The Feast of Friendship

Back in September, I wrote a post about friendship, “Risking Friendship, The Secret of Happiness,” here. In the same post I mentioned our church’s annual women’s retreat, which was scheduled for November, but had to be re-scheduled because of a death and funeral. Now it’s this weekend: Friday & Saturday, January 18 & 19, at St. John Orthodox Church here in Memphis.

Conversations with two dear friends last night and this morning have spurred me to post about this topic again.

First, about the retreat. The speaker is Father Paul O ‘Callahan from St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Wichita. (Here is he, with his family.) He’s the author of the book, The Feast of Friendship. I used his book as the primary source for one of the talks I gave at a women’s retreat in Austin about two years ago. Titles for his talks are:

“Eternal Communion: Friendship and the Meaning of Salvation”
“A Barren Field: Modern American Individualism”
“Real Friendship: What it Looks Like” and
“Soul Friend: The Role of Spiritual Father”

When I first read Father Paul’s book, I thought, “oh, my. I can’t believe this was written by a man. He’s so in touch with his feminine side!” (For those of you not familiar with Jungian psychology, that’s a good thing.) I’ve met Father Paul personally, when I visited Wichita a number of year ago, But I’ve never heard him speak, so I’m looking forward to the retreat. But not just to have my ears tickled by a good speaker. As I told someone on the phone today, I’m looking forward to what God has for all of us in the way of learning how much our salvation is wrapped up in one another… how much we need each other… and how to have healthy, salvific friendships. Some of us in this parish have known each other for 40 years. Other friendships are new. All are priceless.

In preparing for the retreat, I re-read several passages of Fr. Paul’s book today, and I’d like to share a few quotes here, and a few of my own reflections. From 3 sections of the book:

(1) The Achievement of Personhood

Love, freely given, manifests the essential relatedness of a person to others. Thus, the individual who cannot love fails to develop true personhood…. the one who loves fully becomes his own identity through communion with others….The achievement of human personhood therefore is unthinkable apart from the drive for communion. It is undeniable that relatedness is a fact of human existence from the moment of our conception. We are conceived in the fire of passionate relations between two people. We develop in the nurturing womb of our mother. We experience our relatedness first at her breast, and then with our father and siblings, relatives and neighbors. We find out soon enough that our existence has occurred in the nexus of particular communities, and then discover the place of those communities in the larger realm of the human race in the world. We venture into friendships, integrate into all kinds of associations, find lovers, marry, and beget children. Even the most distinctly biological aspects of our generation and socialization do not and cannot occur apart from personal relationships. When one becomes fully conscious, one recognizes the dimension of communion that is possible, may actually underlie, and is often manifest in such relationships. The highest and most fulfilling are those in which a genuine experience of communion between persons takes place in utter freedom: friendships and marriage.

I know there’s a lot in there. Read it again, if you have time. I’m big on the aspect of freedom that he talks about here, and in much greater detail later. We choose our friends and our spouses, but not our parents or our children. But then they become part of our “tribe” in a sense. Part of who we are as persons. Part of the realm in which our personhood develops. They’re not optional, if we want to develop into whole, mature persons.

(2) The Creativity of Friendship

Because we allow our friends access to the intimate spaces of our hearts, we place them in a position to deeply affect us…. They discern and seize upon our deepest spiritual aspirations and encourage us to strive more mightily to realize them than we could ever do alone…. They recognize our genuine gifts and talents, and embolden the humble expression of them….Fundamentally, genuine friends grant us access to the most creative dimensions of our souls by receiving us and reflecting us back to ourselves.

I have a friend that does this, and it is a beautiful and sacred gift. Without her love, I am sure I would never have believed in myself enough to paint an icon. Or write a book, or even an essay. Or speak at a women’s retreat. Or face down some of my demons. She teaches me how to be a friend, and hopefully, I can learn to be that to others.

(3) Issues and Problems in Friendships: Needs, Possessiveness, and Expectations

If perfect intimacy is to be attained and preserved in a friendship… certain basic principles must be honored. The first is the absolute necessity of maintaining distance in the relationship. We may imagine that the common dimension shared by friends exists in the delicate space in between them…numerous forms of over-identification can collapse it, such as possessiveness, inappropriate expectations….The freedom and autonomy of real persons are precisely the prerequisites of genuine friendship….one trusts the character of his friend and thus setting rules for his behavior is out of the question…. The development of highly specific sets of expectations among friends… at bottom… betrays a lack of trust. It reveals the desire to regulate and control the other…. True friends relish the distance between them as much as the communion that unites them. This is because they recognize that the distance between free, whole, autonomous persons is the essential precondition of their relatedness.

Okay, I could talk about this forever, but I’ll try to be brief. I have parents who told me what to do while I was growing up. And then some. But they were supposed to tell me what to do. They were my parents. Not my friends. I had teachers growing up, and even now, iconography instructors and writing instructors, who tell me what to do, although sometimes they only make suggestions, but they’re supposed to tell me what to do. They are my teachers. Not my friends. I have a spiritual father who only tells me what to do if I ask him to. Thank God. Sometimes I want him to be my friend. But I need him to be my father. It gets confusing at times. But I trust him. And he trusts me and never tries to control me. So I guess he’s also my friend.

I was part of a cult for seventeen years. We were taught to control each other’s behaviors. It wasn’t a healthy place to learn friendship. But some of us who survived and came into the Orthodox Church together in 1987 have been re-learning it together. Trying to figure out how to preserve that precious space that must exist between two Real Persons in order for them to become Real Friends.

I think Father Paul O’Callahan understands these things. I’m looking forward to his talks this weekend. And to spending time with my friends.

Speaking of friends. Two more came over today. First, my friend Nancy. The one I actually met at Starbucks about four years ago. She signed my cast “Starbucks Nancy” and cheered me up with this beautiful butterfly on my cast. And a latte.

Later my realtor, Linda, dropped by with yet another latte, and our earnest money on the house we lost because ours hasn’t sold yet. Not her fault. Or Saint Joseph’s. An Theli O Theos. As God wills.

Thank God for friends.

Finding My Voice

I read an essay by Brenda Pontiff in the (Charleston, South Carolina) January issue of skirt! Magazine yesterday called “Lucking Out.” (January is the “luck” issue.) It’s about a girl who was attacked in her apartment when she was 20 years old. Thankfully, she wasn’t harmed, physically, as he only wanted to rob her. But at one point, he had her pinned down on her bed with his finger down her throat and his knee in her crotch, threatening to kill her if she screamed. After being disappointed with the contents of her wallet, he ran out of her apartment. She tried to scream, but couldn’t find her voice.

I’ve always wondered what might happen if I was ever in similar circumstances. Could I shout loudly, or not? Thankfully, this ability hasn’t been tested in me, yet… other than one night during a dream. At least I think it was a dream. It was in 1995. I had been through a very dark time, spiritually, and was struggling with evil dreams. This particular night, I was in bed, asleep (I think) when suddenly I felt something or someone physically pulling me up out of my bed by the arm… up into the air above the bed. My husband was asleep next to me. I tried to scream, but no sound would come out of my voice. It was terrifying. Suddenly I woke up and felt myself dropping back down onto the bed, as though I had been suspended in the air. Fully awake, I got up and went to my icon corner and prayed. And cried. I was shaking. Perhaps in this situation it wouldn’t have helped to have been able to find my voice, because I was fighting against a spiritual enemy, rather than a physical one, but still….

I was watching "The Titanic" on TV the other day, and when it got to the part near the end when the heroine is waiting to be rescued and the men in the rescue boat are near her, calling out, she can’t scream for them to hear her. Just watching it, my throat constricted and I remembered that helpless feeling again. Of course I love that she swam over and got the whistle out of the dead man’s mouth and started blowing on it, and therefore was rescued. The writer could have had her scream out for help, but he didn’t. He had her lying there helpless, unable to find her voice.

Laura, the sixteen-year-old protagonist in The Girl From Charnelle, tries to scream when the married man who has taken her on a secret camping trip inflicts her with pain as he ravages her virginity. She is unable to make a sound, to find her voice. The book seems to be about that very thing… about Laura, and her mother, and her older sister, trying to find their voices in a small town in the Texas panhandle in the 50s and 60s. (Her mother just left the family one day, and the older sister ran away with an Air Force pilot and eloped at 18.)

Why is it that we are unable to speak when we are in danger? Does fear temporarily paralyze our vocal chords or something? Actually, one of my vocal chords is physically paralyzed (has been since 8th grade) … but that didn’t stop me from yelling out cues when I taught an aerobics class years ago, or yelling at my kids (unfortunately) … or singing at the top of my lungs at times.

I’m wondering if finding our voice during a crisis is akin to finding our voice as women, in general? A therapist once helped me come to grips with some addiction issues I was having. She helped me understand how my addictions could be related to something that happened to me in early childhood, when I was helpless. And again later, when I was in my twenties. It made so much sense to me, but when I shared these things with a male friend, he didn’t think it was such a big deal. It was like I was screaming for help and he couldn’t hear my voice.

Writing helps. Gloria, Laura’s older sister in The Girl From Charnelle, wrote letters home to her family from Europe, where her husband was deployed as an Air Force pilot. When she came back to Charnelle for her fist visit to her family, she told Laura that she made copies of the letters for herself, as a sort of journal. I love what she says about it:

“I love writing the letters. It’s not real, I guess, unless I write it down. And then the experience takes on a shape. It’s like I get to see my own mind.”

When I read this, I thought, yes. This is part of why I write. To give shape to my experiences. To see them as my mind sees them. To give them a voice. So I’m inspired to work on an essay today. Working title: “Finding My Voice.” ahhhh... the sound of ten fingers clicking....

One Hand Clapping

Last night I did some more reading in Anne Lamott’s book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. Two of her essays really blessed me. One was about her teenage son, Sam. She writes about Sam a lot… maybe I’ll share some of that another time. Her essay, “One Hand Clapping,” is what really got my attention yesterday.

It’s about a woman in her church (just outside San Francisco) who had only a stump for one of her hands. Her mother had worked as a chemist for the military during WWII… helping develop chemical weapons. She was one of a number of children of these workers who were born with birth defects from their mothers’ exposure to the chemicals. But Lamotte tells the story about this courageous woman (who later lost a battle with breast cancer) who fought for the poor and other causes dear to her heart. She was limited in what she could do, physically, but not in the way she could touch people’s hearts.

The same day I read this essay, I watched an ad on TV during the football games, about a woman athlete who lost a leg. It showed her running with a prosthesis. She swung her hip out awkwardly as she ran. But she ran.

As I attempt to do more things for myself around the house, without putting any weight on my left foot, I’m learning lots of lessons. The body needs all its parts to function smoothly. When other parts are called on to pick up slack for a broken part, it hurts. My other foot hurts. My knees hurts. My hips hurt. My wrists hurt, from supporting my weight on the walker. My arthritis is flaring up big time.

Things I took for granted come at me in endless details. Pay a bill? No problem. Let’s see, the checkbook is in that room. The stamps are in there. The envelopes are in there. And I need to get on the computer (in there) to check on something first. All that for just one little job. Now I’m carrying a backpack around on my walker, taking stuff from room to room. I’ve never stayed inside my house for six straight days in my life. Before my surgery I was asking the doctor, “how soon can I drive?” Now I’m not a bit interested in driving. Just in figuring out how to get the milk and cereal to the table.

All this to say that limitations change your perspective on things. On how often the cat’s litter box has to be raked. Or how much it matters if the afghan is folded neatly on the couch. Or if clutter accumulates because it’s exhausting to move from room to room.

Sitting here looking at my cast, I read Katherine’s words again, “Be still and take care of you!”

Be still.

This morning I was still. If you call writing being still. I was still physically… but four pages of notes and outlines for a memoir came pouring out. Maybe the genesis of a book of essays with a related theme. Thankful for having two good hands to type these words with. Trying to imagine the sound of one hand clapping…. I can only hear the sound of one foot walking: thump, thump, slide; thump, thump, slide.

After a morning of (relative) stillness, several wonderful groups of visitors arrived. Sue and Sarah brought us lunch… and Sarah did this marvelous cast art creation. This rose is so awesome I’m not going to want the folks at Campbell Clinic to cut it off. Well….

Later Reem brought delicious chicken over for our dinner tonight (which we just ate and yum!) …and brought Sophie with her. Here’s Sophie (almost 5) doing her cast art… a pretty flower and her name… while Oreo and I watch. It’s so narcissistic having people sit at your feet and draw pictures on your cast while I take photos. Or in this case, Sarah took photos.

Around 5 pm Kathy came by for a glass of wine and a visit.

At 7 pm hubby arrived home with groceries. Yes. Now I know how old people feel, watching all the young people buzzying around them quickly. I can’t do anything quickly right now. Well, except type. Back to those essays!

Ups and Downs

After such an “up” day on Friday, Saturday was really a downer. Although I woke up with NO PAIN in my foot at all (this was the good part), I decided to quit taking Percocet. But then it hit me. The cumulative affect of the Percocet all week… and I spent most of the day dealing with really unpleasant side affects. Not blogworthy. Just saying.

By evening I was “up” again, thanks in part to my friend (and nurse) Margaret, who gave good advice, to my sweet hubby who ran to the drug store for me and put up with me all day, a sweet visit from another Goddaughter, Julie, who brought chicken soup and visited… even while I was still nauseated. And then the surprise of the day: Dan and Lori O’Brien’s Greek Chicken and Orzo and wine (yes) … suddenly tasted good and made everything better.

More artwork on my cast (no photo right now) and just more tangible reminders of how loved I am. These dear friends from my church are just angels.

So, this morning I did what I do every Sunday morning if I don’t go to church. I drank coffee and read the New York Times. I really enjoy the NYT Magazine and Book Review, but today in the “Sunday Styles” section, there was this great article, “Take Me as I am, Whoever I Am,” by Terri Cheney. She’s got a book coming out in February, Manic: A Memoir. Terri is bipolar. And she writes about it with candor and humor and clarity. Can’t wait to read the book.

Terri’s “ups and downs” were the inspiration for this blog post… and also got me to working on notes for an essay about some of my own struggles. Or maybe a book of essays. I spent some time editing a piece I’m considering sending in for Dinty Moore’s critique session at the Creative Nonfiction Conference at Ole Miss in February… but then again I think I’ll wait ‘til closer to deadline and see if I come up with something that’s more in the memoir genre. We’ll see.

I’m still going “up and down” about writing nonfiction vs. fiction… so I enjoyed part of the morning continuing to read K. L. Cook’s The Girl from Charnelle. Yes, it’s fiction. But literary. And he makes you believe it could be true. It’s what good fiction can do. Here’s an excerpt… the protagonist, Laura, has gone with her family to visit “Aunt Velma” on Easter weekend, April, 1958. Backstory: Aunt Velma’s husband committed suicide.

Aunt Velma claimed that the church had saved her after Uncle Unser died, literally saved both her physical and spiritual lives, and she had devoted herself to volunteer work and to intensive study sessions with other members of the congregation, particularly those who’d lost spouses, parents, children, brothers, or sisters…. Laura was fascinated and often moved by Aunt Velma’s fervor. Regardless of whether or not you believed what she believed, it was clear, to Laura at least, that it had changed Aunt Velma for the better….It made her generous and forgiving, and sustained her as she grew old, lit her from within rather than turning her cynical and ossified, as Laura could easily see happening to someone else in Aunt Velma’s shoes. When your husband kills himself… well, no telling what could happen to you.

And here’s one more teaser… at the end of an eventful weekend, Cook frames the days’ events (through Laura’s voice) in prose that is almost lyrical:

It seemed as if the fall from the horse had shaken whatever was bad or festering out of her, that those few minutes of deadness had made way for this sense of pleasure she now felt. She smiled to think of what Aunt Velma would make of this….maybe that’s how people like Aunt Velma find themselves, through these odd connected moments, ripened with mystery, like beads on a string─leaving town, falling off a horse, brooding over the dead, eating until you’re stuffed─and poof! ─through some magical alchemy, you’re crazy for Jesus.

I’ll be curious to see how Cook has Laura (who is 16 when the book begins) deal with the affair she’s having with a married man… a friend of her father’s, actually. How he “frames” her actions in light of her mother’s desertion and the other events in the small Texas town in the 1950 and 60s. I’ll get back to you… won’t give the book a thumps up or down ‘til the end.

Meanwhile out in the den, (watching football with hubby this afternoon) one of our homeboys made good… Eli and the Giants just won their playoff against the Cowboys… but earlier we watched Peyton and the Colts lose… we were in school with Archie and Olivia, so it’s hard not to pull for his boys. I’m not really a football fan, but hubby did something to connect us to the Manning boys forever. November 17, 1969… the night Ole Miss beat the Big Orange… he proposed to me. And I said yes. Little did we imagine, that night, that two of our kids would one day to go the University of Tennessee.. and watch Peyton play. God, we’re old. And poof!... we’re crazy for Jesus. Just like Aunt Velma. We all have our ups and downs.

Plan B

Day 4 of foot surgery recovery: This afternoon I moved into the den and set up headquarters with my laptop and wireless keyboard and mouse... just in time for a flurry of afternoon visitors.

Claire and Deb showed up after a movie matinee outing, and added Pen and Palette and Oreo artwork to my cast, and a delightful distraction from foot pain with their visit.

While they were here, Pamela and Hannah came and brought baby Peter...

But I'm writing backwards... so now I'll flashback to yesterday and this morning....

Yesterday our realtor called to say that the owners of the house we put a contingency contract on have another offer. It’s the really really yummy house in a great location and everything… but we haven’t sold our house and we really really don’t want to be the proud owners of two houses, so… we had to let it go.

Of course I’d been walking around in that house in my mind for three months… picking out new furniture, imagining myself writing a best-seller in the Virginia Wolf Room (a room of my own) and enjoying the front porch swing and…. Sigh.

So as friends got the news, the condolences started coming in. (And no, not one person has said "I told you so"... because we didnt' bury a statue of St. Joseph in the yard:-) Sometimes I don’t want to be encouraged, you know? I just want to be sad. To grieve the loss on my own terms. Especially while I’m lying in bed with my foot in a cast and throbbing with pain (when the Percocet wears off) and everything…

But somehow grace arrived with the news. A friend was here when I got the phone call, and that helped a lot. And it was my Goddaughter, Katherine’s 10th wedding anniversary and she came over to see me this morning. I was Maid of Honor in her wedding… and we blinked and now she has three children and it’s ten years later. Her house has been on the market longer than ours, as her family is wanting to make a change, too. She brought me a latte and wrote on my cast. Here: “Be still and take care of you!”

I had been reading Anne Lamott’s book of essays, Plan B: Further Thougths on Faith. At one point she says, “You don’t always get what you want. You get what you get….life, and grace.”

So I’m trying to be open to Plan B. And to grace. A good friend emailed me saying that God has something more wonderful for me, and it might be something within. She knows I’m stirred up about my writing. So the For Sale sign comes out of the yard for a few months and the focus goes within.

Today is Mary Allison’s birthday. She would be 30. She’s my Goddaughter who was killed in 1998. The one who moved in with us ten years ago this week, actually. I wrote about her memorial service about in September. Just remembering her today and the gift she was to our family, and the lessons we learned when we lost her.

Working on an essay a little bit today but feeling sleepy from the meds, so I think Plan B will be to try to do what Katherine wrote on my cast: be still.

And read some more in The Girl from Charnelle… my Christmas present from Stacy (well, I used the Barnes & Noble card she gave me to order it)…. I’ll relax and enjoy K. L. Cook’s writing for a while tomorrow….

Takes place in a south Texas town in the early 60s…. stay tuned for a review in a future blog….

Toe Story

Scrubby went with us Tuesday morning, at 5 a.m. to Campbell Clinic’s Outpatient Surgery Center. She was a big hit with the doctors and nurses. Well, mainly with the nurses. She wore her mask and everything. She got to stay with me until they took me in for the surgery.

Thank God (and thanks to everyone for their prayers) I was ASLEEP and didn’t feel a thing. I woke up briefly and heard a saw or drill or something, and felt someone holding my leg, which was numb, so I went back to sleep. They started at 7 and were finished before 9 am. The doctor said everything went great, and indeed, my previously crooked big toe, which is peeking out the top of the cast, looks straighter. It has two pins inside (permanently) to hold it straight.

On the way home we picked up one of these Dry Pro thingies, so I don’t have to use a garbage bag on my cast to shower. And then a latte, of course.

Back at home I set up recovery camp in the guest room… since hubby is still sick (but was well enough to take me to surgery) and we’re kind of keeping different sleeping times right now…. It's not fair that he doesn't get to be sick by himself... I can't wait on him much now:-(

After the numbness wore off, the nausea set in. I won’t describe this part, but it was over by 8 pm, and thanks to my friends, Perky and Darcy, the pain has been manageable so far. I’m learning to use a walker… can even carry a cup of coffee from the kitchen to the guest room, balancing it on the front of the walker with my right hand as I scoot along.

Beth was leaving for Knoxville Tuesday afternoon, so she was first to autograph my cast.

Today Nancy came to bring catfood (which I forgot at the grocery) and then Madeleine came with a latte, so she autographed next.

I've got a bowl of colorful

Sharpies waiting for visitors to add their creations!

In between naps and visitors (and homemade soups, thank you Anna-Sarah and Ellie!) I’ve been loving Haven Kimmel’s novel, The Solace of Leaving Early. After reading her two wonderful nonfiction memoirs, A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch, I thought the novel started slowly. But now I’m loving it. I find myself leaning one minute towards writing fiction and the next towards memoir as I devour these yummy authors. (Kimmel and Lamott right now.) Tomorrow I hope to put pen to paper again. Trying to think of my surgery recovery time as a writing retreat.

But tonight it’s hubby and me with our laptops in the den watching Ole Miss vs. Tennessee AND Memphis vs. ECU… Go Vols! Go Tigers! (yeah yeah yeah, I know we went to Ole Miss… but our money went to Tennessee with our kids....

okay... that's all for now... nothing very ethereal... just a thankful heart and hopes for happily-ever-after ending for this toe story.

Bananas Foster, Stories, Poems and Essays: YWG Kicks off 2008!

On Saturday I didn’t drive to Oxford for my monthly critique session with the Yoktapatawpha Writers Group. I drove to East Memphis. Patti hosted our group in her home… complete with lunch she prepared herself, and marinated flank steak and chicken for dinner. We brought side dishes for dinner. (More about them later.) This is Patti, with her new puppy, Buttercup.

And here’s the “morning group” (minus Sue and Doug) …. and the afternoon group (at left) ended up being the YWG Original Five: Patti, Doug, Herman, Tom and me.

First the critique sessions (before and after lunch). Terry and Sue could only stay for the morning, and Doug could only make it for the afternoon and evening, but we figured out a way to get everyone’s input on each writing sample that was submitted. On the two wonderful poems turned in by Sue and Doug. And the delightful essay by Terry. Patti shared some bits and pieces of the family stories she’s working on. Another chapter of Tom’s book. A couple of stories from Herman. And I got help with a creative nonfiction piece I’m working on.

Here’s Terry, aka “the slasher”…

Here’s how it works:

We submit our work (via email or the YWG web site) before the meeting, and everyone takes red pen in hand and makes suggestions as they read. At the meeting, one person is the moderator. Usually me. Because Doug says I like to be in charge. (You think?) The moderator just gets the critique session started with a few comments about the piece being critiqued. Everyone offers their feedback, on everything from content to punctuation, point of view to grammar. The author is supposed to remain quiet during this part and only respond at the end. We’re not very good at that, so we often respond to the criticism throughout the session.

Sometimes we rabbit trail. Like Saturday, when one of the essays stirred up a conversation about racism. Issues matter. How we treat them in our writing matters.

After each critique, we turn in our pages to the author and start over on another one. The author has to have thick skin and know that what we want is to help each other become better writers. But he/she also has to remember that it’s her/his work. Kind of like they say at a Twelve Steps meeting: “Take what works and leave the rest.”

I learn something every time. Not just from the critique of my own work, but from reading and listening to the comments on everyone’s writing. Thanks so much, Doug and Tom, for driving up from Tupelo and New Albany for the meeting. We’re looking forward to coming down to Tupelo in February, Doug!
Now. About the food. Two of my favorite side dishes for the dinner were:

Tom’s wife’s veggie casserole (I went back for seconds):

1 can French style beans, drained

1 can shoe peg corn

1 can water chestnuts, sliced

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 can cream of celery soup

1 carton sour cream

1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 roll Ritz crackers, crushed

1 stick melted butter, mix with crackers

Layer beans, corn, chestnuts

Sprinkle onion on top

Mix soup and sour cream - spread over onion layer

Sprinkle cheese over this and then crackers

Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees until brown.

And Herman’s Bananas Foster. Yes. I helped! (Well, I sliced the bananas and scooped the ice cream into the bowls.) It was amazing. Had three kinds of liqueurs plus rum. Yum. I loved smelling the butter and brown sugar caramelizing in the skillet. And watching the rum burst into flames. Putting the meal together in the kitchen at the end of a day of critiquing each other’s writing was so relaxing.
The spouses were invited to join us. To meet these people with whom we share so much of our creative endeavors. One spouse was able to come…. MINE! He wins the Best YWG Spouse Award, don’t you think? He and Tom discovered a bond… check out the “secret handshake” in the photo. Not saying what fraternity they were in. Not.

Lots of good wine and life-stories were shared. Here are some scenes in, or near, the kitchen…

Okay, guys… I’m heading to Campbell Clinic at 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday (they moved the surgery up to 7:00 a.m.) so I don’t know when I’ll get back to my computer. I do know this: I'll be having one sip of Holy Water (all I'm allowed after midnight tonight) before I leave in the morning.

Beth will be driving back to Knoxville Tuesday afternoon for another semester of grad school in architecture. Oh, and Jon just called to say he’s off to Iraq on Wednesday night. (leaving from Savannah, Georgia) I’ll write more about that later. Just saying… for your prayers. Traveling mercies for Beth and Jon!

Holy Water

Our bodies are nearly 80 % water. So is the earth. Personally, I’m chronically dehydrated, which causes dry skin, itchy eyes, headaches, and rusty joints. Easy to fix, just drink more water, right? I’m working on it. Slowly. If my body is 80 % water, how come I don’t like the way it tastes? How come I’m always thirsty for things that, well, make me more thirsty? Like alcohol. Or caffeine.

The same is true, I think, of spiritual thirst. Saint Innocent of Alaska said:

Nothing in this world but God can fill our heart or fully satisfy our desires. A fire cannot be put out with brushwood and oil, because only water will put it out. In exactly the same way, the desires of the human heart cannot be satisfied with the goods of this world, because only the grace of God can quench the thirst of our desires.

This morning I got sprinkled with Holy Water. During the Great Blessing of the Water at the Feast of Theophany at St. John Orthodox Church here in Memphis. Sophie, my four-year-old Goddaughter who often sits with me at church, asked what was happening. I pointed to the large icon of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and explained that the water was made Holy by Jesus. After the service, I went forward with the others, carrying my small Holy Water container, and received a cup of freshly blessed water to drink, and then a deacon filled my water container to take home.

What will I do with it at home? Well, first thing today, I shared it with my husband, who had stayed home sick this morning. For healing. Then I put the container in our icon corner, where we’ll drink a small amount from time to time after our prayers. The pious tradition is to drink some every morning after your Morning Prayers… for it to be the first thing you consume each day, just as the Body and Blood of Christ (in the elements of bread and wine) are the first thing we consume at Divine Liturgy. Which is why we fast before the Liturgy. Because we are about to receive something Holy.

I also use Holy Water mixed with egg yolk to bind the dry pigments I use in painting icons. Correctly done, icons last for centuries.

So do Holy Traditions…. Like Blessing the Water… sometimes rivers and oceans, like in these pictures. Click here to see a slideshow of yesterday's Blessing of the Water at Ross Barnett Reservoir in Madison, Mississippi. Father Paul Yerger is the priest that we traveled to Greece with in October (along with his wife, Sissy). And click here to see a slideshow of the Blessing of the Water and diving for the cross in 2004 in Madison, Mississippi. Several Orthodox Churches in and around Jackson, Mississippi joined together at the Ross Barnett Reservoir for the event. I was thinking about it this morning, because my husband was baptized in those very waters about thirty years ago... before we were Orthodox.

Here's a picture of a bishop blessing the water in Moscow. And parishioners processing from the church to the river. brrrrr. Hard to believe it was 70 degrees here today. We should have blessed the Mississippi River and had the boys dive for the cross! (well, the currents are pretty dangerous there.)

Tuesday morning I’m going to Campbell Clinic for my foot surgery. I thought about it during the Divine Liturgy this morning (to a distraction, I’m afraid) but I also thought about the power of the Holy Water to heal, and it brought me great peace. I may need to drink some more first thing Tuesday morning.

A Second Helping: Writing on Writing

Wednesday’s Feast of Words brought a friendly message to my email inbox… from Beth Ann Fennelly. She was writing to me and the others in the Yoktapatawpha Writers Group who heard Beth Ann read her poem, “First Warm Day in a College Town,” at the workshop in June. The one that got published in the Oxford American. The one she said she hoped wouldn’t get her fired from her teaching post at Ole Miss. Well, here it is, in her own words:

Hi guys--Thanks for the congrats! You're so sweet! And of course, partially to blame--if you'd been more shocked and horrified by the poem I don't think I would have sent it to the OA. So you only have yourselves to blame! Susan, thanks for the blog, and I enjoyed the Neal Walsh piece a lot. I thought that David Payne's essay on So. lit was brilliant--make sure you check it out. I'm wishing you all much writing success in 2008.

Your pal, Beth Ann

So there it is. She was test-driving the poem at the workshop in June and we loved it. So did the folks at the Oxford American, evidently.

Beth Ann’s encouragement to check out David Payne’s essay in the same issue of OA is the impetus for this “Second Helping” of a Word Feast today. Oh. My. Goodness. What an incredible essay. “Carrying America’s Shadow.” It’s what we southerners do for the rest of the country… especially we southern writers. I’m a fan of Jungian psychology myself, so when Payne defined the situation with terms like Self and Other and Shadow I knew it was going to be yummy. A few clips:

Self and Other in the outward and political realm correspond to ego and shadow in the inward and psychological one, which brings me to my hypothesis—the bias against Southern writers is an example of a lingering Northern bias against the South itself, which has historically played the role of shadow in America’s collective psyche.

Yes. The dark, fertile Mississippi soil that nurtured writers like Faulkner and Welty and neighboring shadowlands like Alabama and Georgia, whose bumper crops included jewels like O’Connor and Harper Lee represent a place, an “Other,” to the rest of the country. Our Northern neighbors are afraid of their shadow. Of us. As Payne says:

The shadow, psychologists tell us, is the repository of what we hate and fear as well as of urges difficult to reconcile with self-regard. Thrusting these down into the unconscious, we then project them outward onto others.

So they came up with stereotypes like “Nigger” and “Redneck” … distortions of their own repressed selves.

The healthy end stage of the process involves the reintegration of the shadow; to reach it, the projector has to look at what he hates or fears and ask the question, How is this like me?

Payne’s argument continues as he explains how this plays out in the country’s judgment of Southern writers:

The shadow inevitably presents this way—as “primitive,” “behind,” or “backward” —and I suspect this is why critics so frequently attack Southern writing in two key areas—language and emotion—labeling the first “over rich,” the second “overheated” and/or “sentimental.” It’s just those areas in which Southern practice differs most noticeably from accepted Northern norms.

If I keep this up I’ll quote the entire essay… you should really buy the magazine and read it yourself. So much more yummy stuff in here, about staying connected to the soil, to our roots, not rejecting our bodies, remembering what it means to be truly human. He hails Lee Smith, contemporary Southern author whose works aren’t hailed much north of the Mason Dixon Line, but should be, because:

Smith and Faulkner offer the memory of an older path that leads through a hidden door, down a winding stair, away from what is advanced to what is primitive,…away from reason toward emotion, away from the waking world to the world of dreams. There, in the shadow realm, we must look for answers among the broken items lying on the floor where previous generations discarded them as worthless.

I understand why people who aren’t from the South are afraid of it. I was born and raised in Mississippi and I’m still afraid of it. It’s dark. It’s dirty. But I’m learning that I have to face it down and embrace it, much like my own personal shadow, if I’m going to benefit from its richness. And forgive it. Someone said that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past. I’m in the process of forgiving the South for its shortcomings and embracing my People in all their primitive, backward, emotional, earthy, beautiful selves.

Kudos to David Payne for his brave and clear call. Let’s try to answer him with writing that is intimate and real and connected to the older path. It might take some time to clear the overgrowth off the path. But we can do it. I’m game.

I’m meeting with my writing group buddies tomorrow for our monthly critique session. Here we are... the "original 5" at our first meeting in September. And the group that grew, at our last meeting in December. Can’t wait for our first meeting of 2008! We've changed venues... instead of meeting in Oxford, we're gathering at Memphian Patti Trippeer's home... and our spouses are joining us at the end of the day for a cookout. See you guys in the morning!

A Feast of Words

I’ll never eat again. How many times have I said that? From Christmas day through New Year’s I’ve eaten enough to last until Easter. So today I stopped eating. Well, I slowed down. Enough to realize how hungry I am … for words.

For Orthodox Christians, it's why we fast. So we'll be hungry for Jesus. When our bellies are stuffed and our minds are fuzzy from too much wine, we don't know we're hungry for anything else.

So today, instead of eating, I read. Okay, so I read every day… but this was a Word Feast.

First Course: the new issue of The Oxford American arrived. With New Fiction by several authors including Neal Walsh. Neal was one of the faculty for the Writing Workshop I attended last June at Ole Miss… he was a graduate of the MFA program there at the time and now he’s working at LSU. He led the critique sessions at the workshop, which is where I first learned how the critique process works. That workshop was the genesis of my critique group that now meets monthly. The Yoktapatawpha Writers Group.

So… Neal had a story in The Oxford American called “Pins.” It’s kind of edgy. This is the “Sports in the South” issue for OA, but calling Pins a sport is a bit of a stretch. It’s an adult party game. I’m not even going to try to explain it. Get the magazine and read it yourself. Kudos, Neal!

In the same issue Beth Ann Fennelly, who gave the wonderful craft talks and served on a faculty panel at the same workshop at Ole Miss last June, has a poem, “First Warm Day in a College Town.” I cracked up when I saw it, because Beth Ann read it to us at the workshop, adding sheepishly that she might get fired if it ever got published. It’s a sensual slow-tease word feast. Just yummy. Way to go, Beth Ann!

The latest issue of Poets & Writers has a great interview with well-known literary agent, Lynn Nesbit. You can read the interview here. She’s friends with Joan Didion, who wrote The Year of Magical Thinking. Lynn was surprised by Joan’s success, although she thought her memoir was well written, especially “the way she addressed the reader without any sentimentality….” But Lynn loves fiction and bemoans the current trend towards nonfiction and memoir:

I think it’s unfortunate. I think it’s mirrored in every part of our culture. Look at the reality programming on television─people want to know the truth, they want to identify. This memoir craze has eaten away at fiction. A lot of people will read memoirs but they won’t read a novel.

Here we go. I read her and I want to write a literary novel.

And then I read a piece by K. L. Cook in the Glimmer Train newsletter and I’m even more intrigued … this time with turning family stories into fiction. Cook teaches creative writing and uses exercises involving family themes and family secrets to teach fiction writing. A teaser:

According to family systems theory, there are no secrets in families. The entire family colludes, either consciously or unconsciously, in keeping and perpetuating a secret. Often a secret is linked to a family’s conception of shame and maybe used as a strategy for one generation to exert its will (about how to behave) over another generation….

Is there a secret in your fictional family? How has that secret generated either chronic or acute anxiety in the life of this family? Does that secret directly affect the story you wish to tell?...

He went on to suggest structures and strategies for using family themes and secrets in creative ways. I’m intrigued…. and I sent a (fiction) short story to Glimmer Train today. And another one to Yemassee Journal. (pix at left is from one of their covers!) Just throwing a few more things up against the wall to see if anything sticks.

After my surgery next Tuesday I’ll be house-bound for a while and hope to jump into writing a book… with all this input maybe I’ll finally decide the direction… a book of creative nonfiction essays? A literary novel?

I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

yum yum.