Moral writing? Uncool, but bring it on!
If moral writing is “unmistakably and unsentimentally rooted in love,” bring it on!
Moral writing? Uncool, but bring it on! Read More »
Creativity
In Dialogue
We can be in dialogue with our whole being, accepting what life makes of us, taking what has happened, and making of it something new. From this dynamic exchange comes aliveness—our own and the world’s.
Broken & Beautiful: How the Light Gets In
The funny thing is that, wrong as we are, we do belong here, and wrong as our work may be, it belongs as well. Everything is cracked, and everything is beautiful.
Broken & Beautiful: How the Light Gets In Read More »
Paper Doll Spirituality
I thought of her over the long weekend without me, pouring all her energy into this paper representation of our family; I imagined her bent over the dining room table, making her passionate “I love you—I love you—I love you” into little flat people she could give hair-dos and tenderly clothe, and I saw finally how we’d each in our own ways been praying all weekend, placing our hearts into this vast, connected, and holy family.
Paper Doll Spirituality Read More »
Undoing the Single Story
Revision insists that we reject the single story in favor of layered, complex, and contradictory stories. Just as intimacy and awareness break down our stereotypes, intimacy with and awareness of our material break apart our over-simplifications and half-truths.
Undoing the Single Story Read More »
Permission for Privacy
Because of Robinson’s vast permission to explore what she wills however she wills, she’s creating literature that ministers to a profound and very contemporary thirst—for grace, for beauty, for kindness. She teaches me that those hidden, peculiar, contrary motivations that rise up when I’m given solitude are even more worthy than I thought.
Permission for Privacy Read More »
Creative Rest
All writers know the magic of putting aside a problematic passage (for a nap or a walk) only to have the solution appear unbidden. This turning away from writing is, paradoxically, an essential part of writing.
Feeling like a Fraud–or Not
I’ve been bowled over by how many people have shared with me that they feel like frauds. It plagues artists, for whom there’s always some level of public recognition to strive for that might finally affirm our worth; it plagues leaders, who must stand in front of people who will inevitably question their authority; it plagues parents, who feel they should know what they’re doing and don’t. Is there anyone who doesn’t at some point feel fraudulent?!
Feeling like a Fraud–or Not Read More »
The Story Comes First
I’m increasingly convinced that what makes writing (both the process and the product) valuable is its service to the story. Nothing else satisfies in the end—not success, not recognition, not extraordinary craft accomplishments, certainly not money.
The Story Comes First Read More »
Bi-Focals
The spiritual gifts of bisexuals and transgendered folks reside in the both/and of our bodies. We contain paradox. We defy dualism.