Monthly Archives: December 2012

Socrates, alive and well and emailing me

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I think it was Socrates who said, “The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.”

I have a very dear friend who is experiencing this same truth right now, and since she is just fantastic and brilliant and compassionate and humble, I wanted to share some of her thoughts with you.  One thing you should know about my friend is that about a year ago, she underwent a painful divorce, a devastating experience that drove her right into the arms of God.

The following is essentially a series of emails she sent to me, edited to keep her anonymous:

This morning I was thinking about my life and where I was 4 years ago.  I thought I had so much figured out at that point.  There would be times throughout the past 4 years where I’d look back and think about how things were better back then, how I had a relationship with God, I was happy and stable and figured out, and I would regret so many of the mistakes I made.  But today, I realized that…I didn’t really know God back then, or at least not how I know him NOW.  Even back when I was [in Bible college], when I was surrounded by Christians and learning about the Bible, I didn’t know God the way I know God now.  That if my life had not totally blown up (oh heck, if I hadn’t totally blown up my life), I never could have ended up where I am now.  And I don’t mean “here” like “in this job/house/etc,” but “here” as in…being forced to look at the world we live in, to think about the God I thought I knew, and to look to the Bible and ask myself, “Have I ever really understood God?”  There were times I thought I did; many more times when I knew I wasn’t living for him but threw his name around anyway; times when I desperately wanted to find him so I could know that I hadn’t screwed up to the point of no return; times when I wanted a quick fix of good feelings before going on my own path.  Recently, I’ve had to throw away everything I used to think about God and start fresh.  I never could have done that if I was still married.  I wouldn’t have dared look at what I thought was right and asked, “Am I sure?”  When I stopped asking questions about God, he stopped answering.  When I started asking questions, he started blessing me.
Now I feel like I just get so much of him.  Why did God ignore the “righteous” and look to the “sinners”?  It’s not just that he is merciful and not just that the sinners needed him…it’s also that the sinners were the ones willing to ask the right questions.  They were the ones to say, “Really, God?  There’s room for me, too?  Even though this is who I am?”  So much of my life I lived like one of the Pharisees while thinking I was a lamb.  HOW MUCH I’ve learned; HOW MUCH I’ve gained from realizing that I really never sat down and asked God about who he is, what he wants, what he thinks.  I just listened to others, looked at some words in the Bible, and thought I knew it all.  I knew nothing.  Now, in doubting him and his plan, I’ve actually come to my greatest knowledge of who he really is.
I can’t remember, but I think I told you a few weeks ago that I received the first EVER assurance of my salvation.  How funny that it came at a time when I’m looking skeptically at the Bible and digging deeper to ask questions instead of accepting it at face value; funny that it came when I’m divorced instead of married; funny that it came when I’m more focused on being a strong, SINGLE career-woman instead of a wife and mother.  My whole world has flipped upside down.  I think it saved me….I think it (my sin, my knowledge of my sin, the loss of my marriage, the loss of my faith) actually saved my faith and my soul.
I just can’t help but regret all the years I’ve wasted not really knowing God.  That I sat at a [Christian college] and took in everything I was told about God, adopted beliefs because they were “God’s beliefs,” and never took advantage of the resources and community I had.  That I was too afraid to say, “Yes, but what about…” and that any answers to tough questions were either dismissed with, “We just need to accept that’s who God is” or “we live in a fallen world, so that’s how it goes.”
I know now that I’m way too radical for most mainstream Christians to take me seriously.  I know that 4 years ago, I wouldn’t have taken me seriously.  But now I can look back and know that when I thought I had all the answers, I really had none, and when I thought I knew God, he was a remote figure to me.  Now I have REAL fath, REAL knowledge, REAL love, REAL security.
You’ve said before that you think God allowed sin into the world because the Cross was just a better way.  I read recently that someone suggested the fall occurred because all good stories need conflict to move the story forward.  I think about these things and I can ask myself, “Why am I divorced?” and “How can I forgive myself?” and even, “How can GOD forgive me?!”  But if the whole reason for all of this was for me to get to a place to really know God, and if I couldn’t have arrived there without all of this, then I am a very very lucky woman to have a God who loves me enough to put me through hell to get to heaven on the other side.
Wow.  Just wow.
~1

Why Write?

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When it’s just you and your manuscript in a tiny house for a week, both truth and lies are going to ricochet like crazy off those old walls and you know some barbs are going to get stuck in you.  You’ll go from imagining your impending wild success to realizing that you’re a complete fraud.  The only reassurances you can find are electronic—Facebook, texts.  You drink them like water, but even then, you think what do these people know anyway?

This has been happening a lot lately, you think. This up and down, this rollercoaster.  You’ve tried to tell yourself it’s just the writing life, the way things are.  And to some extent, this really has to be true.  But you’ve got to find some solid footing or you’re going to go insane.

So stand on this: you don’t write because you want to be published.  You write because you love writing.

You love sounds and rhythms and the way words work.  You love that challenge of finding that exact right word—the one you’ll know when you see it—and so you dive through the thesaurus and spin in circles until you finally find capacious or sentinel or intrepid and think yes, yes, that is the one.  You love the characters and the way they take on their own personalities and force you to share the decision-making with them.  You love the modicum of control you retain over the rest of it—the smells, the sounds, the setting.  (Even if you can’t manage what your characters will do or say, you can still toss them onto a roof together or in a car wash or a parking ramp.)  You love story.  You love the way that truth sometimes is clearest in fiction.  You love alliteration and imagery and all those uncontrollable verbs.  You love the way one perfect line can steal your breath.  You love that you get to be a little creator.

And you love the writing community—how it’s full of quirky, broken people who beat back the darkness by stringing words together.  You love how you can understand one another, and how at one point or another, they all need to be reminded of the same thing you did this week.

Life of a WriterdeviantART by seetheduck

Life of a Writer
deviantART by seetheduck

Barnabus

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I am so glad that my spiritual gift is encouragement.  It is such a fun gift!

I love targeting a friend and sending an email full of the things I like about him or her.  I systematically go through my phone to send encouraging texts– just a little 140-word pop! of joy or gratitude, or something to make a friend laugh.  I do this on Facebook too sometimes– click on “Friends” and write on the first dozen or so people’s walls with just a little something.

I try to do this for strangers too– you never know when it might make their day.  I compliment strangers in the hallway and send “WOW” messages to Etsy artists I will never, ever meet.  If I am on a website that I like, I’ll take the extra couple seconds to email the site owner.

The reason for this post is not to praise myself– but to share how much joy this gives me.  I am so grateful to God for giving me such a fun and delightful and life-giving challenge to make people understand how loved they are– how beautiful– how talented.  I never have to lie or invent a reason to encourage someone– there is so much to love in each person.

I also love to buy gifts for people– some fun little present, a scarf they’ve admired or a book I know they will love– but my main gift is words.  They matter so much, and anytime I toss a line of Truth into the darkness, I am reminded just how much words shine.

sparkler

Mental illness is a medical problem.

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One thing that frustrates me to no end is when people treat mental illness like moodiness, as if you can just snap out of it, instead of like the medical issue it is.  This mindset is so pervasive that it has infiltrated even those with mental disorders.  It broke my heart to sit across the table from an obsessive-compulsive who thought she should be able to just “pray away” her OCD.  Now, of course I think that prayer matters.  But I think also that you pray about cancer– and then undergo chemotherapy— and pray some more.

whatifwe

books books books

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Just finished …

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling |We’re not in Hogwarts anymore, Toto.  This is Rowling’s first book after the Harry Potter series, and it is absolutely nothing like them, which I’m sure was her point.  I mean, how do you compete with one of the most popular children’s series ever?  You avoid the competition and write an adult novel instead, I guess.  The Casual Vacancy was hard for me to get into at first– I felt that Rowling was trying to shock me just because she could.  Also, I couldn’t tell what the story was about for quite a while.  It is a book about smalltown politics– both literal politics and also the inner workings of a town that is all interconnected and where people often say and do things that are different from what they think or believe.  The book is very well-written, but very raw, real, gritty, and sad.  Very, very sad.  While I will re-read the Potter series for the rest of my life, I think one time through of this book will be enough for me, period.

Map of Time by Felix J. Palma | I had heard this book likened to The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, one of my favorite books I read this whole year.  But it just wasn’t true, and I’m not sure at all where the comparison came from.  Map of Time started off fascinating– telling the story of a man in love with one of the Whitechapel prostitutes in the time of Jack the Ripper.  (I have researched Jack the Ripper in both high school and college, so this was particularly interesting to me to hear about the incidents from the other angle!)  The premise seemed interesting, and I was starting to care about the characters … and then suddenly, I felt duped and we were onto the second story of three in the book, and the person I thought had been the protagonist had to climb down off the stage.  It was just such a strange format, and it didn’t work for me.  In the end, the book was too shallow for me, and I never felt like I really got to know the characters.  Palma tries to trick his readers multiple times throughout the book, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  In most books, I am thrilled when I discover a twist, but Palma’s just disappointed me.

Gorgon in the Gully by Melina Marchetta | As I just posted recently, I think everyone should read Marchetta’s books.  Unlike her usual writing for teens, this book is for younger readers.  It still appealed to me because 1) Everything she writes is marvelous and 2) It is about Danny, the younger brother of Jonah Griggs (of Jellicoe Road).  It is a delightful little story about pulling together a group of friends from various groups.  I think it would be the perfect read for a middle schooler!  It inspired me to re-read

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta | Masterful.  Just masterful.  And so absolutely original.  A book centered around the territory wars between the boarding school kids, the town kids, and the cadets in the visiting military school– but really, that’s just the venue for the story.  The real story is one of love and friendship and generations.  This is such an incredible book, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  If you read it, you will fall in love.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni | So, this is obviously not the usual type of book I review on my blog, but it was quite fascinating.  It is a “leadership fable” about a team that needs to work together better and how the CEO makes it happen.  I read it in two days!  The majority of the book is a story about this fictional company/team, but then the last part of the book goes into non-fiction details of how to put this into effect at your workplace.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis | Yes, the whole series.  Yes, again.  Yes, just as incredible as the last time through.

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson | This was only my second time reading this story, and somehow I forgot how magnificent it was.  The writing is absolutely stunning, which is not surprising, since the author has two MFAs– one in poetry and one in writing for children and young adults.  It is the story of Lenny Walker, whose older sister/best friend Bailey died suddenly about a month before the book starts.  She is trying to navigate her grief all while falling in love for the first time, and it is just so good and sad and good.  If you have a sister, you’ll probably shed a couple tears.  This book will break your heart.

Currently reading …

Reached by Ally Condie | The third book of the Matched series, and again … my opinion is still out.  I liked Matched but was not very into Crossed.  We’ll see if Reached can win me back!

I did just get Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta on audiobook, and I am so pumped to listen/re-read that one!!  I have so many books that I want to read, and I just keep amassing books (I just bought a new bookcase that is back in my apartment waiting to be assembled after my writing retreat) and am not able to get through them as fast as I’d like (especially since I spend a lot of time re-reading favorites, which I know some people can’t understand).  I guess that’s the problem when you love reading but you LOVE writing.

Questions for today: what are you reading right now?  Do you like to re-read?  If you’re a writer, do you, like me, find a hard time balancing reading and writing?

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OCD stereotypes and Pure-O

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Just like any other group, obsessive-compulsives have their own stereotype, which is quite often perpetuated by media.  When most people hear “OCD,” they think of a neat-freak.  The truth of the matter is that, for some, washing and ordering are just symptoms of the problem.  Oh, and about 2/3rds of OCs are hoarders, so … yeah, that neat-freak stereotype falls a little flat.

monk

Personally, I identify as a pure obsessional (in our community we call it “pure-o”), which is actually a misnomer, because we pure-o’s still have compulsions.  My most common obsessions were about sin and hell, and then my primary compulsions were seeking reassurance* and internal repetitive prayer.**

* This usually centered around whether or not I was hellbound or whether or not something was “okay” and not sinful.  With some people, it would be an overt, “Do you think this was wrong?” or “Do you think I’m going to hell?” but with others, I would be more passive about it.  For example, at work, I would say something like, “I am terrible at this,” and then wait for someone to say, “No, Jackie, you’re not!  You’re great at your job!”  Both are forms of seeking reassurance, and it is a real compulsion.  I know because if I would try to keep myself from doing it, my heart would flood with terror.

** This was prompted by certain words and sounds– for me, usually curse words, words that sounded like curse words, and the sound of the letter f– and would include repeating the phrase “Father God, I love You; Father God, I love You” over and over in my head.  This was my way to combat the direction I knew my mind would go when I heard those sounds, which would be to curse at the Holy Spirit, what I believed to be unforgivable.

If you weren’t a close friend of mine, chances are you probably wouldn’t even notice my compulsions (although a roommate did notice what appeared to be a facial tic– when the repetitive prayer was cycling through my mind and someone was having a conversation with me, it would be so hard to keep both going that I would shake my head– just a little bit, like an Etch-a-Sketch– to “clear away” that repetitive prayer, et al, and focus back on what my friend was saying).  So there’s that.

And I am not a neat-freak.  Not by a long-shot.  Ask anyone who has ever lived with me, and they will tell you that I am a slob.  My friend Tracy would say I’m a “piggy”!

I know obsessive-compulsives who are washers, checkers, orderers, hoarders, but actually, most of those I talk to are pure-o.  You live with us, work with us, are friends with us– and you don’t even know it because we don’t fit the stereotype.  There is this joke that goes “I have CDO.  It’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the letters are in alphabetical order AS THEY SHOULD BE,” and I just find it so annoying because it seems to belittle OCD so much.  Even for those who are orderers and who would be upset by something like that.  People just don’t understand that there is a drive– a terror– so much fear and this feeling of disgust and wrongness if we don’t perform our compulsions.

It’s so much more than being organized or neat, even for those who are organized and neat.

What are some stereotypes you or others have of OCD?  I’d love to share the truth!

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the non-obsessive-compulsive people (those who are just straight-up clean or quirky) who then label themselves as “OCD” … grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  Yeah, maybe if it stood for “obnoxious chump disorder.”  😉

 

 

 

writing retreat this week!

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On Saturday, I drove about three hours to a small town in Minnesota (pop. 1,200) to retreat from friends, family, work, distractions, responsibility, chain restaurants for the week so that I can focus on my novel.  I have so been looking forward to this!  And now that I am here, I am even more excited.

This town is one of the sweetest little things ever.  You can drive from one end of it to the other in about 20 seconds since the town covers about 1.5 square miles.  I ventured out to find the grocery store and eventually located the large (and old) brown building proudly claiming to be “Dean’s Country Market.”  Inside, the far left is a gift shop and the right is the grocery store.  I was looking for some Advil, but instead I found two choices: low-dose aspirin or some kind of “non-aspirin”-labelled bottle.  Love the variety and selection!  Oh, and the taxidermy on the walls in the meat department!

grocery

For those of you who don’t know, I am not actually a Minneapolis native.  In fact, I grew up in a small town much like the one I’m retreating in now, so all of the small-town-life makes me smile and think fondly of where I grew up.  It also makes me think of Green Lake, the fictional Minnesota town where my novel takes place.  This week will be a wonderful reminder of what life is like for West, my protagonist.  It also reminds me that Silas, my character who just moved there from a large city, should probably be a little more shell-shocked.

I’m happy and snug in a tiny BRIGHT GOLD bungalow.  I am so unused to complete solitude that I keep imagining that someone is going to come over/drop by, and it’s just not true.  I honestly believe that I could stay in this house for the next seven days, and I would see no one and hear nothing but the bark of the neighbor dog and the rustle of the train on the nearby tracks.  Even though I am an introvert, I feel quite sure that I will be lonely by Saturday.  Leave me lots of blog comments this week so I don’t feel so alone!

At the same time, right now I am thrilled to be alone.  The days are stretching out before me with such a promise of productivity.  This week will be about words.  I plan to write and edit like a maniac, and when my creativity dwindles, I will read the books I brought along, and when my mind can’t process anymore, I will sleep– lovely, deep, long bouts of sleep from which I will allow myself to wake up naturally.  Who cares if I sleep till noon and then am awake till three AM?  I am all alone.

When I retreated this past summer, I was in Hudson, Wisconsin, so I had access to a Target, Dunn Bros, Perkins, and even home, since I was only 45 minutes away.  This week, if I am people-starved, I will head to the public library, the cultural center, the Eagles Cafe, or the Bake Shoppe.  The people at the cultural center (where I checked in and got the house key) are so nice that I want to just shoot the breeze with them like one of the locals.

My hope for this week is to revise as many chapters of my novel as possible.  I just finished revising chapters 1-4 based on feedback from my writing group, but– nice timing, right?– I am headed into this week to revise chapters that have not yet been critiqued.  I am hoping that I will have great intuition!

Leave an encouraging comment– I need human interaction and encouragement this week!

dream argument

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I could have guessed the tiny Green Lake Library in City Hall wouldn’t have any Billy Collins books.  I asked Janice Boggs, the librarian, to request a few from another branch, then headed out to Legacy House, since Gordon Leimbach had a book collection to rival the library.

“Billy Collins, you say?” he asked.  “I know I have a few of his collections, over there on the middle shelf of the barrister—just go ahead and lift the knob.  The whole glass front panel swings out and tucks right back into the shelf.  See anything there?”

Through the glass fronts of the antique bookcase, I could see the whole thing was dedicated to poetry. Langston Hughes and John Keats.  Calvin Miller.  Robert Frost.  Dickinson and Whitman and Donne.  I saw a few books by Collins, took one off the shelf, then closed the barrister behind me and sat down on Gordon’s couch.  He sat in his rocker and started to pack his pipe.

“Gordon, why do you keep so many books around if you can’t see the pages anymore?”

“They’re just good company,” he said simply.  “Read something aloud, would you?”

I chose a poem called “The First Dream,” which ended with a woman puzzling over her original experience of the phenomenon.  I could hear my voice listing with her as I read:

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

“Brilliant,” said Gordon, pipe now between his teeth, dark glasses on, looking for all the world like some jazz hepcat.  “Mmm.  Brilliant.  Yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Makes me think of the week on August Arms all about dreams.  Back in, oh, maybe January or February, remember?”

“I do.”  It had been a fascinating week in which I had learned that the faces we see in dreams are all ones we have seen in real life and that those who have gone blind after birth can still dream in images.  Gordon had told me then that his late wife Mavis was the one face that had never faded from his memory after he’d lost his sight.

But Gordon was thinking of a different episode.  “René Descartes’s dream argument,” he said.  “I can’t remember if we discussed it.”

“Briefly,” I said.  “I’m not much of a philosopher.”

Gordon smiled.  “I just find think it’s fascinating, the way people can sort these massive existential topics into numbered statements.  One, if I have experiences in waking life similar to the ones I have in dream life, and two, there is nothing to help me distinguish between the two, then three, it is possible I am dreaming now.”

“Oh, that,” I said, his words prompting a distant recollection.  “I sort of remember that episode.  I guess I never understood why he thought it was so important to go there—you know, to take it that far.”

“Well,” said Gordon, now in his professorial element, “he was trying to establish doubt.  Universal doubt.  You know his famous statement, ‘I think; therefore, I am’?”

“Yes.”

“It was all en route to arriving at that point, which we call the Cogito.  If you strip things down and start with the Cogito, then your philosophy—however you re-build it—is not connected to tradition.”

“But is that a good thing?” I asked, doubtfully.  “I’m not so sure.”

Gordon grinned with pride.  “And you say you’re not a philosopher.”