I read an interview with William Faulkner in The Paris Review this morning, and loved his response to the question of how he learned The Bible. It reminded me of my own childhood, each kid in the family having to read a verse of scripture before dinner. Faulkner seems to capture the restlessness of that part of childhood--that, and much more:
"My Great-Grandfather Murry was a kind and gentle man, to
us children anyway. ... he was simply a man of
inflexible principles. One of them was everybody, children on up
through all adults present, had to have a verse from the Bible ready
and glib at tongue-tip when we gathered at the table for breakfast
each morning; if you didn’t have your scripture verse ready, you
didn’t have any breakfast; you would be excused long enough
to leave the room and swot one up (there was a maiden aunt, a
kind of sergeant-major for this duty, who retired with the culprit
and gave him a brisk breezing which carried him over the jump
next time).
It had to be an authentic, correct verse. While we were little, it
could be the same one, once you had it down good, morning after
morning, until you got a little older and bigger, when one morning
(by this time you would be pretty glib at it, galloping through
without even listening to yourself since you were already five or ten
minutes ahead, already among the ham and steak and fried chicken
and grits and sweet potatoes and two or three kinds of hot bread)
you would suddenly find his eyes on you—very blue, very kind
and gentle, and even now not stern so much as inflexible—and
next morning you had a new verse. In a way, that was when you
discovered that your childhood was over; you had outgrown it and
entered the world."
Showing posts with label spirtuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirtuality. Show all posts
Friday, July 9, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
On the Stories We Tell Ourselves
I'm working on this book every morning, getting up at 5:30 so I have time before work, missing very few days, and feeling more momentum than I ever have as "writer." I've written a lot of poems, and those are cool because you can finish one in a single morning. Sometimes I've finished eight in a single evening. And although there's revision, all of it is on a single page so it's manageable revision.
Prose is different, especially long prose, and I'm astounded by the--and there's no other word--mystery of this process. How I show up every day, put my hands to the keyboard, and, more often than not, know exactly what comes next, even when I think I don't. There are all of these little voices in my head saying "You shouldn't say THAT" and "My, that was an ugly sentence" and "WHAT is Soandso going to think?!" But I find, miraculously, if I keep going they shoosh up, and I keep going and something else arrives in my brain to put on the page. I'm not trying to say that God is telling me what to say, that I'm speaking for Him by any stretch of the imagination, but in a way, doing this every morning makes me believe in God in a way that I haven't before. My goodness, there's something out there fueling me as I try to work stuff out on the page.
But this is a strange thing, to rummage around in my past like I'm looking for a pair of shoes, looking for something that goes with something else, looking to make sense of my experience to someone that doesn't have immediate access to my brain. Or really, to my own brain. I'm probably trying to make sense of things to my own brain, since the story of how a very young girl went to Mississippi and now lives in Boston with a Sam is a story that I don't entirely understand myself.
And so today I'm thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and the way we narrate our experiences, even inside us. In a way, this sense of story is what shapes our lives. What I mean is this: Once, when I suffered a painful (if mostly mutual) breakup, I realized I was obsessively trying to land on the story I would tell myself about it. Was it: boy and girl simply not right for each other, which happens often and everything will be okay? Was it: boy a big mean jerk who never loved me anyway? Was it: Woe is me; if I could have just lost 20 pounds then he would have loved me? Was it: I never liked that guy and I'm gonna get pretty and successful and then he'll see what he missed out on? When I realized I was doing that, shuffling through stories, I worked really (really) hard to only tell myself the most useful story, the one that would help me move forward gracefully. It wasn't that the other stories weren't true. I could acknowledge that in one way or another they were probably all a little bit true. But the one I wanted to dwell on, the one I wanted to package up and store on the shelves of my brain, was the kindest one, the most generous. It took me probably a year to tell myself that story often enough that it overrided the other ones that kept presenting themselves. But I remember that one day I cried about it and knew I was crying about for the last time, that I was ready to let the story alone.
In a way, I feel like that's what I'm doing now. I'm telling myself a story. I'm trying to make it as honest as it can be, presenting as many of the scary questions as I can. And hoping that, when I'm done, I'll have made a story I want to keep, even if no one else in the whole wide world reads it. I'm trying to move forward gracefully. I'm learning something new about that story every time I put it on the page.
Prose is different, especially long prose, and I'm astounded by the--and there's no other word--mystery of this process. How I show up every day, put my hands to the keyboard, and, more often than not, know exactly what comes next, even when I think I don't. There are all of these little voices in my head saying "You shouldn't say THAT" and "My, that was an ugly sentence" and "WHAT is Soandso going to think?!" But I find, miraculously, if I keep going they shoosh up, and I keep going and something else arrives in my brain to put on the page. I'm not trying to say that God is telling me what to say, that I'm speaking for Him by any stretch of the imagination, but in a way, doing this every morning makes me believe in God in a way that I haven't before. My goodness, there's something out there fueling me as I try to work stuff out on the page.
But this is a strange thing, to rummage around in my past like I'm looking for a pair of shoes, looking for something that goes with something else, looking to make sense of my experience to someone that doesn't have immediate access to my brain. Or really, to my own brain. I'm probably trying to make sense of things to my own brain, since the story of how a very young girl went to Mississippi and now lives in Boston with a Sam is a story that I don't entirely understand myself.
And so today I'm thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and the way we narrate our experiences, even inside us. In a way, this sense of story is what shapes our lives. What I mean is this: Once, when I suffered a painful (if mostly mutual) breakup, I realized I was obsessively trying to land on the story I would tell myself about it. Was it: boy and girl simply not right for each other, which happens often and everything will be okay? Was it: boy a big mean jerk who never loved me anyway? Was it: Woe is me; if I could have just lost 20 pounds then he would have loved me? Was it: I never liked that guy and I'm gonna get pretty and successful and then he'll see what he missed out on? When I realized I was doing that, shuffling through stories, I worked really (really) hard to only tell myself the most useful story, the one that would help me move forward gracefully. It wasn't that the other stories weren't true. I could acknowledge that in one way or another they were probably all a little bit true. But the one I wanted to dwell on, the one I wanted to package up and store on the shelves of my brain, was the kindest one, the most generous. It took me probably a year to tell myself that story often enough that it overrided the other ones that kept presenting themselves. But I remember that one day I cried about it and knew I was crying about for the last time, that I was ready to let the story alone.
In a way, I feel like that's what I'm doing now. I'm telling myself a story. I'm trying to make it as honest as it can be, presenting as many of the scary questions as I can. And hoping that, when I'm done, I'll have made a story I want to keep, even if no one else in the whole wide world reads it. I'm trying to move forward gracefully. I'm learning something new about that story every time I put it on the page.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Books are Delicious
from Charles Lamb, quoted in Patrick Madden's Quotidiana:
"I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."
And, from Joseph Smith, quoted in Eugene England's Dialogues with Myself, which, if the introduction is any indication, is going to be incredible. I already wish they would have issued it to me at baptism.
Joseph Smith, 1844, just before his martyrdom: "By proving contraries, truth is made manifest."
Okay, and a third quote, so you can have some context for how England draws on what Joseph Smith said:
"Part of the Prophet Joseph's moral and spiritual heroism is focused for me in his growing insight (and willingness to risk all, including his life on that insight) that tragic paradox lies at the heart of things and that life and salvation, truth and progress, come only through anxiously, bravely grappling with those paradoxes, both in action and in thought."
"I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."
And, from Joseph Smith, quoted in Eugene England's Dialogues with Myself, which, if the introduction is any indication, is going to be incredible. I already wish they would have issued it to me at baptism.
Joseph Smith, 1844, just before his martyrdom: "By proving contraries, truth is made manifest."
Okay, and a third quote, so you can have some context for how England draws on what Joseph Smith said:
"Part of the Prophet Joseph's moral and spiritual heroism is focused for me in his growing insight (and willingness to risk all, including his life on that insight) that tragic paradox lies at the heart of things and that life and salvation, truth and progress, come only through anxiously, bravely grappling with those paradoxes, both in action and in thought."
Monday, March 1, 2010
Morning Cup of Hope
A friend told me about this old talk by President Spencer W Kimball and it was exactly what I needed to read this morning. Maybe you've already seen it, but perhaps you'd like to be reminded of it? Anyway, it was delicious to me.
Link: "The Abundant Life"
Link: "The Abundant Life"
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
That's It!
Tonight, at a Relief Society activity, a woman read a quote from President Uchtdorf. If you're an LDS woman, you've probably heard it. And if you're not an LDS woman, you probably won't care. But for me, it was a much needed reminder. Oh, I needed it. He says:
"My dear sisters, I have a simple faith. I believe that as you are faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, as you draw closer to Him in faith, hope, and charity, things will work together for your good. I believe that as you immerse yourselves in the work of our Father—as you create beauty and as you are compassionate to others—God will encircle you in the arms of His love. Discouragement, inadequacy, and weariness will give way to a life of meaning, grace, and fulfillment. As spirit daughters of our Heavenly Father, happiness is your heritage."
This is the part that gets me, the part that made a jolt of warmth pass from my head to toes: he says clearly that the work of God is to CREATE BEAUTY. Right there. He says creating beauty is up there with service.
Now, I've been struggling with this writing thing. Haven't be doing much of it, truth be told. I'm terrified of it. And I can't figure out if it's worth doing. I know it is, deep down. But I doubt and doubt it. I wish I had Sam's pure, clear devotion to the work. His pure, clear diligence and conviction that it's worthwhile. Instead, I go through bursts of enthusiasm, followed by months of fear and dithering. It's absurd. And it makes it very hard to get anything done.
So not only do I love President Uchtdorf for saying that happiness is my heritage, a message I'm in desperate need of, but I love him for saying I should be writing, that writing is what I give to God. I know there are lots of ways we can create beauty, and I'm drawn to all that stuff too: a lovely meal, a pretty room, an orchestra, a dress, a painting, a well-designed sidewalk. And I want to do all of those things too, I'm just not good at any of them. But I know how to write. I'm not saying I'm really incredibly good at it, I just know how. And I enjoy it. And I teach it. And I've been through 8 years of school to do it.
So I must do it. And by doing it, I serve God. Maybe, just maybe, He put me here to write something. Which means maybe, just maybe, if I ask, He'll help me do it. That would be nice.
"My dear sisters, I have a simple faith. I believe that as you are faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, as you draw closer to Him in faith, hope, and charity, things will work together for your good. I believe that as you immerse yourselves in the work of our Father—as you create beauty and as you are compassionate to others—God will encircle you in the arms of His love. Discouragement, inadequacy, and weariness will give way to a life of meaning, grace, and fulfillment. As spirit daughters of our Heavenly Father, happiness is your heritage."
This is the part that gets me, the part that made a jolt of warmth pass from my head to toes: he says clearly that the work of God is to CREATE BEAUTY. Right there. He says creating beauty is up there with service.
Now, I've been struggling with this writing thing. Haven't be doing much of it, truth be told. I'm terrified of it. And I can't figure out if it's worth doing. I know it is, deep down. But I doubt and doubt it. I wish I had Sam's pure, clear devotion to the work. His pure, clear diligence and conviction that it's worthwhile. Instead, I go through bursts of enthusiasm, followed by months of fear and dithering. It's absurd. And it makes it very hard to get anything done.
So not only do I love President Uchtdorf for saying that happiness is my heritage, a message I'm in desperate need of, but I love him for saying I should be writing, that writing is what I give to God. I know there are lots of ways we can create beauty, and I'm drawn to all that stuff too: a lovely meal, a pretty room, an orchestra, a dress, a painting, a well-designed sidewalk. And I want to do all of those things too, I'm just not good at any of them. But I know how to write. I'm not saying I'm really incredibly good at it, I just know how. And I enjoy it. And I teach it. And I've been through 8 years of school to do it.
So I must do it. And by doing it, I serve God. Maybe, just maybe, He put me here to write something. Which means maybe, just maybe, if I ask, He'll help me do it. That would be nice.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Something from D H Lawrence in My Brain
I can't even claim I know what this means, entirely. I don't even know that Lawrence did. And I sure don't know how to do it. But I like it. It feels true. And I'm thinking and thinking on it.
"The essential function of art is moral. Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But moral. The essential function of art is moral.
But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood first. The mind will follow later, in the wake."
"The essential function of art is moral. Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But moral. The essential function of art is moral.
But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood first. The mind will follow later, in the wake."
Sunday, January 4, 2009
On How a Mormon Reads Lolita
I read Lolita over Christmas break, and found it to be one of the most heartbreaking, beautiful books I've ever read.
It makes me nervous to admit this, admit I read it. It's one of those books you hear whispers about before you ever read it, especially when you're a good little Mormon girl, as I am/was/will forever be. (As a sidenote, check out this article on a kid's bed misguidedly named, "Lolita Bed." So not cool.)
You see, Mormon folk are careful what they read/watch/see. When I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to watch PG-13 movies, and I remember trying to read a book by Joyce Carol Oates and feeling like God told me not to read it anymore. Which, I sort of think He did, because it was ugly and negative and boring. So I grew up thinking that there was such a think as "moral" literature, books we "should" read and books we should not. And I still suspect that's true, I just don't know what they are anymore. The line seems blurry.
Take Lolita: the main character is Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is basically a pedophile, who seduces (or is seduced by, some critics say) a 12-year-old girl. Do I find the thought of this character disturbing/disgusting? Yes, yes I do. Take him out the walls of literature, and I hate him, I say lock him up; tell me he lives on my street and I'll move to another neighborhood to protect my kids. I think about my niece who is nearly twelve and I just shiver.
But the book tells this man's story, and makes you feels stuff about him, stuff for him. At the end I wept for him, this man. I find I'm sort of offended when I (or someone else) boils the plot down and calls him a pedophile. And so maybe the book, therefore, is "bad." Do we really need books that redeem pedophiles?
That's one way to see it. The other way takes me to something C.S. Lewis said:
"[I]n reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."
There's more to it than that, but I can't find it. He says something about wishing the dung beetle could write books, because he'd want to read those too. And Humbert is a dung beetle; he basically says so himself.
Nabokov, in a essay at the back of my edition, talks about the seed for the book. He says he felt the first stirrings of it when he read in the paper about an ape they taught to draw, and how they painstakingly, over months and months, tried to teach it, and when they finally succeeded, what it drew were the bars of its cage. What's the implication here, the connection to Lolita? Humbert is writing the book from prison, so I assume the book is, in a way, the bars of his cage. And it feels like the bars of the cage. As I said, it's heartbreaking.
So maybe it's like something Yeats says, in a book of essays I can't remember the title of. He argues that literature is the purest Christlike act, because in a sense we do as Christ did, forgive, redeem. We take something dispicable and are made to understand it, to see the man as a man, not just a sinner who should be locked up. Which is how Christ sees us, right, with love no matter what we've done? I was talking about this with Sam, trying to figure it out, and I asked him if there was ever a limit what we should forgive, if there are people we simply should not read/write books about, and he said, "I don't know. Not according to Jesus." Point taken.
And there is a barrier between art and life, and of course this doesn't apply in the courtroom because laws against pedophila and murder are important and meant to keep us safe and maintain order. And Nabokov never says the bars of Humbert's cage shouldn't be there, he just shows you what they are.
And still, I'm nervous. Isn't there a limit, a line, a point we shouldn't cross? Or maybe all the lines are personal, none superior to the other?
Two sides, and I find myself straddling them. Do I want my nieces/nephews/future children reading Lolita? Maybe in a long long while. If I met my twelve or even twenty-year-old self, would I recommend the book to her? No, no I wouldn't. I wouldn't have been ready for it yet.
But now, I love it. At the end, when Humbert is driving down the wrong side of the road, and they put up a roadblock and pull his despairing, limp, apathetic body from his car, I wasn't sorry I read. Oh, I wasn't.
It makes me nervous to admit this, admit I read it. It's one of those books you hear whispers about before you ever read it, especially when you're a good little Mormon girl, as I am/was/will forever be. (As a sidenote, check out this article on a kid's bed misguidedly named, "Lolita Bed." So not cool.)
You see, Mormon folk are careful what they read/watch/see. When I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to watch PG-13 movies, and I remember trying to read a book by Joyce Carol Oates and feeling like God told me not to read it anymore. Which, I sort of think He did, because it was ugly and negative and boring. So I grew up thinking that there was such a think as "moral" literature, books we "should" read and books we should not. And I still suspect that's true, I just don't know what they are anymore. The line seems blurry.
Take Lolita: the main character is Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is basically a pedophile, who seduces (or is seduced by, some critics say) a 12-year-old girl. Do I find the thought of this character disturbing/disgusting? Yes, yes I do. Take him out the walls of literature, and I hate him, I say lock him up; tell me he lives on my street and I'll move to another neighborhood to protect my kids. I think about my niece who is nearly twelve and I just shiver.
But the book tells this man's story, and makes you feels stuff about him, stuff for him. At the end I wept for him, this man. I find I'm sort of offended when I (or someone else) boils the plot down and calls him a pedophile. And so maybe the book, therefore, is "bad." Do we really need books that redeem pedophiles?
That's one way to see it. The other way takes me to something C.S. Lewis said:
"[I]n reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."
There's more to it than that, but I can't find it. He says something about wishing the dung beetle could write books, because he'd want to read those too. And Humbert is a dung beetle; he basically says so himself.
Nabokov, in a essay at the back of my edition, talks about the seed for the book. He says he felt the first stirrings of it when he read in the paper about an ape they taught to draw, and how they painstakingly, over months and months, tried to teach it, and when they finally succeeded, what it drew were the bars of its cage. What's the implication here, the connection to Lolita? Humbert is writing the book from prison, so I assume the book is, in a way, the bars of his cage. And it feels like the bars of the cage. As I said, it's heartbreaking.
So maybe it's like something Yeats says, in a book of essays I can't remember the title of. He argues that literature is the purest Christlike act, because in a sense we do as Christ did, forgive, redeem. We take something dispicable and are made to understand it, to see the man as a man, not just a sinner who should be locked up. Which is how Christ sees us, right, with love no matter what we've done? I was talking about this with Sam, trying to figure it out, and I asked him if there was ever a limit what we should forgive, if there are people we simply should not read/write books about, and he said, "I don't know. Not according to Jesus." Point taken.
And there is a barrier between art and life, and of course this doesn't apply in the courtroom because laws against pedophila and murder are important and meant to keep us safe and maintain order. And Nabokov never says the bars of Humbert's cage shouldn't be there, he just shows you what they are.
And still, I'm nervous. Isn't there a limit, a line, a point we shouldn't cross? Or maybe all the lines are personal, none superior to the other?
Two sides, and I find myself straddling them. Do I want my nieces/nephews/future children reading Lolita? Maybe in a long long while. If I met my twelve or even twenty-year-old self, would I recommend the book to her? No, no I wouldn't. I wouldn't have been ready for it yet.
But now, I love it. At the end, when Humbert is driving down the wrong side of the road, and they put up a roadblock and pull his despairing, limp, apathetic body from his car, I wasn't sorry I read. Oh, I wasn't.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Art
Was thinking today about the creation of the world--the classic story: organizing matter, dividing light from darkness, land from sea, making animals and plants, and finally man and woman.
And it occurred to me: God didn't make art. He designed the centipede, arranged the perfect tendons in my right hand, piled big rocks to make Kilimanjaro, gouged the Grand Canyon. But He didn't set down music, painting, and the novel on the planet. We did that.
Don't get me wrong, I think God has a lot to do with the creation of art, just as He's behind advances in science and technology. I'm of the opinion that good stuff comes from Him. My most successful work seems to come from some place beyond me.
But it struck me: art, as such, is so purely and beautifully human. It's our chance to create, to make something from nothing, to organize matter, to create the world.
And it occurred to me: God didn't make art. He designed the centipede, arranged the perfect tendons in my right hand, piled big rocks to make Kilimanjaro, gouged the Grand Canyon. But He didn't set down music, painting, and the novel on the planet. We did that.
Don't get me wrong, I think God has a lot to do with the creation of art, just as He's behind advances in science and technology. I'm of the opinion that good stuff comes from Him. My most successful work seems to come from some place beyond me.
But it struck me: art, as such, is so purely and beautifully human. It's our chance to create, to make something from nothing, to organize matter, to create the world.
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