Faith & Writing Festival, 2024-Saturday, April 13, 2024
Christian Wiman
The Art of Faith | The Faith of Art
Christian Wiman
Christian Wiman began his talk by noting that this Festival of Faith & Writing is his favorite place to give readings and talks because we share, he said, “the word with a little w and the Word with a capital W.” Isn’t that beautiful?
He read “Peacocks” by Wallace Stevens. He said it is one of his favorite poems and he still doesn’t know what it means. He said we can accept poetry the way we do music. This poem “gives a surge of spiritual alertness.” (Note from me as I transcribe the notes I took. I thought the poem was named “Peacocks” but as I looked for a link to it, I realized it’s called “Domination of Black.”)
Wiman mentioned “I create in return.” Duncan (Kill the Creature - essay). I wrote a blog entry about the essay. Fascinating.
Loneliness is one of the ways we know God. We are his image. Is there a correlation there?
Love - adjacent solitudes - Rilke. [I googled this and found “The Difficult Art of Giving Space in Love” in “The Marginalian.” Lots linked to from there.]
Benchmarks of my work. Written in Prague.
When I was learning words
And you were in the bath…
[Googled again: BELIEF: God’s Truth Is Life by Christian Wiman.[
“D., Gardening” - love poem
Joy - You can’t plan it but you can be ready for it, at least not be someone who doesn’t let it come.
Article from The New Yorker found while googling. “How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith”
Poetry
I cannot remember for sure why I wrote this little list in my journal at the Festival. When I journal, I use just one side of the page. I leave the other side to doodle or write down thoughts or ideas that occur to me as I listen to someone. I wrote these 3 words on that side of the page from my notes about Christian Wiman’s talk, above. I think it is what Christian Wiman said when someone asked him about what poetry is. Or maybe some things he listed that are usual characteristics of poetry? ???
assonance
internal rhyme
images
“Picturing the Invisible:” Faith, Education—And the Power of Film with Both
Randy Michael Testa
This presentation felt like a college lecture. The presenter (Randy Michael Testa) struck me as a little full of himself and dramatic, but that’s being judgmental, I know. He seemed to put his life and soul into what he talked about.
What makes a story work? It has to transcend any neat allegory the transcends any pat category.
Testa spoke a lot about “cross media,” using various media to tell stories, where movies are not “versus” books or books “versus” movies. Instead, he teaches cross media, which adds to the story, makes it a story twice-told, with different lenses.
Made a lot of sense to me.
Professor Roy Anker
A fun thing that happened at the end of this session was I saw and spoke with Professor Roy Anker. I introduced myself and we chatted a bit about the session. Then I said, “You did an alumni event for us years ago, before DVDs, and you came to my house to pick up a machine I’d rented for you, some kind of disk reader that enabled you to queue up clips of movies.” He nodded and chimed in on the words “disk reader.” I said, “You talked about ‘Places of the Heart.’” He said, “Powerful stuff.” I said, “Yes. I think of that communion scene all the time!” I wrote about that movie scene here (3rd paragraph). I agree, powerful stuff.
Fiction as Public Theology
Bryan Bliss
Calling? A calling to write? Seems cynical to me: “God is telling me I was meant to write; would you look at this manuscript?”
Push against the desire for just one path you are going to take.
Writing is wanting to put something out into the world. And for people of faith that means something.
David Tracy - public theology. Audiences:
Culture
Academy
Church
John W. de Gruchy - argues that public theology must not give highest authority to Christianity.
Requires the development of a language that is accessible to people outside the Christian tradition, and is convincing in its own right. Example: English person’s understanding of American football.
Requires an informed knowledge of public policy and issues, grasping the implications of what is at stake, and subjecting this to analysis.
Gives priority to the perspectives of victims and survivors, and restoration of justice
Requires believing Jesus will show up.
Writing as prayer - Butt in chair. It’s an act.
Mysteries & Manners: Occasional Prose - Flannery O’conner
Writing - enables a lived experience of God.
To learn:
3-act structure
hero’s journey
not falling into the trap that “literary” means boring.
Panel: Why Books Matter
Anne Bogel, Byron Borger, Karen Swallow Prior
Moderator, Jennifer Holburg: The ways we are influenced by so many things. Story-shaped culture.
What is your elevator pitch for how/why do books matter?
KSP: Especially in our scattered lives today, a book slows us down. The act of slowing down for a story cultivates our inner lives and the inner lives of others—empathy, etc.—and helps us understand the external world.
Anne: Books sneak ideas into the back door. Gives me hope.
BB: C.S. Lewis: Sneaking past the watchful dragons. Slows us down, submitting yourself to someone else’s story. Become humble.
Jennifer Holburg: Decenters ourselves.
What about stories that are not good?
Anne: People often search for a certain experience.
KSP: In a classroom, it’s easy to guide. A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet. Loved this book. Living in community helps. So much value in reading together.
* Gift of curation
* KSP: Get Byron’s newsletter. Booknotes.
Anne: Mrs. Darcy’s book club blog, The Modern Mrs. Darcy. Get the lay of the land or some books, some slightly challenging, some that push more.
BB: Good book coming out: Deep Reading.
Anne: There’s Always This Year.
KSP: Bliss - Turkish author, Claire Keegan
BB: Ordinary Saints. Square Halo Books. Harrison Scott Keys, How to Stay Married
Plaster Creek - Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha - author Prof. David P. Warners
The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham by Bob Hudson, also professor at Calvin, taught the workshop I went to on chapbooks. Someone said book is laugh-out-loud funny.
Reckoning, Discernment, Hope: How Narrative Helps Us Faithfully Inhabit Time
James K.A. Smith
A Conversation Between Christian Wiman and Kaveh Akbar
This was my favorite session. Christian Wiman is a hero of mine. I think he’s a genius. I think he’s the most well-read person ever, at least that I know of. I had never heard of Kaveh Akbar but, wow, was he incredible. There he is, reading centuries-old myths and poetry, and it raises goosebumps on his skin—and changes the air in the room we are all in.
Christian Wiman: Zero at the Bone is a whirlwind of a book. We experience life as a whirlwind. It doesn’t cohere, but somehow there’s a centrifugal force.
Kaveh Akbar: I am a poet. Prose is like translating.
CW: When I was young, I experienced poetry as a destabilization, hard. Now the forms have merged. It’s hard to tell the difference between prose and poetry.
KA: Poetry thins the partition between me and the divine, the me that isn’t me. A Brazilian poet uses Jonathan the lover for Jesus: “There’s something that not telling you feels like a sin. The asshole is holy.”
Discussion between both about the names for God, the difficulty of naming him.
KA: When I say “God,” what I mean is…and there is complete silence in this room chockful of people as Kaveh puts his arms in the air, his head facing upwards, and circles his arms rather wildly. Below is the picture I drew in my journal.
It felt like a profound moment. A liminal moment.
CW: Meister Eckhart: We pray God to be rid of God. The word feels like a failure. Lorine Niedecker is my favorite poet. Her poetry is earthy. I aspire to pure, crystal clear words. James Wright is another poet.
KA: Referred to a poem where someone, a farmer I assume, when giving directions “points the way with a radish.” What else? We have language. Jean Valentine is a poet. Apothatic-saying that you cannot say something, i.e., “I’m speechless.” Poem: “I Came to You” by Jean Valentine. K.A. talks about this poem. (In this video, he shows his arm to show he’s getting goosebumps talking about it. This seems to be his signature move—he did it in each session I saw him in. I love his abandonment, his enthusiasm.)
Dinner with Aunt Jeannette, Cousins Doug & Kathy
Just realized how dumb I was not to take a picture! I went to Aunt Jeannette’s house for dinner and Doug & Kathy came, too. We had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, Uncle Al was not there because he is in the Holland Home Nursing Home. His legs were failing him before and now Aunt Jeannette says he is in bed most of the time, although he does get in a wheelchair sometimes. Aunt Jeannette said, and Doug agreed, that he has a good spirit about it all. Doug said he goes down the hall and hears people yelling at the staff about something they don’t like, but Uncle Al, although he doesn’t like what’s happening, is not taking it out on the staff. He seems able to accept and be grateful for their help.
One thing that I am particularly sorry about is that Uncle Al is not able to work on spreadsheets. He loves spreadsheets. I remember a few years back I told Uncle Al that I, too, like him, have Diabetes 2. Uncle Al had what sounded like a huge spreadsheet tracking his blood test numbers on various dates and times, his weight, and I don’t know what else. I barely remember to do blood tests. (Thankfully my case seems to be at a pretty “manageable” level, at least so far.) Anyway, Uncle Al’s been doing spreadsheets all his life but on his desktop computer at home, which won’t work in the nursing home. Doug said they got him a laptop but Uncle Al cannot seem to physically type on a laptop keyboard. That’s too bad.
Doug has retired from Steelcase and Kathy is still working at Calvin University and Seminary. She is still an expert in church polity, which means she spoke sometimes at last year’s Synod, and I'm sure she will be again this year. At San Jose CRC, we are pretty removed from what is going on at the denominational level but I read a lot about it (and grieve), and Joel is involved in a group trying to find a peaceful way to co-exist, and I talk about it with Gil and Joyce. Our church right now seems very peaceful and everyone loves Gil, so I feel like, right or wrong, I don’t want to bring in the divisiveness from the denomination’s struggles. Anyway, it was interesting to hear a little bit of what is happening in Kathy’s work and in their church.
I also heard about Doug & Kathy’s kids and grandkids, which was fun. Their oldest, daughter Missy, lives with her husband Sachin in India, and their two kids. They are coming to visit in May. India does not have the same breaks as here in the U.S.. Their “summer break” is the month of May, when it is particularly broiling hot in India. And they have some time off at Diwali rather than Christmas. I think Diwali is such a beautiful holiday! But it does make visiting the cousins difficult since one or the other is in school when they schedule visits. Missy sounds like a very international well-traveled person! She and the kids are going to Brussels first, then take a train to Amsterdam, then fly to Michigan. Taking two small children by herself (Sachin is flying in later.) sounds like a big challenge but Missy seems to take it in stride. She’s always been a very capable, strong girl and then woman.
Their daughter Nikki got a job as Business Analyst at Steelcase and their other daughter Jackie is pregnant with their 2nd child. Lots more news, of course, and it was good to catch up.
Aunt Jeannette seems quite well. I noticed she needed to sit down when we were standing to say good-bye but she said her back is doing fine now, after a couple of scary episodes. It was fun to see some things that reminded me of Mom. We are so grateful to Aunt Jeannette for coming for Dad’s funeral and being such a blessing to Mom. They were able to spend a lot of time remembering together. Aunt Jeannette said that there are many times where something is happening and she knows exactly what Fran would say. Me, too. We both agreed Mom would be THRILLED that we are moving to Lynden.