2013.11.20 Thank You Mr. Lincoln

The famed Gettysburg Address was delivered by America’s 16th President, Abraham Lincoln,   November 19, 1863 at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Lincoln’s words remain wise and true, a good example of spiritual writing, not just because he used religious vocabulary, like “consecrate” and “hallow” and "perish,"  but because he went right to the heart and soul of what mattered most to him, personally as the leader of a vast war-torn and bloodied country, but also to Americans whose identity and future depended on keeping alive its founding vision as written in the Declaration of Independence of 1776—87 (four score and seven) years earlier.  

Founding events are important, defining, like the Exodus for Jews, Jesus Christ for Christians, or Muhammed for Islam.  Even individuals have such spiritual touchstones. Mine, as many of you know, was meeting God under the table as a child and learning, unequivocally, that I mattered, no matter what.  What is yours?

Near miraculous to me as a writer is that Lincoln spoke the essence of what mattered in just 272 words!!!  (He'd have loved Twitter.) Oh, envy! I have not a brevity bone in my body, as you can see.  I plan to channel Lincoln as I attempt to get my memoir manuscript’s pages over the transom of a publishing house—in just 250 words. 

When asked in junior high who we thought was the greatest person in the world, I wrote Abraham Lincoln without hesitation.  Later, I felt a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t written Jesus Christ, but I didn’t know him very well yet. Even later, I felt another twinge that I hadn’t written a woman’s name, but all I could think of was Jane Eyre. I suppose therein were planted some early feminist seeds: why were all the upfront famous figures men?  

Lincoln said all men were created equal, as was the linguistic habit of his day. But why couldn’t we just say what we meant? Even at 14 I knew we weren’t all equal. Who lives all the way up to their vision?  We try. Yet I knew from my childhood experience that women were included in the equality vision. Girls mattered to Godde. 

To travel to Gettysburg, Lincoln left a fevered son and a distraught wife. He was exhausted with war, politics and from writing personal letters to everyone who wrote to him in their bereavement.  Then he stayed up all night working on his speech, which he read to a crowd of 20,000 from a single handwritten page. When he finished there was a long silence, followed by thunderous applause. And on the way home he contracted small pox, from which he recovered.

Lincoln was right about the “people.” That day they were the voice; they were the government;  they knew the vision had to prevail And they were the ones, on all sides of the issue, who sacrificed the most for the vision.  The biblical Book of Proverbs proclaims: Without a vision the people perish—all the people.  Lincoln knew that. And Jesus knew that. Both men died for the vision but so far neither our nation not Christianity has perished. It’s close.

I leave you with the words of a great man, and a vision to remember. It’s a prayer. Do you think that if we pray it we will come closer to living it, to uniting under it?  Can we feel compassion—for all?

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
 
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
 
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

2013.06.30 Writing In The Dark

"The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads." William Styron

Don’t be afraid of the dark spots in your life. Let them be visible. The author of the above quote,  William Styron, suffered from clinical depression for years. Out of its depths he wrote with profound empathy for human flawedness and human grandeur, even in himself when he wrote his book on his own depression, called Darkness Visible.

Most famous for Sophie’s Choice Styron wrote from the interstices of what classical theology called experimentum crucis, the experience of the cross, the matter of hideous choices.

We all have such times of despair and loneliness and fear that now, and ultimately, there is nothing. It is often the very place where we find something more, something mysterious, something impossible that allow us to enter the paradox of hope against hope.

One of my own such moments came when I’d been rejected twice for ordination. Delusionally, I thought I was nothing, God was nothing, and the Church was definitely nothing. And from somewhere deep inside me or outside me, I couldn’t tell which and it could have been both, I heard something: No one can take this away from you. Truth.

And that kind of truth is what we write about—always and repeatedly. It’s not the drama of the dilemma nor the triumph of new life, but the in between process of bearing up no matter what until your inner eyes can actually see luminosity in the darkness itself. 

And that is what we write—over and over, this theme with endless individual variations.

2011.10.26 Being IN Your Writing

A friend wrote to say she was thinking of starting over with her reams of pages toward a novel she has wanted to write, and will some day get write—or right.(My humor)

Writing is easier than organizing I find, mostly because it’s more fun. It gets your juices up. The drone and drudge is getting it organized and into a structure that makes it shine and make sense—like a trellis for beautiful roses—for its beholders.

I recommended starting afresh and just giving it 2-3 hours a day. This is advice I’d never be able to follow. I hate the idea of scrapping it all and starting again. Admit I have done it with some chapters and do it daily as I cut and paste.

As to time, there is an isolation that comes with being an artist of any kind. It’s wise only to devote a certain amount of time each day...then go out and play.

I'm fresher in the a.m. but I find I don't get to it till after 1 or so by the time I do my prayer time, yoga stretches, walk, emails, breakfast and morning paper, maybe a phone call, and try to be nice to my beloved.

I call this pre-crastination: doing NOW what might wait till LATER, or tomorrow. As opposed to pro-crastination: doing LATER what might or should be done NOW.

Take your pick about where manyana (couldn’t figure out the tilde) fits in for you.

Everyone says I do it backwards, that writing should be priority and come first. But pre-crastination works best for me. I hate having undone “essentials” related to my mental, emotional and physical needs/wants hanging over my head.

When I write I like to feel free, to be totally devoted to it. I find when I get INTO it and it sparks I‘m not alone at all but full of life energy coming through my words. I am IN my words rather than my words being IN me.

I find it essential to have a writers group, or take a class or two. You need company for the journey and help for the task. Hook up, as they say. The encouragement is so important, as is the critique and accountability.  

Start slow, small and beautiful, close to the hem of earth where Spirit roams and broods.

2011.10.12 Spiritual Writing. One Thought.

Spirituality is loosey goosey to define but here is something that came to me as I read and responded on a friend’s essay on being all F’ed up.

Your writing is spiritual because it dwells in the depth dimension where all hell breaks loose and all heaven breaks through. 

2011.05.31 Three Muses on Spiritual Writing

I have been guided along my way by three Muses—Religion, Spirituality, Feminism. The three often contend for my soul and they also come together as one when it matters most.

These three Muses taught me:

-that Religion offers nourishing gifts like Eucharist, the Bible, and Jesus
-that institutions though clumsy are not the enemy, and that most communal efforts are organized in some way, hopefully placing equal value on every part of the whole.
-that patriarchy is not men’s fault and that women must help to change it for the sake of relationships
-that Spirituality is not only a catch basin for deep and true feelings but an inner crucible where the divine Spirit stokes holy fires within individuals and also takes divine energy beyond the one to the many, igniting healing connections and creating human community
-that Feminism wherever She lands is a force for justice helping realize the radically egalitarian dream that all creation is one and a beloved community is possible
-that all genders, and today there are many variations, are holy
-that some day Femin-ism won’t be needed to urge us along


Spiritual writing at its best pays attention to the Muses as it seeks to plumb the depth dimension of people, places and things. It seeks within the holy, divine, eternal, beyond. It speaks of Mystery which can not be measured replicated or contained in any way because it is not yours; you don’t make it happen; and it does not belong to you though it is graciously given and shared with you.

The paradox of spiritual writing is this: you have to write it, to put it into some kind of words, but the more you try to explain or define it the more it sluices away from you. (See, I've just tried to do it anyway!)

So just write! (Bull Durham as a hesitant baseball player at bat was told: Just bat!)

Write your words. Write it down. If your words are true and deep they may by accident or grace communicate Mystery to someone else.

That’s all you want isn’t it?