Thank you, St. Flannery

When I first started teaching Christianity and Writing, I had some difficulty finding high quality literary work to assign to my students. Early on, I discovered an anthology of short stories written by Christians. The book was published by an Evangelical publishing house and had the word best in the title. I was a bit desperate, and the stories were competent, yes, maybe pretty good. I needed the book to work and would assign the superior ones. The students might not notice the chinks.

One day I talked with Kristina after class, a smart, rising writer. She referenced the book, saying, "The stories are good, but they're not great." I deflated inside and felt outed as a teacher. I always gave my students the best literature possible, but the parameters of the class limited me. The conservative Christian anthology was perhaps good, but not great, and definitely not best.

I've puzzled for years as to why Evanglicals can't write. Part of the problem has to do with the separatism, the us-vs.-them mentality I've written about lately. Evangelicals have created their own ghetto of sorts: Christian schools, colleges, stores, communities--and publishing houses. While the audience is small, literary publishing is alive and well in the mainstream community. No such equivalent exists within the Christian publishing world (at least none whose works truly satisfy). Thus, some conservative kids grow up with largely mediocre literature, and some go on to aspire to write more of the same.

Enter Flannery O'Connor, acclaimed short story writer and patron saint of Christians who write against the tide. I assign Mystery and Manners as part of my Writing of Fiction class because O'Connor's thoughts about Catholic writing over forty years ago are a keen commentary on Evangelical writing today.

One of the key issues within Christian writing is how a Christian worldview is translated through the work. Many Evangelicals eschew subtlety and nuanced approaches, unable to trust their reader. They fail to see the incarnational aspects of writing about the physical world. Novels then become insufferable with overt moralizing. Flannery speaks of Christian writers who impose an unrealistic faith template over a story: "What the fiction writer will discover...is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of abstract truth. The writer learns, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is....He will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them."

For Flannery, the truly Christian novel begins with excellence, attending deeply to the parameters of the art form. Keep in mind the previous post that mentions Facing the Giants as you read O'Connor's quote:

The novelist who deliberately misuses his talent for some good purpose may be committing no sin, but he is certainly committing a grave inconsistency, for he is trying to reflect God with what amounts to a practical untruth. Poorly written novels--no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters--are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying....An individual may be highly edified by a sorry novel because he doesn't know any better.

She says that too many writers are not willing to "stay within our limitations," wanting to create something that has "utilitarian value" (i.e. the novel-as-religious-tract). She irritates some of my students when she concludes that Christian writers can "safely leave evangelizing to the evangelists" by not shoe-horning in fanciful plot lines that make God look good.

In fact, unrealistic plots that turn the Christian life into a predictable, romanticized, quid-pro-quo arrangement are not glorifying to God. O'Connor says that such plots serve to "tidy up reality," which is "certainly to succumb to the sin of pride." The sin of pride? Yes. Such contrived and overly rosy plots seek to one-up God, with writers saying, in effect, that they can create a better world, a more perfect world, than he allows to exist. As I like to tell my students, God does not need you to do public relations spin for him.

In the end, good fiction doesn't give us quick, easy answers, Flannery says, but, instead, "leaves us, like Job, with a renewed sense of mystery."

After discarding that anthology years ago, I've found new authors of faith to assign for my class. Few, if any, of them could be classified as Evangelical, but they open windows of faith within their literature, deeply penetrating concrete reality. I'm still waiting for Evangelical writers to truly emerge in the canon, and I wonder whether the ways that Evangelical culture forms people mitigates against its members emerging in the arts. Even if that's true, I know wise voices like Flannery's can enlighten and provoke us to something artistically higher, maybe to something greater or even the best.

Joining the Culture Part Three: At the Movies

Recently, I listened to a speaker whose topic was the Christianity, arts, and culture. I had looked forward to hearing his thoughts, ready for new insights, as he was an expert of sorts. What he said left me a little bit stunned. And frustrated, especially in light of my recent theme about Christians' needing to join the human race.

The speaker talked about the need for Christians to be a presence in the arts community. The way to go about it, he said, is for Christians to see the needs within culture and then create art to fill that need. This is the opposite of what I would tell my students. We don't create strong art by pointing a spyglass toward the culture, diagnosing their need, and creating art to fill in that crack. We create meaningful art by going deep within ourselves, getting in touch with our own needs, desires, brokenness, and creating out of that place. The speaker seemed to be intimating that because Christians have all the answers, our job as artists and writers is to package them in words, paint, or clay and ship them off to a clueless culture.

Again, we're back to us vs. them, holding ourselves apart from the rest of humanity. In short, failing to join the human race.

Later, he talked about examples of art by Christians that he felt were commendable: Facing the Giants and Fireproof. I could barely stay in my seat. The student next to me gave me a knowing look. She had been in a class of mine a few months before where we had read an article deconstructing the response to Facing the Giants, a terrible movie by all accounts. A friend told me that the makers of those movies are not interested in film as an art form. They simply wanted a vehicle for presenting a Christian message.

I have no doubt that many were affected by both movies, perhaps drawing them closer to God, but to have those movies held up as models for Christians finding their place in the world of film, or the arts in general, saddens me. We cannot assume that the films' spiritual impact on the rest of the culture was merely neutral. I'm afraid such movies reinforce stereotypes about Christians, their art, and the simplistic, often unrealistic, ways that they see the world, potentially pushing them further away from the Gospel. And I can only imagine what unbelievers who truly care about the beauty of film think.

Again, we find ourselves divided from the culture, us vs. them. They have their art, we have what passes for ours, art that can only be loved by either people who already agree with its moralizing or who don't care about artistic integrity.

Despite all that the speaker sparked in me, I have a lot of hope for Christians joining the table of arts and culture. Two weeks from now, my college will be graduating a couple hundred students. A few will be writers I've worked with for three years. I've given them good literature to read in every writing class and expected big things from them. Some of them have the potential to find a place in the emerging canon. They understand that sincerity is not an acceptable substitute for artistic excellence. They write out of their own pains and joys, their desires and hopes. It's honest, sometimes raw.

They're involved in culture, loving words and the beauty of the world, caring about quality in what they create. For those in English Departments and coffee shops around this country, people whose language is beauty and excellence, these students might well become a city set upon a hill.

Joining the Human Race, Part 2

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"--

A few weeks ago I heard a speaker talk about Christians engaging with culture through the arts (that post is coming), so I've been thinking about writing an essay for my sabbatical collection about the Christian writer's relationship with culture. And there's a story that keeps coming back to me when I ponder the topic.

About ten years ago, I taught a poetry literature class and assigned Walt Whitman. In class discussion, I noticed some of the students seemed to have a dismissive attitude toward Whitman and his work. Certainly, he's a bit provocative and outrageous. I told the students to write a response to this question: Why should they, as students at a Christian college, study Walt Whitman? I read the twenty-some answers, which generally expressed that Whitman is an important American poet, so we should read him, or as Christians in culture, we need to know about poets, such as Whitman, who are considered excellent, so we can be a better witness.

Not one student said he or she could learn something valuable from Walt Whitman, that his poetry had something to offer that the students needed as human beings in the world.

I shared with my students the gist of their responses. I closed class announcing, "Well, I hope you all come back next time because my devotional of the day will be entitled 'Why Walt Whitman is more spiritual than you!'"

The following class, I talked about "Song of Myself's" spiritual significance for me--delight in even the smallest things, seeing the holy everywhere, a celebratory stance toward life. I don't know if my thoughts had any affect on the students. The poem seemed much more alive to me than many of them did, and I wanted them to see that non-Christian writers can add value to their lives and perspectives. Clearly, some of them had been taught, explicitly or implicitly, that unbelievers have nothing important to say to them, and their job is to get to know about the world just enough to set it straight spiritually.

I think what grieves me about this tendency to sequester ourselves from the world is that we miss so much of God, of goodness, along with some really interesting people. The world we live in is a broken one but so are all of us in our humanness, even as we follow Jesus. And there are disordered elements within Whitman's poem that I would never defend, yet this is a microcosm of a life-long skill--allowing the wheat and the tares to grow together while maintaining our capacity to tell the difference. Jesus journeyed through life this way. This world is haunted by dark presences, but it all belongs to God, and there's beauty enough to keep us dazzled.

But this can only happen if we decide to join the human race first. And that's the barest beginning--the starting gate--of our calling as the people of God to be a compassionate presence. Whitman himself penned, "A kelson of the creation is love."

Speaking of Speaking of Faith

While I was on San Juan Island in Washington, I took to listening to archived episodes of Speaking of Faith, a weekly radio program on public radio. In the early evening, I would make supper in my cottage, selecting a radio interview that interested me to serve as dinner conversation. I met some amazing people that way, heard some stories that heartened and haunted me. Jean Vanier, the L'Arche community in Iowa, Martin Marty, Joan Chittister, Shane Claiborne, Jimmy Carter: Krista Tippett did a wonderful job of connecting with these interviewees. These warm, thoughtful conversations saw me through many dinners--I sometimes listened to the same programs twice.

Then Tippett interviewed a major voice in the Evangelical community. The man--let's call him Evan--set off a distinct note of discord in me as I listened to that interview. His answers felt canned, perfunctory, pushy, close to a monologue at times. He seemed to be using the questions to say whatever he wanted said. It wasn't much of a conversation. Tippett, an excellent interviewer who has an easy, engaging style, stuttered a bit at times, seemingly off balance, struggling to grapple with Evan's style of conversing.

Honestly, I felt embarrassed. After all the other programs I listened to, people speaking from the heart, deeply interacting with Tippett, this one felt flat and uninspired, like a TV commercial.

Of course, anyone can have an off interview, and I have respect for Evan on many levels. That particular program simply served to point out something that feels sadly true in much of the Evangelical community: we have trouble joining the human race. We sometimes have trouble just being with people who do not hold our belief system.

Maybe we're concerned about being sure people get the Gospel, so we shoe-horn it in if needed, or we're a little defensive about the public image of conservative Christians. If our primary metaphor for spiritual living is war or battle, then perhaps staying fortressed behind a bunker, lobbing ideas over the wall into enemy territory, feels like home. The result is superficial engagement because we don't truly open ourselves, our hearts, to outsiders (i.e. unbelievers), and we don't listen well.

I'm afraid that some parts of conservative Christendom are so insulated, so embedded in their own Evangelical ghetto, that they are close to social cripples, unable to engage the world in a satisfying or meaningful way. Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to be a part of the human race, and I'm not sure how we can find out way back. It makes me wonder what we're afraid of and if we've forgotten that in God's kingdom, truth and love are inextricably linked.

I think of Krista Tippett's graciousness with people that kept me company those nights on the island. Maybe what I can do is to be mindful of that graciousness, extending myself to all the people I encounter, remembering that another word for unbeliever is person, even person made in the image of God.

Writing on San Juan Island

Today felt like a typical day on San Juan Island. The alarm goes off about 7:15, and I do my morning thing--shower, breakfast, walk to the bluff that overlooks Friday Harbor to see what the day is like. It was cloudy today and a little cool. It's been like that for most of my stay here with snow on select days. Mornings I read poetry (Jack Gilbert is a poetry god) and/or prose by Annie Dillard (I've re-read Holy the Firm twice), Joni Tevis, Kathleen Norris. I listen to them all carefully. These are good voices to carry into my writing day.

It's strange to have my day surround words so intensely. Odd in a way--traveling so far, buying four weeks' worth of groceries--so much effort to make space to write.

After lunch in my cottage, I pack up my computer, iPod, wireless mouse, manila folders of my writing and head over to the study building, a two minute walk. I have a desk in front of sliding glass doors that's overlooks the bluff and the harbor. I've had of late an office mate, Bill, who is writing a book on his philosophy of human rights. He reads books like The Myth of Ownership and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. We barely talk. There seems to be a code in the study building with its high ceilings where sound bounces around at will. It's like an uber-library, so we mostly exchange little pleasantries coming and going.

Bill types a lot. I stare out the window a lot. I've felt a little self-conscious about this at moments. Does he realize I'm not typing much? Can he tell when I'm on Facebook? Sometimes I sit with the computer screen, shifting my chair closer, staring intently, changing a phrase here or there. A lot of my work has been the putzy type writers do after they get the initial thing on paper. In other words: shaping, revising.

I walk around a lot here--taking breaks or my late afternoon constitutional--and sometimes I think about Bill. Here's a guy writing a book on human rights for heaven's sake at a time in our history where the world's cruelty needs all the counter-balancing it can get. And me? I'm writing about, well, writing. And I stare at screens a lot and watch the ferries come and go in the harbor (Bill confessed that he enjoys that too).

So I've been thinking about the value of writing, about the value of my project. I'm writing about beauty, fruitfulness, contemplation, as well as working on short nonfiction pieces. What does it all add up to?
I think beauty matters. I think words that help us to feel more human and more aware of God matter. Language in the right patterns carries with it the possibility of transcendence, and I want that. By transcendence I mean moments of intense awakening, where we sense a magnificent otherness above and beyond us, a deep significance, poignancy, and meaning to life and our relation to it. We have too little of that. I believe such things can change the world.
But the change might be small, slow, almost imperceptible at first, perhaps like the proverbial butterfly in San Francisco whose beating wings set off a motion of air across the world that eventually becomes the roar of a tsunami in Japan. Maybe it's like that. Or maybe not. What I know is I am in this hidden place doing a hidden work. I'm silent most of the day, working and walking alone.

Writing is a blind journey of faith and that's part of its formational power for me. All I can see from here is the silence and the hiddenness and the words that form the day. This is where I must be: in the now with God, staring at the screen, tending word by careful word. This is my call in this season, and I pray to be faithful. And for this day, this season, it's enough, it's good.

Eagles and Solitude

I've been in Friday Harbor for a week now. It's been mostly overcast with some rain here and there (rain and/or sleet seems especially attracted to my long walks). We got half and inch of snow last Wednesday. Yesterday morning, Sunday, was the first morning there was sun early in the day. I finally saw what my east-windowed kitchen area looked like with light pouring in. Some days after breakfast, I finish the last swallows of my first mug of morning coffee on my deck that faces the harbor. I wandered out, breathed deep, and glanced out at the trees and the water. Then I saw it, a bald eagle sitting in a tree about thirty feet from me. I stared at him, grabbed my camera and took one shot. Then I just stood there watching him until he lifted off, unfolding the great expanse of his wings. Amazing. I remember thinking to myself, "It is good to be here."

It is good, but intensive writing is a hard business. I write slowly and sometimes am unsure what I mean or even what I'm doing. Writing makes me moody. Plus, spending money and time on a trip like this can put pressure on me to be sure something substantive comes out of these weeks. Mostly I'm not affected by these niggling thoughts, but there are times. And in the middle of my messy thoughts, I get an eagle in flight.

I have a lot of aloneness and solitude here. I don't speak to hardly anyone on a typical day so far. Knowing this might be the case, I brought The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen as a text to companion me through these weeks. It has been many years since I read this little book, and I'm glad it made it into the suitcase. I'm especially touched right now by the "Solitude" section where Henri talks about our need to "die to our neighbor" in order to serve and minister to people. Henri explains what it means to die to one's neighbor:

In order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others. To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never exist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

I'm reminded how easily I make judgments about others and about myself. Henri says, "The compassionate person is so aware of the suffering of others that it is not even possible for him or her to dwell on their sins." These words are chastening and refreshing. I make up my mind about people so quickly sometimes. It's often an automatic response. The book says compassion is strengthened by solitude. I pray that's true for me.

For the present, I'm reminded to let go of judgments in the form of pressures and expectations, to breathe deep and say, "it is good to be here." The remainder of yesterday and today, I kept scanning the trees for that eagle, for another sighting of something rare and beautiful, grateful for the glimpse I was given.

Homecoming

Right now I'm sitting at my kitchen table watching dusk come over the sound. I have just moved into a cottage on San Juan Island in Washington state, my home for the next four weeks. I can see the water, illumined by the waning light, through the trees that crowd the slope down to the shore. The day was cool--around 45 degrees and misty--a contrast to the warmer, sunnier days I had in Seattle since Friday. I have come here to close myself in with God and with words and to see what occurs when I do that.

The books I brought for this sojourn stand upright on a shelf to the left of my gas fireplace, some carefully chosen, some guessed at and tossed in the suitcase. In a manila folder are photocopies of articles and pages from books that I thought might be helpful. So much work went into coming here.

I came to continue what began in the below-zero temperatures of St. Paul in early January, to say something about the writing life and how my faith intersects and ultimately becomes that life. A year ago, I decided that my sabbatical project needed a change of scenery that would both invigorate and de-center me from my normal spaces and routines. I wanted to participate in an unfamiliar beauty that it might seep into the beauty I hope to write. I desire to chronicle some thoughts about the importance of beauty and all that stems from seeking the beautiful, which is to say that I'm seeking God and his presence in the world.

And maybe I care so much about beauty these days because the Christian faith I grew up with didn't. Hans Urs von Balthasar points out that religion's relationship with beauty is in serious disrepair. He writes and of this sad fact and its dire consequence:

No longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. We no longer dare to believe in beauty, and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will no allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name, as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past, whether he admits it or not, can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

Perhaps I'm on San Juan Island because I believe these words of von Balthasar. Beauty, neglected and forsaken, is a pathway to experiencing God and recognizing his goodness and truth all around us.

And then there's love. Recently, I wrote, "As I travel more deeply into God, I notice that love and beauty run parallel in my living, and in the act of writing, they are the same thing." And then this: "Beauty is the love of God at play in the world." Beauty is one of the transcendentals, a part of God's very existence, along with goodness and truth, that pervade all God creates. If that's true, then beauty is a pathway of knowing and experiencing God.

And so I'm here, 1500 miles from home and yet home all the same. John O'Donohue says, "When we experience the beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming." That sounds right. I hope to find myself at home with God in the beauty of this place. May that be so for all of us, whatever our surroundings.