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Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Festival of Faith & Writing 2014

I started writing a bunch of Festival notes under my photo gallery but then thought it would probably fit better if I write a blog and embed the pictures. It'll be long but basically I'm transposing little notes I took at the Festival. Most were sentences/quotes that I found thought-provoking.

My photos:
http://moonfamily.smugmug.com/Travel/Festival-2014
Faith & Writing Festival:
http://festival.calvin.edu/
Speakers:
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/

Gene Luen Yang
Is Art Selfish? by Gene Luen Yang. I had never heard of Gene Luen Yang, but he was so interesting. Definitely want to read and learn more. He's a graphic novelist but prefers to call himself a cartoonist. He spoke on whether art is selfish or selfless.
Is Art Selfish? was the name of Yang's talk. I had never heard of Gene Luen Yang, but he was so interesting. Definitely want to read and learn more. He's a graphic novelist but prefers to call himself a cartoonist. He spoke on whether art is selfish or selfless. When you write you are alone and need to shut yourself off from others. He has 4 kids and had a photo of a tiny child's hand sticking out from under the door of the room he writes in. They bang and knock on the door.
He asked his wife, "Is art selfish?" and her answer was, "It can be."

He spoke of 4 points:
  1. Art as an icon - Intense discipline to point you to something higher than self, our stories as part of a lineage.
  2. Art as prayer - Holy Spirit work to create something else. Tame the "monkey mind" to get to flow.
  3. Art as an organ - Like a liver. Vital, can't function without it.
  4. Art as our act of service - Collection of stories that bind a community together.
Art as a service that renews a people.

From the interview. Boxers and Saints based on the Boxer rebellion.
  • It's really irritating that Jesus talked in story.
  • He never wrote anything, only in the sand.
  • If only he'd written on paper -- like, bullet points
  • His (Yang's) heroes of faith:
    • Henri Nouwen - Caring for others out of your own brokenness. Don't have to be complete to help others.

Scott Cairns

Time to write:
  • start with reading
  • poring over a line or two
  • praying for something to come of it.
  • writers who have found a way to find things to say
Discipline - language - pursuit of truth.
Wallace Stevens poem - "The Idea of Order at Key West."
Make good friends with accomplished dead people.
Midrash says, "And another interpretation might be...."
Threnity - song or poem for the dead
Kol Nidre - recanting from ill-considered vows.
Saint Isaac of Syria / Ninevah - rominent in The Brothers Karamazov.
Poem = Not pointing to or at; not a document of meaning made, but a scene of meaning making.
Language that provokes a vision and more.

People he reads:
  • Simeon the Theologian
  • W.H. Auden
  • Samuel Coleridge
  • Emily Dickinson
  • Constantin Kovafy
  • Elizabeth Bishop
  • Robert Frost
Idiot = 
  1. Monks who have their own rule
  2. Monks who share a rule
Isolated figure. Also, the fool - concern for other, bigger than self.
An idiot who hopes to become a fool.

Writing = coming to terms, but not conclusive. Get more from it each time.
Poem - opportunity to make something useful to the reader.

http://www.faithandleadership.com/qa/scott-cairns-words-lead-you-ideas
James McBride

He spoke extemporaneously and genuinely about living a good Christian life.
One of McBride's pieces of advice was to forget about mistakes. Try, and then just let it go, put it behind you, then try again later. 

Brett Lott
  • The word "Christian" was never meant to be a modifier, like "Christian plumber," "Christian writer." It makes it a lesser person. We are people who are Christians.
  • Descriptions - Triangulate - Points us to a known item to help us know the thing.
  • To write precisely, you must be there. Paying attention. Inside the story itself.
  • Precision calls for patience, stumbling over.
  • Exercise:
  • She steps onto the boardwalk, unnerved to hear it creaking under her feet.
  • Take the "ing" out. "Creaking" is a gerund, and implies always happening. Make it "creak." Don't rob it of its power.
  • Marilynne Robinson - You should always think of your audience as someone who's a little smarter than you.
  • Show emotion, don't tell.
Richard Foster
  • Words matter. They are the best carriers of idea. And ideas rule the world.
  • We are what we think about.
  • Allow our words to be grounded in silence.
  • Distraction is a key problem.
  • Need silence - discipline.
  • Silence is writing.
Screenwriter / Filmmaker. he showed a documentary he directed called "Battlefields to Farmfields." 

It was inspiring. It's a program to get vets into growing food. They find it calms their troubled minds and it also gives them a new purpose in life - to grow food for the world. More about it here:
It started in Santa Rosa. I'd like to learn more!

http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/raymond-singer/

Okey Ndibe

I had not heard of Okey Ndibe, either. I loved his voice and manner, and his story. He is from Nigeria and has written several books plus writes essays and commentaries.

Okey Ndibe is working on an autobiography that I hope to read when it comes out. He also is publishing online stories of coming to America. The title begins with "Going Dutch..." He's got intriguing views, looking at the world and religions in a different way than we usually do.

Another book is Foreign Gods, Inc. He mentioned the commodization of gods, buying and selling gods, the ultimate outsider.

http://www.okeyndibe.com/
http://festival.calvin.edu/plan/speakers/okey-ndibe/

Rachel Held Evans
Rachel Held Evans is one of my big favorites who was at the Festival. I've read her books and follow her blog. I wrote a note to a friend after listening to her interview: "There's a scene in "Notting Hill" where the goofy sister says to the movie star, '...and more importantly I genuinely believe and have believed for some time now that we can be best friends. What do YOU think?' That's kind of how I felt." So much of what Evans said seemed like things I would say or do. She seems like a kindred spirit. I know many others feel the same way.

One scene was really funny. During the Q & A time after her talk, someone asked her about how she responds to people who say she is sowing disunity in the church when she voices some of her differences of opinion and so on. She walked away from the podium, closer to the questioner and started talking about how, often, the status quo works for people, and it's natural that they would object to changing it. She said, though, that it is right to express what you believe is true. Then we all heard a low rumble from outside. She stopped and looked out at the audience. "Is that a storm rolling in?" she asked. Before anyone could answer, she scurried over, back behind the podium, folded her hands demurely, and said quickly, "The church is wonderful just as it is, and we should not cause any disunity." We all cracked up.

Before her interview, I had said to my sister that it seemed kind of a shame to me that several of the speakers had talked about the downside of technology such as social networks, e-books and so on. I actually agree that the internet has changed our behaviors. My own reading is most definitely affected. But I said that I wished we could get into a discussion of the best way to take advantage of the benefits of technology, while still encouraging reading. I felt that affinity to Rachel Held Evans when she turned to the audience and said, "It seems like some of the people here are kind of dissing the internet, doesn't it?" And then she went on to talk about how collaborative her writing is, with involving those who respond to her web-based contributions.

Some quotes/gems from Rachel Held Evans.
  • Social media - connection with the readers
  • From certainty, through doubt, to faith.
  • Recognize doubt and uncertainty are part of faith.
  • A lot of people are afraid of grace getting out of hand.
  • Get out of the way and let Jesus do his thing.
  • The Bible as a conversation starter, not a conversation ender.
  • Jesus' teachings are annoyingly straightforward.
  • Proverbs 31 - This woman is like a Pinterest board come to life!
  • The banana of self control. There are so many ways you could make that interesting. (She was referring to how, often when the fruits of the spirit are posted on walls as fruits, self control is a banana because it's the longest.)
  • The act of writing is the best part.
  • Post-it above her desk: The next sentence is not in the refrigerator.
  • Process: Start with animal crackers, move on to more complex carbohydrates.
  • Writing is the work of paying attention.
  • What makes the gospel offensive is the people it lets in, not those it keeps out.
  • Mary Carr, author of Lit, is an author she admires.
  • She also reads old prayers as a way to begin writing - Teresa of Avila prayer, Julian of Norwich.
  • Other favorites: To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain.

Anne Lamott

Anne I love. I think I've read every book she's written, and I follow her on Facebook. Some gems:
  • I don't think we're here to figure it out. "Figure it out" is not a good slogan.
  • The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
  • The sacrament of puttering.
  • Closet shrinkage.
  • Toxic self-consciousness
  • "From Mau to Mozart" - documentary she loves.
  • Laughter is carbonated holiness.
  • We're not hungry for what we're not getting.
  • Kill your little darlings - speaking of writing and then editing your writing.
  • If you can't find an hour, even Jesus can't help you.
  • I have not found inspiration to be a useful tool.
  • Voice of distractor and seducer - Have to be firm, strict and nice. You choose which voice.
  • You can kind of gently bust yourself...I know, honey, I know.
  • Structure and discipline - it's the way to freedom.
  • Every day you have to ask yourself, "Do you want the hit or the serenity?"
  • We hope for the wrong things.
  • People don't need as many casseroles ad you may have thought. I really think it's helpful to offer to do the laundry.
  • Barry Lopez - When all is said and done, all we have is compassion and stories.
  • Barbara Johnson - We are Easter people in a Good Friday world.
  • Can only do it in community.
  • Christianity is Jesus saying, "Got a minute?"
  • Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..which is everyone else...and the courage to change the things I can...which is me.
  • Annabel - Kathleen Winter - about Inuit in Canada. Ulitmate story of restoration.
  • Authors she loves:
    • Mary Oliver
    • Adrienne Rich
    • Fredrick Buechner
  • We don't share our good ideas with people so that we may be more comfortable.

James Schaap
Jim read from a poem he is planning to publish, still in draft form. It reminded me of "Our Town." The narrator is based on a reporter from a small Iowa town who is dead, talking to the reader who is also dead, introducing him to others in the cemetery "up the hill." He spoke of the dead as "redeemed souls."

I thought it was good writing and I will keep an eye out for the new book.


Miraslov Volf

Volf's talk was the most dense, most truly a lecture, talk I heard. I took tons of notes; there was so much in what he said.
  • Theology  articulated way of life.
  • Exclusion & Embrace
  • Two major cultural elements
    • Failure of world to secularize and resurgence of religion
    • Gradual pushing out of exploration of the meaning of life from colleges and universities
  • Expected secularization - help from Hawkings, Stalin, Mau.
  • Thought religion was superfluous. Don't need God to explain.
  • Thought religion would privatize
  • Thought religion would atrophy
  • 1990-2000s - Number of Buddhists, Christians, Hindu, Muslims has grown extensively, also relativity.
  • Charles Taylor - philosopher, great book.
  • People continue to choose religion for many reasons.
  • One reason, central, is:
    • Faith explains the world.
    • Also, faith manipulates people
  • Presumes faith, like science, is to explain and manipulate. 
  • Vigorous debate. Debate is misdirected. Leaves out religion.
  • Augustine: You move us to delight in you. You have made us to delight us. Our hearts are restless until we find you.
  • References to transcendence defines us as human beings.
  • Secularists presume religion needs explaining. But religion presupposes humans need religion.
  •  When we rest in God, it becomes the axis of our being. To be free and flourishing, life is to be lived in relation to the divine.
  • World faiths bring people to transcendence, so their lives have purpose and meaning.
  • Science doesn't compete with this.
  • Now the debate is, how do we understand transcendence?
  • Pushing out the quetion of the meaning of life from colleges and universities.
  • End = goal. What is a life worth living?
    • Age of purity - goal to parse out the assumed way of life
    • Secular humanism - to 1968. Explain meaning of life without religion. Pluralistic.
    • 1968 - all changed - Question of life's meaning has ceased to be recognized. Professors swa themselves as scholars, not there to discuss that question, just advancing knowledge.
  • Humanities lost out and are at the bottom of a hole, according to a scholar he was talking about.
  • Volf thinks more important: You can see a loss of understanding of human nature. As many meanings of life as there are individuals.
  • Faith leaders may or may not contribute to this.
  • Decisions about life worth living are chosen by preference, like consumerism.
  • Stream of new goods is an opiate of people.
  • Preferences come under the meaning of life.
  • In university, it is about research, the question is how.
  • Question for humans is, "to what end?"
  • We have lost the ability to deliberate.
  • He teaches a course looking at religions/philosophy and ask how would your life change if you followed each religion or philosophy?
After this session I was thinking especially about the part where Volf spoke about preferences, about how we make decisions based on preferences rather than on what will give us a life worth living, help us to answer "to what end." I had been involved in a conversation with two young women discussing choosing a church to join when moving into a new area. I wondered how thinking about this would affect that decision. Rather than preferences, thinking what church would help you to live a life worth living, help you answer "to what end?"


Amy Leach

Another author I had not heard of. She is very animated, almost hyper, extremely cheerful, exudes enthusiasm. Some gems.
  • Degree in "creative non-fiction."
  • Thinking new thoughts - session was on how to encourage thinking new thoughts.
  • How can we think independent thoughts?
  • I get out of my own ruts, go to things without preconception.
  • Why should conversations be so much more understandable than experience?
  • Reading old books illuminates our current times
  • A longing/yearning to think new thoughts.
  • Don't be satisfied with the beginning thoughts. Keep thinking to find new thoughts.
  • Find surprising words - dictionary, old poetry.
  • Some authors:
    • Edward Lear
    • Thomas Carlyle
    • Lewis Carrol
    • Laura E. Richards
    • Felicia Lamport
    • Shel Silverstein
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Saturday, January 18, 2014

Dearie by Bob Spitz

Dearie, the Remarkable Life of Julia Child



I haven't written here in a while and now I notice that the last time I wrote it was about Julia Child's best friend, Simca, and now I'm writing about her biography.

Our bookclub chose this book on the recommendation of one of the members who is a fantastic cook. I've been an admirer of Julia Child for quite a while, and have read her memoir, My Life in France. (By the way, that was written with the help of her nephew, Alex Prud'homme, and was used as inspiration in the movie "Julie and Julia," written and directed by Nora Ephron.)

I liked this book a lot. Bob Spitz did a great job of filling the book with facts and details, yet making it interesting and fun to read. In his Afterword he writes about having written a "tome" about the Beatles. Now that I've seen his work, I may check that out, too.

But to get back to Dearie, I loved getting to know Julia Child more. Did you know she was actually 6'3"? I guess she told people she was 6'1" but she was shaving off a couple inches. And her sister "Dort" was 6'5", their brother was 6'4". Have to love a tall family! She seems to have never let it bother her. She sort of galloped through life, making her presence felt wherever she went.

She was not perfect by any means, but what a wonderful woman! She had lots of fun as she grew up in California, in a fairly wealthy family, but she didn't figure out what she really wanted to do until she was somewhere in her 40's, I think it was. That was part of the memoir and movie: her discovery of her love of French food when she went to Paris with her husband Paul, and then going to culinary school to become a chef.

Her devotion to Paul is one of  the things I admire. She loved him so dearly. He loved her, too, of course. In the book you learn that Paul was kind of a difficult guy. He was very smart and creative, but stuck in government jobs and he didn't advance easily in his career because he was rather blunt and sometimes irritating. Even when he got old and lost his memory and eventually needed to live in an assisted living facility, Julia still called or visited him every day and told him all the details of what was going on in her life.

She was not sentimental, though. She was practical in matters of money, for example. She really did not make a whole lot of money for many years of her cooking, TV and book-writing career, and part of the reason for that was her loyalty to those who contracted with her in the beginning. Sometimes she was a contradiction - accepting much less pay than she could get elsewhere in some cases, and other times deciding to go with the party that offered the most money even though she had a longtime friendship with the other person involved.

She liked to flout convention and break the rules. That's another one of the things that makes her endearing to me. I sometimes have a tiny problem with authority myself, and it's fun to read about her doing things pretty much only in order to break the rules. One time she was working on the show, "Julia and Jacques," and insisted on drinking beer with the meal they made even though she never drank beer with meals - she always had wine. But Kendall Jackson was sponsoring the show and some of their representatives were watching, and she just wanted to be contrary. As the author wrote, Kendall Jackson did not sponsor any more shows for her. Not the wisest action for Julia to take, but I can't help but laugh.

Those "Julia and Jacques" shows are a favorite of mine. I want to find them and watch them again. I always felt that Jacques was treating Julia with so much love, even when she was purposely exasperating him with insisting on her methods over his. I was so glad this biography included a bit about these shows. They were a big hit precisely because of that back-and-forth disagreement between the two of them. I knew they were both being genuine, but I didn't know that Jacques was as exasperated by Julia as he must have been. The author said that on some breaks, Jacques would stand on the porch with his fists clenched and let out a stream of French swear words. But then he'd go back on camera and lovingly bow to her opinions. (And speaking of swearing, Julia did her share. She was known to say, or advise others to say, "Fuck 'em!" as she moved forward in what she felt was right.)

By the time she was filming those "Julia and Jacques" shows, she could pretty much get away with anything. She was truly the queen of the cooking scene, treated like royalty wherever she went. Usually she was kind and gracious to her admirers. Even when she didn't approve of a chef's methods or foods, she would avoid unkindness and find some way to say something encouraging.

It was interesting to learn about her writing, too. Julia took her cookbooks very seriously. She tested every recipe over and over. She'd call authorities to learn the chemistry of ingredients, or the best cuts of meat, or any other answer she needed. It's no wonder it took her years to complete the books. She worked hard and put in long, exhausting hours. Julia spurned cookbooks with vague recipes and made sure hers were precise in measurements and instruction. I've been trying new recipes lately and have come to appreciate those precise recipes.

I highly recommend the book. You'll enjoy getting to know a remarkable woman. Julia Child has been and continues to be one of my heroes.
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