Country Store

She watches him sitting
by the old cast-iron stove,
she only kept it because
it had always been there,
central has been put in
years before. Slightly slumped
he holds his Styrofoam cup,
black coffee straight,
and stares waiting at the
street. He makes her
nervous she knows it’s
foolish he was innocent but
inside ten years who knew
what had happened what he
was like what he’d become or
the anger bottled up the
injustice done and we all did it.
He glances at his watch and
then she knows he’s waiting
for the bus from Billings it
was due in but usually late she
hopes not today.

Jon Acuff's "Stuff Christians Like"

There’s no question that evangelical Christians, across both denominational and non-denominational, have a “culture.” But you don’t consider how that culture can manifest itself until you read something like Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff.

Based on the posts on his blog of the same name, Stuff Christians Like examines through the lens of the humor microscope how Christians pray, worship, witness, read their Bibles, go on missions trips, think about God, think about each other, think about non-believers, learn if other believers drink alcohol (or not), dance appropriately, do baptisms and a host of other “cultural” practices.

Acuff does not skewer or lacerate his subjects (after all, he’s one of them himself). But he does point out the things that Christians do that stereotype themselves, like using the word “just” in every prayer, as in, “Lord, we just ask you for…” or look for typos in the worship songs on the jumbo-trons (for those of us who don’t use hymnals and have churches big enough to use jumbo-trons to display worship songs) or the seven types of people you meet in a prayer circle.

His purpose isn’t to ridicule. Without his underlying fondness, sympathy and love for the people he’s talking about, in all the crazy ways they practice their faith, this would have been an “edgier” and more biting collection, of short articles, long articles, and cartoons. Instead, the humor leads you into more serious thought about how much of this could be about yourself. Acuff’s final section, with the title of “Saturday Night Cryfest,” particularly does that.

I smiled. I laughed. I cringed. I got embarrassed. Because what he writes is true.

I may never be the same again. I’m certainly going to be aware of my tendency to use the word “just” in a prayer.

"Watch Over Me" Named Top Fiction

Yesterday, Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish was named the 2010 Christian Book Award winner in the fiction category by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. Five finalists are selected in each category and then the winner is chosen by a panel of judges.

I reviewed the novel here in March. It's a great story, and a fine novel, and fully deserves the recognition.

Renee Riva's "Heading Home"

I don’t normally read Young Adult (YA) novels. Not that I have anything against them; I just haven’t been a YA for a long time, although I remember with great fondness always being directed by any church we attended to the class for young couples. But even then we would have been too old to be classified as YAs.

But I’m interested in all things fiction, and Travis Thrasher, whose books I enjoy and have reviewed here, is currently writing a series of YA novels under contract. So when I received an email asking me if I might be interested in a review copy of Renee Riva’s Heading Home, I said yes (Federal Trade Commission – please note that I have made my disclosure here). (I’m going to be very disappointed if I find out that the FTC is not monitoring my blog to make sure I spill the beans when I get a free book to review.)

Heading Home is the third novel in a trilogy, preceded by Saving Sailor and Taking Tuscany (yes, I noticed the alliteration in all three of the titles). So I was starting at something of a disadvantage, and not quite sure what I would be reading.

In Heading Home, 18-year-old A.J. Degulio returns home to the Pacific Northwest after eight years in Italy with her family. The family remains in Italy; she’s coming back to see her dog Sailor, renew her friendship with her childhood friend Danny Morgan, and to start college, where she intends to study veterinary science. Sailor remembers her, Danny turns out to have become something of a hunk (A.J.’s words, not mine), and vet studies might have to take a back seat to A.J.’s intent to become a nun.

A nun?

How about a would-be nun who gets jealous when Danny begins dating someone else?

It’s complicated. The lives of YAs are always complicated.

Here’s what I learned from this well-written, fast-paced YA novel.

The audience is not YAs; the audience is most likely YA females.

Someone reading this book would not be embarrassed if her mother or father found her reading it. It’s clean. For whatever reason, I was reminded of reading the Hardy Boys mysteries when I was slightly younger than a YA.

It’s funny. Riva, the author of several children's books in additiont ot hese novels, writes humor well, and there are scenes (including one involving blackberries) that first provoke a smile and then a laugh. Once the family arrives from Italy, and then the extended family from all over, the story moves into an ongoing series of funny scenes.

And Heading Home is touching, including one scene between A.J. and her father that’s happened a million times in fiction but here seems fresh, tender and real.

Heading Home is not the kind of fiction I usually read, but it’s aimed right at its target audience, and the target audience’s parents (and grandparents) won’t mind reading it, either.

It Is But a Tiny Glimpse

Arriving at the foundation’s compound, Moses stopped the group at the entrance. “The children should be at recess about now, out on the playground. We’ll go straight there, unless you need to have something to eat and drink first.”

"Speaking for myself,” Hank said, glancing at Trevor and the others, “I’d like to go straight to Andera. But if you chaps are hungry, I can wait.”

Trevor laughed. “I think we can wait for a few more minutes, Hank. And I’m dying to meet your new adopted boy.”

Moses led the group quickly through the building to the playground. More than a hundred children were running, throwing balls, playing, singing and climbing all over the playground equipment.

As Hank scanned the scene for Andera, Trevor turned to Moses. “Are these children all orphans?”

Moses nodded. “Many came from the same kind of situation as Andera – families killed in civil unrest. Others were abandoned by families who could no longer afford to care for them. And another sizeable group had parents who died from diseases like AIDS.”

Trevor stared at the children in silence.

“So here at the foundation, we provide housing, education, medical and dental care until the child reaches 12 or 13. If a family has not stepped forward to take a child by that time, we actively seek one, here in Kenya or elsewhere.”

“And for the few for whom no family can be found,” Hank added, “Moses and Florence find ways to take care of them themselves.”

“God provides the means, Hank,” Moses said.

“And sometimes that means is named Moses and Florence,” Hank said, still scanning the playground. “I saw what you did this summer.”

Then he saw him. Six-year-old Andera was standing to the side, watching a game of what looked like a short form of soccer. Or whatever the game is, thought Hank, it uses a soccer ball. One boy kicked the ball, and it landed next to Andera, who scooped it up and began to bounce it from knee to knee as Hank had taught him.

Moses smiled at Hank. “A son will learn many, many things from his father.”

At that moment, Andera bounced the ball back to the playing group, and caught sight of the group of men watching from the back veranda. The boy froze as he saw Hank. Then he began to walk quickly, and broke into a run as Hank began to run to him. They both stopped, and stood face to face, as many of the other children recognized Hank and all of them watched.

Hank, still in his business suit, fell to his knees in the dust and opened his arms, and Andera hurled himself into them.

“That, my friends,” said Moses, “is but a tiny glimpse of how our heavenly father will welcome us home one day.”

To read other posts in the One-Word Blog Carnival on joy, visit Bridget Chumbley’s place.

"The Poetry That Surrounds Us"

In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron describes writing as a conversation, one that “offers a different and more engaging way to look at things.” She then quotes poet James Nove, who says all of us have this “poetic vision” if we would just “give ourselves permission to see the poetry that surrounds us.”

The question I ask, even if Nove and Cameron don’t, is what is this poetry that surrounds us? Or asked another way, could God speak in poetry? I don’t mean “could God speak through the poetry that people write or have written in the past.” I do mean something else: is there a poetry that is intrinsic to creation, a rhyme, a meter, a narrative that speaks to all of us, whether we hear it or not (or choose to hear it or not)?

And if the answer to that question is yes, could what we know as poetry be a reflection of that “divine poetry,” even if a pale and fragile one?

The first poetry I can remember reading or having read to me was children’s rhymes. The first poetry I can recall reading and writing about in school was Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. I can remember having to discover Masters on my own; my teacher for American literature believed Jacqueline Susann had written the great American novel with The Valley of the Dolls, published the summer before my junior-level course.

In college, two basic literature courses were required for everyone during the sophomore year, English 55 and 56, which was mostly American literature. How many millions of students had to write papers on “Young Goodman Brown” and “Barn Burning?” How many times did I have to proof papers written on those two stories for fraternity brothers? English majors, however, didn’t take English 55 and 56; they took 51 and 52, the literature of Britain. For those students boneheaded enough, they could substitute 51 and 52 for 55 and 56. Nobody did, especially not journalism majors who had to contend with a professor for introductory journalism (taken the same time as the English courses) who handed out automatic Fs like peppermints.

Only one person I knew actually chose to take British literature.

Me.

So instead of “Barn Burning,” I met Beowulf and Chaucer; Shakespeare and Milton; the great essayists of the 18th century; Wordsworth, Keats Shelley and Coleridge; Tennyson; Hardy and Housman; and Eliot. It’s only now that I realize that the lion’s share of what I learned in those two courses was poetry. And I still have the textbooks we used – the two-volume set of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.

More than a decade later, I started reading the American poets, because I was on the speechwriting team at work and it was actually something smart to do – read and study poetry so that you could apply and adapt the rhythm, meter and flow to speeches. (No one does this anymore.) (That’s why so few speeches today are memorable.)

And then, last year, I started writing poetry. I’m not sure why; I’d been reading contemporary poets for some time. I think it has something to do with growing older, at least for me. Some of what I’ve done is bad, and some is – not bad. But I’m learning how to be better at it, and I’m learning some other things, too.

To write poetry is to believe in the symphony of life, life individual and life collective.

To write poetry is to believe in the underlying order of all creation, and to believe that the order can be understood.

To write poetry is an affirmation of faith.

To write poetry is, as Julia Cameron says, to listen with the heart.

And to listen to the poetry that surrounds us.

Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about the time lie (as in, you never can find the time to write). This week's discussion is about inviting the muse to tea.

Related:

In February, I wrote a post here called “In Defense of Poetry.”

L.L. Barkat's "Julia Cameron Meets ProBLogger."

Cassandra Frear's "Living With My Writer."

"Mood Altering" by Nancy Russell Kourmoulis.

Nancy Rosback's "Thoughts and Dreams."

"Playtime: are you doing what you love?" by Tess at Anchors and Masts.

Monica Sharman's "The Sincerity of Pretense."

Saturday Good Reads

I must have writing on the brain, because several of the good reads below are about writing.

Prose

“When Everything Flows” by Melissa at All the Words.

“Writerly Rules” by Tom Vowler at How to Write a Novel.

“Why the World Needs You” by Mick Silva at Your Writer’s Group.

“10 Ways to Write Skinny Sentences” by K.M. Weilland at Word Play, and her “The Myth of Being in the Zone” at The Master’s Artist.

“Lost and Found and Lost” by John Blasé at Dirty Shame.

“NightandILoveYou” by Billy Coffey in his Monday post at Hey Look, A Chicken! And then he posted “This Lump of Clay” at The Master’s Artist.

“Why Doctrine is Only Half the Message” by Don Miller.

“Nature, Alone” by Brian Volck at The Image Journal.

“Cool Waters, Common Ground and the One That Didn’t Get Away” by Jeff Jordan.

“The Poetry of Illness” by Maureen Doallas.


Poetry

“The Hunger,” by Pete Marshall

“Things” by Justinian at Delight and Glory and Oddity and Light.

“Stay” by John Blasé at Dirty Shame.

“The house shook” by Nancy Rosback at Poems and Prayers. And then Nancy wrote three poems inspired by Part 1 of The Mystery of the Cross.

"Song 23" by Fred Sprinkle at I Force It to Rhyme. It sounds familiar, and it is – and it’s not.

This regular Saturday post is about the articles, essays and poems written by others. But if you’re into monster poetry, read the article “Controlling Our Monsters in Verse” by Marcus Goodyear at High Calling Blogs. One of mine is cited and discussed – but the article links to 26 poems written in the past week from monsters’ perspectives – and they are wonderful.