I’m finishing Victor Lavalle’s latest novel, The Devil in Silver, a story about inmates in a mental hospital who befriend each other while fighting a known but unknown devil and an increasingly unresponsive health system. These videos aren’t about Victor’s novel but writing itself; he reads a good bit of a story in the video and discusses it the way he would in one of his classes. I hope you learn from him. It’s helpful if you’re writing now or revising.
Category / Quotes
This category keeps the quotes of much smarter others, and the sayings are usually about parenting.
Marilynne Robinson’s Advice to Her Students
But all we really know about what we are is what we do. There is a tendency to fit a tight and awkward carapace of definition over humankind, and to try to trim the living creature to fit the dead shell. The advice I give my students is the same advice I give myself–forget definition, forget assumption, watch.
From “Freedom of Thought” in When I Was A Child, I Read Books
David Swanson posts this quote and insightful comments worth considering after the President’s visit to the neighborhood last week.
Now, this is what I had a chance to talk about when I met with some young men from Hyde Park Academy who were participating in this B.A.M. program. Where are the guys I talked to? Stand up you all, so we can all see you guys. (Applause.) So these are some — these are all some exceptional young men, and I couldn’t be prouder of them. And the reason I’m proud of them is because a lot of them have had some issues. That’s part of the reason why you guys are in the program. (Laughter.)
But what I explained to them was I had issues too when I was their age. I just had an environment that was a little more forgiving. So when I screwed up, the consequences weren’t as high as when kids on the South Side screw up. (Applause.) So I had more of a…
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“…complete these necessary endings.”
When I heard of Pope Benedict’s resignation, after I got over that popes actually could resign, I thought of Henry Cloud’s book, Necessary Endings.
The pope’s historic decision is a surprise to many. I am prayerful for the church that Benedict leads, that it may be pastored by its Good Shepherd. Whatever the implications of the pope’s choice, the differences between him and previous bishops of Rome as they’ve faced physical decline and increasing responsibility, I hope it also turns into a model of courage, an example of how catholics discern. May it be that for us non-catholics, too.
Here’s a quote from Dr. Cloud; may it be helpful as we pray for our catholic brothers and sisters and for the entire church community:
Something about the leaders’ personal makeup gets in their way. Leaders are people, and people have issues that get in the way of the best-made ideas, plans, and realities. And when it comes to endings, there is no shortage of issues that keep people stuck.
Somewhere along the line, we have not been equipped with the discernment, courage, and skills needed to initiate, follow through, and complete these necessary endings. We are not prepared to go where we need to go. So we do not clearly see the need to end something, or we maintain false hope, or we just are not able to do it. As a result, we stay stuck in what should now be in our past.
The Problem With Commandments
I’m reading a book about the 10 commandments. The book is old by many people’s standards, published in way back in 1999, by Hauerwas & Willimon.
I think I’m starting a journey to reading everything Hauerwas has written. I started with his memoir last year at David Swanson’s suggestion. Hauerwas makes Christianity seem both accessible and incredible for it’s simplicity. He and Will Willimon often get together, join literary powers, and paint this faith beautifully.
This slim volume on the commands is just as intriguing. Their premise, or one of them, is that the commandments only make sense if we have as a background the vocation of worshipping God. God is not to be helpful or responsive to us but worshipped. God is, and creation worships. In their own words:
The commandments are not guidelines for humanity in general. They are a countercultural way of life for those who know who they are and whose they are. Their function is not to keep American culture running smoothly, but rather to produce a people who are, in our daily lives, a sign, a signal, a witness that God has not left the world to its own devices.
You may disagree, but those sentences clarify the ten words (another way of talking about the commands is by using the earlier phrase “ten words”), but they also make them that much more dubious in that clarity. They are both sensible and nonsensical, which is how they come to the language of these acts being countercultural.
This quote below is actually about an early theologian, Thomas Aquinas, and their summary of something Aquinas said. But the quote is searching me right up through here. It is in the chapter on the fifth commandment not to murder. By this point in the chapter, they’ve hinted at how murder is a term that captures all kinds of killing and that they scripture’s intent is both external and internal. So think about behaviors and thoughts:
Aquinas does not mean that we are not to feel righteous indignation against injustice, but rather that we are to develop among ourselves those virtues that free us from temptation to envy and self-importance, which so often lead to presumptions that we have been grievously wronged.
I’m thinking about this in relation to being a father, thinking about this as a leader, as a husband, as an opinionated person. And the less the commandments are about the external only (i.e., murdering a person), the more challenging they become. I’m pretty sure I’ll see coming the whole me-murdering-somebody-thing. It’s external. But the internal killing is taken up into this commandment, too, and when I believe that, when I believe that God who is concerned for thoughts from afar or “lust” as Jesus has so said, I have an existing problem with the commandments. I feel both inspired to live into this vocation as a person before God and knocked to my knees. At some point, I get really thankful that grace is both fulfilling and inspiring. At some point. For now, I taste that problem on my tongue.
The Problem With Commandments
I’m reading a book about the 10 commandments. The book is old by many people’s standards, published in way back in 1999, by Hauerwas & Willimon.
I think I’m starting a journey to reading everything Hauerwas has written. I started with his memoir last year at David Swanson’s suggestion. Hauerwas makes Christianity seem both accessible and incredible for it’s simplicity. He and Will Willimon often get together, join literary powers, and paint this faith beautifully.
This slim volume on the commands is just as intriguing. Their premise, or one of them, is that the commandments only make sense if we have as a background the vocation of worshipping God. God is not to be helpful or responsive to us but worshipped. God is, and creation worships. In their own words:
The commandments are not guidelines for humanity in general. They are a countercultural way of life for those who know who they are and whose they are. Their function is not to keep American culture running smoothly, but rather to produce a people who are, in our daily lives, a sign, a signal, a witness that God has not left the world to its own devices.
You may disagree, but those sentences clarify the ten words (another way of talking about the commands is by using the earlier phrase “ten words”), but they also make them that much more dubious in that clarity. They are both sensible and nonsensical, which is how they come to the language of these acts being countercultural.
This quote below is actually about an early theologian, Thomas Aquinas, and their summary of something Aquinas said. But the quote is searching me right up through here. It is in the chapter on the fifth commandment not to murder. By this point in the chapter, they’ve hinted at how murder is a term that captures all kinds of killing and that they scripture’s intent is both external and internal. So think about behaviors and thoughts:
Aquinas does not mean that we are not to feel righteous indignation against injustice, but rather that we are to develop among ourselves those virtues that free us from temptation to envy and self-importance, which so often lead to presumptions that we have been grievously wronged.
I’m thinking about this in relation to being a father, thinking about this as a leader, as a husband, as an opinionated person. And the less the commandments are about the external only (i.e., murdering a person), the more challenging they become. I’m pretty sure I’ll see coming the whole me-murdering-somebody-thing. It’s external. But the internal killing is taken up into this commandment, too, and when I believe that, when I believe that God who is concerned for thoughts from afar or “lust” as Jesus has so said, I have an existing problem with the commandments. I feel both inspired to live into this vocation as a person before God and knocked to my knees. At some point, I get really thankful that grace is both fulfilling and inspiring. At some point. For now, I taste that problem on my tongue.
“…a study of this baffling geography…”
James Baldwin, a grossly talented, truthful, and penetrating writer, is at his best in some of the reviews, speeches, and essays in the edited collection The Cross of Redemption. This is the first part of his review of The Arrangement, a novel by Elia Kazan:
Memory, especially as one grows older, can do strange and disquieting things. Though we would like to live without regrets, and sometimes proudly insist that we have none, this is not really possible, if only because we are mortal. When more time stretches behind than stretches before one, some assessments, however reluctantly and incompletely, begin to be made. Between what one wished to become and what one has become there is a momentous gap, which will now never be closed. And this gap seems to operate as one’s final margin, one’s last opportunity, for creation. And between the self as it is and the self as one sees it, there is also a distance, even harder to gauge. Some of us are compelled, around the middle of our lives, to make a study of this baffling geography, less in the hope of conquering these distances than in the determination that the distances shall not become any greater. Chasms are necessary, but they can also, notoriously, be fatal. At this point, one is attempting nothing less than the re-creation of oneself out of the rubble which has become one’s life…
Lucille Clifton’s Why Some People Be Mad At Me Sometimes
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.
Validation, Human Desire, & Criticism
I saw part of this originally in a post by Rachel Held Evans. Then I went back to the original post and found more to quote.
Validation is an interesting thing though, and no matter how strong or unphased by criticism we are, there is an undeniable human desire to have people like what we feel passionate about–our art, our words, our stories, our styles, our writing, our opinions. It’s why we sometimes feel hesitant to publish or share. What will people think?
Let me answer that. If you share, if you publish, if you write, if you speak, if you are brave and decide to put yourself out there, I promise you, someone won’t like it. Someone won’t agree with you. Someone will misinterpret. Someone will think that you are silly, unqualified and that your work is crap. That you are crap. They might not just think it but they might tell you. And that won’t feel good, especially not the first time you hear it. But it is necessary. And it’s okay.
My friend Melina is a fabulous writer. She lives an adventurous life and writes riveting accounts of her excursions. She is funny and witty and brave in her writing. Sometimes I read her stories and think “I want to write like that.” Her blog readership has understandably increased the last year and I wasn’t surprised when I recently received an e-mail from her–sister’s first really really nasty comment. Girlfriend took a punch to the gut, and I’m not going to lie–it was a doozy. The commenter went for the jugular and beyond. In summary, the comment wasted a lot of needless words to say “You. Are. Crap.” And Melina’s e-mail to me went something like “I am shaking, I am pissed, I am processing this.” And I shook my head and smiled and thought, “I get it, I get it, I get it.” I promised her that she would grow confidence and understanding faster than a Chia Pet grows sprouts–that it was good and normal she felt this way and that this whole experience would help her own her words, her style, her work and be proud of it. I told her that the hurtful words shared had nothing to do with Melina and everything to do with this commenter’s pain or insecurities or desire to do what Melina is doing. Within two days, Melina was on a roll again. Wrote a hilarious piece in response to that hurtful criticism and then moved on…fiercely. She’s more confident in her writing–I can tell.
For me, receiving negative criticism has been an important tool in self awareness and owning my voice. I’ve gone from believing what mean comments pointed out (I am a horrible person and I suck at writing), getting angry with the people who wrote them (You are a horrible person and you suck at leaving comments) and doubting if writing publicly was really something I wanted to do to a completely different place of understanding and compassion–both for myself and the people who are hurting enough to project it in a carefully crafted you-are-crapcomment. I have a dear friend who has helped me with this. She talks about pain–how we are all hurting–and she helps me see nastiness in the world as the need for more love. Does that sound unicornish? Maybe, but it has helped me move forward and embrace cutting comments both in and outside of this little Internet, as an opportunity to initiate more kindness. We’ve all been there–the hurting one.
Read the full post by Kelle Hampton here.
Cornelius Eady’s Travelin’ Shoes
It’s something how poetry—and literature in general—can touch your reality with words that feel so much like your own. I read this poem by Cornelius Eady last night and thought it an appropriate, almost exact, reflection of life right now. It’s called “Travelin’ Shoes.”
And at last, I get the phone call. The blues rolls into
my sleepy ears at five A.M., a dry, official voice from
my father’s hospital. A question, a few quick facts,
and my daddy’s lying upstate on the coolin’ floor.
Death, it seems, was kinder to him in his last hour
than life was in his last four months.
Death, who pulls him to a low ebb, then slowly
floods over his wrecked body like a lover.
Cardio-vascular collapse, the polite voice is telling
me, but later my cousin tells me, he arrives on the
ward before they shut my father’s eyes and mouth to
see the joy still resting on his face from the moment
my daddy finally split his misery open.
Christmas Reminder from Dr. Gardner Taylor
This is the glory and pain of my work as preacher, never more so than today. There is much that I see and know about Jesus Christ, but I cannot say it. One feels sometimes, with Robertson Nicoll, that “the desire to explain [the atonement] Christ may go too far. The reality of Jesus Christ is much more readily understood than many explanations. Its onlyness is the main thing.” Every preacher must feel sometimes like the woman who said, “I understand who Jesus Christ is and what he does for me. I understand it well until some one ask me to explain it.” Well, the preacher’s job is to explain and proclaim Jesus Christ, and it is too big a subject for any human lips to speak. So! This sermon will be a failure, but may it be a godly failure and give honor to the Lord who calls it forth…
…Now I would want to fasten this morning upon those two titles joined together: Jesus Christ. Here is what all of our preaching is about: Jesus Christ. Here is what all of our believing is all about: Jesus Christ. Here is what all of our community work is about: Jesus Christ. What we do in the projects and enterprises we have undertaken here, unmatched in scope and versatility by any voluntary group of black people in the history of this city, is all done not as something aside from, separate from, but as a result of Jesus Christ and our relationship to him. I want to talk about him this morning and see how in him we are blessed. “Thou shalt call his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). That was the signal at the birth of our Lord that we have in him a reality. A man, a person.
Now, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of Jesus as man, person, one of us, “a man for others,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer called him. The Heidelberg New Testament Professor, Gunther Bornkamm, stresses that in the Gospels we have an emphasis upon the person of Jesus. The writers stress the authority of his words, what he said, and the authority of his deeds, what he did. Ours is not a misty, thin, airy faith, no pious fantasy without living reality. I wish that people would some day understand that. Ours is an earthy faith, not something way out somewhere from the reality we know. If people understood that they might see Christian people in a different light rather than the muddle-headed, thick-witted notion passing for shrewdness which assumes that when you see a Christian you see a dunce, that to be tender-hearted one must be soft-headed. Stupid!
Our Lord lived here.
A small portion of Dr. Taylor’s message, “Jesus Christ,” preached March 20, 1977.
“Which Led To His Death”
I’m almost finished reading James Cone’s The Cross And The Lynching Tree. The book is an insightful and personal addition to the powerful language that I’ve read from Professor Cone in the past.
In the book he turns his critical and historical powers as a premier theologian to the subject of Jesus’s crucifixion and the lynching of black people in the United States of America. Never good at subtlety, his remarks about the perplexity of being Christian, or a Christian nation, while engaging in the systematic and, worse, spontaneous murder of black people throughout history is searing and probing and heavy. He nods to current forms of lynching, though he doesn’t dwell with them. Like backgrounds in a memorable scene, they are there even if they aren’t central.
I love what he’s doing in exalting again the place of the crucifixion and its dark woody symbol the cross. He corrals the great artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the lyrics of singers like Billie Holiday; he showcases the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer and reminds us of the massive, prophetic role of Ida B. Wells. He doesn’t flinch when he heralds the primacy of the cross (and not the resurrection per se) in the African American experience in this country. He does it in a way that is refreshing for the truth within it, and there is love springing through it. He says more in the book than I think he does in other places about his personal story, his upbringing in an A.M.E. church, and his worry over the possibility of his father’s death at the hands of whites in Arkansas.
Here is a quote that doesn’t sum up his thought but that does give you a view into the central ministry of Jesus and his cross as Dr. Cone discusses. Every word has meaning:
The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair, as revealed in the biblical and black proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection.
There is little more appealing to me right up through here than this kind of stuff. If you want something growth-provoking this Advent–and this is not the most liturgically appropriate meditation, I suppose–find this book and take it slow.
Michael Washington 