters and why?
Book: I’d Rather Be Reading
Podcast: What Should I Read Next?
Isaiah and Power
Aviya Kushner
Book: Wolf Lamb Bomb At first, I thought everyone was saying Wolf Lamb Bob. I kept thinking of the movie called “What About Bob?” I wondered what in the world “Bob” was doing in the title of a book about Isaiah. Ridiculous! :D
When her grandfather died, she realized that there were no special instructions, no tradition like Kaddish or sitting Shiva, for someone who lost their grandfather. She decided she would go to synagogue on time every week (I can’t remember if it was every day or every week) for a year—which she said was very unusual for her—, and read Isaiah. For a time, Isaiah was all she read.
Isaiah mixed anger with comfort.
Appreciates the poet Paul Celan. Feels he uses Isaiah’s style/grammar.
Also Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever (she said “Avram”), poem “Memory of a Meeting With a Wolf.”
And Derek Walcott and Robert Pinsky
What Can Spiritual Poetry Teach Us About Living?
Kaveh Akbar
This session was the one that surprised me the most. I was unfamiliar with Kaveh Akbar. Somehow I had his novel, Martyr, on my TBR list, had even checked it out, but did not get a chance to read it and it could not be renewed since it was so much in demand. Needless to say I will be checking it out again. I thought Akbar was so engaging and easy to listen to. It seems like his mind is going a million miles a minute. Sometimes he doesn’t even finish a sentence. The Festival organizers had his talk in the Seminary chapel and I think they underestimated the response. People kept pouring in and ended up sitting on the floor. I was glad I had gotten there early enough to get a seat. If I remember right, I think I sat by Joylanda Jamison. I met her in the chapbook seminar and we ended up walking and going to a few sessions together. I would not be surprised if someday Joylanda is a speaker at the Festival. She is a professor and writer. At one point when my old body was having a little difficulty keeping up with her young one, I said to her, “You don’t have to stay with me. It would be fine for you to go ahead,” and she said, “Oh, no, it’s nice to have a buddy!” Wasn’t that sweet?
Book-Novel: Martyr
Link to materials he read from: tinyurl.com/kavehffw
Book-Poetry: The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse 110 Poets on the Divine - He felt like this was a “mix tape” of poems he put together.
As a child, Akbar watched and mimicked the moves of his family in prayer. At 6 or 7 he learned prayers with his father by reading them written phonetically. He and his father would laugh when he got things wrong. Akbar seemed to remember this time with much fondness.
Somewhere around this point in the talk, Akbar’s phone (Siri) said, “I don’t know how to respond to that.” The whole room laughed. Akbar said he didn’t know what happened or how to “summon” Siri back.
He talked about the mellifluous, musical language that can thin the curtain or veil between us and the divine.
Note to me: Made me think of “liminal.” That image of a thin veil or curtain that separates us from the divine, or from those who have gone “beyond the veil,” fascinates me. I think it was in a Harry Potter book where the author wrote about seeing shadows of figures beyond a thin curtain. Or a Narnia book? I can’t remember.
Akbar read part of a poem and then paused and said, “Feel the different air in the room right now? Different from a minute ago when I started to read. This poem written by a woman 4,000 years ago. That is the magic I have known.” I can’t remember if it was here or at another time he held up his forearm and said, “Look, I can’t fake this. My hairs are standing up.”
Rage can be a measure of tenderness—the ability to see the humanness of the neighbor. (Me: Hmmm)
Language is language. How can we get to where we already are?
Lunch Circle: Church-Based Writing Group
You could sign up for lunch circles, people meeting over lunch to talk about a topic. I signed up for this one about “Church-based Writing Groups” because I’ve been thinking lately about how to be in or start a reading group. I wondered about doing that in a church. My biggest question was about the freedom to share and how that would work. In the group, I asked people about that, saying that if I wrote about some of the things I have come to believe, I think many of my church friends would have a real hard time of it. Basically, those around the table seemed to say they just don’t do that, they share only to give encouragement and positive feedback. Nice enough people and everything but I decided this was not for me. I did not attend the second session.
Some things to note about writing groups:
The group morphs, depending on needs of those who attend — times, frequency, etc.
Good to set expectations of what they’ll be doing
One group made a booklet of Lenten devotions each year
There’s an emphasis on safety in sharing.
Some groups take turns giving writing prompts, then sharing
Note to me: Maybe look online for an editor?
Writing as Mourning, Writing as Hope: A Conversation About Grief, Lament, and Honesty
Bryan Bliss and James K.A. Smith
What essential do you need for writing?
B: Has to be something I care about, then the story. Sneak in time.
S: Not in my office. I nwws to set aside chunks of time. I’m a binge writer; I block off hours.
Where does the desire start to write in mourning and hope?
B: Probably in the sixth grade. Then in my MFA program.
S: Honestly, it was in therapy for my depression. “Naming my demons.” Tried to find solidarity and transcend. Requires patience, slowing down to open the door to others. Stopped writing just to explain and/or instruct people. Give others the room to work.
What is the difference between grief and lament?
S: Difference between finitude and fallenness. There has to be grieving but it does not always have to be tragic. Love that comes with time vs. a theft; vs. thinking, “This is not the way it’s supposed to be.”
B: Paul Tillich - Beyond lament. Reaching out beyond the thing. I call it God. How can my words come to the Kingdom of God? I want to read and write things that challenge and transform us.
S: Great privilege. Niche justice.
How do you write for the sorrows of today?
B: Be honest. Risk being wrong.
S: Don’t bullshit. Our problems are complex. Confirmation is the condition for solidarity. Tribalism means being together in consensus. Solidarity is together with openness to differences. Communion, reconciliation.
The Politics of Vulnerability: How Faith Inspires Us to be “Black Sheep”
Asma T. Uddin
Her father memorized the Quran. He recited parts of it every morning.
She is a defender of religious freedom
Religion is natural
Religion has obligations
Religion is a force for tremendous good
Imagination: It’s Not Just Hobbits and Hobby Horses
Karen Swallow Prior
Karen Swallow Prior was one of two authors I was most looking forward to seeing at the Festival (Christian Wiman was the other.). Swallow Prior gave a wonderful talk. I only wish there had been some Q and A.
She said we tend to think of imagination as individual. But imagination is so much bigger. we are all formed and fueled by imagination.
What is imagination? Basic definition is the process of making an image. This seems individual but images we form are derived from what we notice around us.
We are the product of God’s imagination. Coleridge: a repetition in the finite mind of the infinite imagination of God.
Plato: Imagination as a mirror. Imitation is not as good as the real
Aristotle: Imagination as a lamp. The value of imitation.
Modern age, enlightenment: Center reason and science, invention, creation. A meaning-making function. Close to religion
Taylor: Pre-cognitive images
David Foster Wallace: Story of the two fishes. “How’s the water?” “What the hell is water?”
The water we swim in is language. All language is metaphorical but we have used them so long we forget:
wake “up”
“on top” of things
“run” to the store
Evangelical - Her definition, from Bebbington:
Emphasis on conversion
Emphasis on the Bible’s authority
Centrality of crucifixion
Emphasis on activism
A Little Shock for a Student
At one point, I was standing in front of a campus map to orient myself and a student kindly stopped and asked if I needed help. I told him I was going to the bookstore, and he said he was on his way there, too, so I could walk with him. During our conversation, I mentioned that I graduated from Calvin in ‘78. He stopped in his tracks, faced me with wide eyes, and said, “Nineteen-seventy-eight??!” It cracked me up. He was probably thinking, “You mean there are still people alive who graduated in 1978?!” Once I hit my ‘60’s, I just find it amusing when people react to my old age. I think, “We all get our turn, God willing.” I remember thinking that 40 was old, let alone 60 or more. But, truly, I am grateful to be as old as I am (66 as of this writing) and as healthy as I am. Just the fact that I was able to come to the Festival is more than I could ever wish for.