This is absolutely *chef’s kiss* writing and I’m going to archive it for re-reading. Vivian Gornick’s “The Situation and The Story” alerted me to another landmine: the trouble of conveying passion and feeling without letting the writing become consumed by it. It’s a tricky task to step out into a dispassionate narrator’s persona and at the same time maintain access to the most intimately interior experiences. The form has to be skillfully constructed, yet the content must be dewy. Head and heart in harmony.
This was fabulous. Loved the way you plunged into all the doubts, hopes, fears, and great quotes between that opening and closing scene. As a writer who often feels too much for my family and immediate community, I feel seen too. :) It is hard and courageous to bring your whole self to the table, but we need more spaces where this happens. Not everyone will write a publish a memoir, but we’re all called to share our testimony/story. 💛
This is a fantastic piece. The question of what we continue to reinforce is a question that I continually come across in the world of classical music. Too often, the work of the same dead, white, male composers is performed and the idea of what is "beautiful" is stuck in a time past, irrelevant to today and the true make-up of our society. The process of composition is very similar to writing, though the details of how we come across with vulnerability and "radical honesty" looks quite different.
Thank you for an essay packed with insights. I too, feel seen. I had a surprise birthday party with friends and family from all the stages of my life. As I walked in, I started to panic; might she speak to him and discover that I was a different person to the one she thought she had talked with recently. This was especially true of the Christians there. I called it being an adult thinker (using von Hugel's classification) who enjoyed the dialetic complexities of seeking understandings. But why were the lesbian married couple sitting next to the 'Old Testament values' couple? This poem arrived:
Honesty and baring one's soul is vulnerability and vulnerability is courage. As far as I am concerned, your writing speaks to the soul: I think many, religious or not, can relate to the daily, mundane almost, struggle to be good, whatever the image of 'good' our own psyche conjures to be. I can only imagine how difficult it was for you to include the personal in your writing, but as you rightly express it yourself, it's a claim to humanity's importance.
I would also add that writing about religion, and encouraging people to a viewpoint rooted in your *relationship* with God and the importance of relationships with others would be close to impossible if some of your real life did not enter the picture. Yours is a spectacular book; poignant, human, and precisely fully alive. Without your personal story and the account of your struggles in your attempts to be better, more attentive and more entangled with others, it would've been colder, more detached and distant.
The integrity of her person is reflected in her writing and echoes through public presence and "persona" as well. She unearths kingdom treasure for all of us.
Ah, I really love seeing you here. I have always loved The Sacred… oh geez, I’ve been meaning to write you an actual letter for a while so I should probably do that to explain everything but in any case I also feel seen.
Have you read the art of memoir by Mary Karr? That kept coming to mine when you were talking here.
Also, The theology of the Ordinary by Julie Canlis. Teaching it at the Christian study Center in my town and it’s blowing my mind.
This feels forward, but I am American so I just wanna say I really feel like I understand where you’re coming from so much of the time! Thanks for your work!
Yes. Exactly this. This is why I am loving your book and slowly savoring it. This is what makes me think, after reading or listening to you, that your voice is a powerfully true one that I must share with others. Thank you! This dovetails well with ideas I've been pondering lately about what image I work to present to others and why. I really appreciate your work, Elizabeth, and am excited to have discovered you:)
This is absolutely *chef’s kiss* writing and I’m going to archive it for re-reading. Vivian Gornick’s “The Situation and The Story” alerted me to another landmine: the trouble of conveying passion and feeling without letting the writing become consumed by it. It’s a tricky task to step out into a dispassionate narrator’s persona and at the same time maintain access to the most intimately interior experiences. The form has to be skillfully constructed, yet the content must be dewy. Head and heart in harmony.
This was fabulous. Loved the way you plunged into all the doubts, hopes, fears, and great quotes between that opening and closing scene. As a writer who often feels too much for my family and immediate community, I feel seen too. :) It is hard and courageous to bring your whole self to the table, but we need more spaces where this happens. Not everyone will write a publish a memoir, but we’re all called to share our testimony/story. 💛
Beautiful. Thank you.
This is a fantastic piece. The question of what we continue to reinforce is a question that I continually come across in the world of classical music. Too often, the work of the same dead, white, male composers is performed and the idea of what is "beautiful" is stuck in a time past, irrelevant to today and the true make-up of our society. The process of composition is very similar to writing, though the details of how we come across with vulnerability and "radical honesty" looks quite different.
Thank you for an essay packed with insights. I too, feel seen. I had a surprise birthday party with friends and family from all the stages of my life. As I walked in, I started to panic; might she speak to him and discover that I was a different person to the one she thought she had talked with recently. This was especially true of the Christians there. I called it being an adult thinker (using von Hugel's classification) who enjoyed the dialetic complexities of seeking understandings. But why were the lesbian married couple sitting next to the 'Old Testament values' couple? This poem arrived:
Johari at the party
Sixty guests arrive to celebrate my sixtieth.
Family and friends, lifes’ lines tangled.
Memories, moments in our histories, shared.
We connect with recognition.
Remembered stones brought into today.
We build windows, four panes for each,
unique combinations of colours
reflecting, refracting, absorbing, transmitting.
Knowing me: open to us
Knowing myself: hidden from you
Being known: blind to me
What neither knows: unknown
Open: shared, enjoyed,
transparent?
Should one perceive the colour
another has seen: offence.
Hidden: fearful, eggshell brittle.
Opaque, polarized.
A glistening surface.
A glittering image.
Blind: ignorant, blundering.
Where is the reflection?
Where the insight?
Light let in grudgingly* .
Unknown unknowns:
The absent present.
Shrouded elements.
Who is the authentic me?
* RS Thomas The Island
Beautiful. Thank you.
Honesty and baring one's soul is vulnerability and vulnerability is courage. As far as I am concerned, your writing speaks to the soul: I think many, religious or not, can relate to the daily, mundane almost, struggle to be good, whatever the image of 'good' our own psyche conjures to be. I can only imagine how difficult it was for you to include the personal in your writing, but as you rightly express it yourself, it's a claim to humanity's importance.
I would also add that writing about religion, and encouraging people to a viewpoint rooted in your *relationship* with God and the importance of relationships with others would be close to impossible if some of your real life did not enter the picture. Yours is a spectacular book; poignant, human, and precisely fully alive. Without your personal story and the account of your struggles in your attempts to be better, more attentive and more entangled with others, it would've been colder, more detached and distant.
The integrity of her person is reflected in her writing and echoes through public presence and "persona" as well. She unearths kingdom treasure for all of us.
Ah, I really love seeing you here. I have always loved The Sacred… oh geez, I’ve been meaning to write you an actual letter for a while so I should probably do that to explain everything but in any case I also feel seen.
Have you read the art of memoir by Mary Karr? That kept coming to mine when you were talking here.
Also, The theology of the Ordinary by Julie Canlis. Teaching it at the Christian study Center in my town and it’s blowing my mind.
This feels forward, but I am American so I just wanna say I really feel like I understand where you’re coming from so much of the time! Thanks for your work!
It’s not forward at all! I have read neither but would now like to
Yes. Exactly this. This is why I am loving your book and slowly savoring it. This is what makes me think, after reading or listening to you, that your voice is a powerfully true one that I must share with others. Thank you! This dovetails well with ideas I've been pondering lately about what image I work to present to others and why. I really appreciate your work, Elizabeth, and am excited to have discovered you:)
Gosh I love you and your fierce mind and heart. Cosign on all the solid celebration of this meditation.
Beautiful!
Excellent essay. Thank you!