A Single Layer

2013 is fast approaching, and with it the recollection that resolutions are in order. Who doesn't hope that each new year might bring with it some kind of change, however insignificant? I have a few ideas for new year's resolutions, one of which would go something like "read the books you already own." Most years I make some resolution regarding books. This past year was 1) to read more and frivolously, and 2) to blog about it . I have a very bad habit of buying more books than I can read, and then going out and getting even more at the library. 2012 has been a year of reading as much as possible, however ridiculous the material - and in the first part of the year I took that very seriously, reading through about thirty young adult novels, among other things, at a remarkable pace, on top of my usual editing load. I flagged off a good deal this fall, and I'm now about ten books behind my goal for the year. But this is not a resolution to get anxious about. Now

And on a completely unrelated note, there's an interview with Madeleine L'Engle biographer Leonard S. Marcus on Omnivoracious . Whatever you think or feel of Amazon, you gotta love their book bloggers.

" The good news of Christmas is that the atmosphere of fear and hostility isn’t the natural climate for human beings, and it can be changed." - Rowan Williams ,  courtesy of Ayjay

If blog posts were articles, I'd wait to write this till I'd done some research. But I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, and that will have to do for now. The topic being, as the title suggests, the relationship between freedom and safety. I was thinking about this a lot during the election, as I tried to mentally sift the different parties into their fundamental ideals. There being so little harmony between parties, it seemed like a helpful exercise. Why is it that we are so divided? What values are so conflicting that they can create such dissension? Recent events have brought the two to mind again. I'm not going to give any space here to the massacre at Sandy Hook, because enough has been said and enough can never be said, and that's the way it is with tragedy. I am not ready to attempt to do justice to it. So, moving slightly through that, I was struck by how quickly people responded to the horror with a call to metaphorical arms against...w

Featured this morning in our church bulletin, a recent Advent poem of mine. Though the version for the service had one line adjustment for the sake of its context; this is the original. More often than not they arrived on foot,  like travelers come a long distance. Think of the three at which Sarah laughed. Think of the one standing in Balaam’s path. The shepherds, aghast at the one, then suddenly surrounded face to face with a host,  looked angels in the eyes. Scattered among the sheep— not suspended—stalking toward them purposefully  with peace to those on whom . The shepherds were not the first. All of Israel followed the angel to Canaan, and it was the angels who brought fire to Sodom. An angel alone led the ram to Abraham. And we haven’t yet mentioned the cherubim, divine dragons, guardians of the throne, strange beasts. This is the company the angels keep. The messengers say do not be afraid , and often lift men from prostrate prai

"What if—the basis of all story. The small child asks all the what ifs. All of life is a story, story unravelling and revealing meaning. Despite our inability to control circumstances, we are given the gift of being free to respond to them in our own way, creatively or destructively."

Grace Bonney over at DesignSponge posted Sugru's "Fixer's Manifesto" on the blog today. Which got me thinking about manifestos in general, and resolutions, especially as we're nearing a new year. The blurry weeks of late December and early January are when so many people make resolutions they fail to keep and (usually) fail to try to keep. But there's value in developing a set of guideposts for each season of your life, standards if you will, to help you develop yourself, your work, or your relationships in ways that are important to you. Bonney also linked to 99U's 5 Manifestos for Art, Life & Business , which include such notable resolvers as Steve Jobs, Leo Tolstoy, and Frank Lloyd Wright. All this is leading to the obvious questions: What is your manifesto? What are your resolutions? What is your set of standards for the season?

I've come across a few new musical experiences lately I thought I'd share. What with holidays and all, it's a good time to be introduced to new songs - and singers. Maggie Ritchie and I went to college together, but I'd buy her album Something Wonderful whether I knew her or not. I don't know the first thing about reviewing music, though, so I won't tell you much about it. Just sample the songs yourself and tell me what you think. Several musical people from my church put together an album of songs we sing a lot. Which is a lame introduction to a beautiful collection, Songs of Grace . If you like what you hear, the doors are open at 9:30 every Sunday.

Both—one at the oven in the square, one at the sawhorse— build from the warm earth, shaping with calloused hands. Joseph in the woodshop,  always a quiet man, now grave in upturned admiration, guides the hands of the boy  (the one who caused such a stir and set the town fathers talking and the unwise wives clucking) bearing the sharp blade over the wood. The boy says, ‘teach me,’ and the quiet father steps back in fear. The man has lost a finger in his day— and almost lost a hand. There was a Sabbath when the boy returned from the Rabbi (the unleavened bread sat cold in the corner). The father thought to ask the son for healing— it had been a helpful finger. But by the time the sun had set, the father had forgot the need— and though his faith  (hidden as it was on the edge of Nazareth) was firm and sure, he was a man of simple plans and could better bear the weight of a cedar branch than aspire to miracle. Not so with

I will definitely be visiting this every day.

God With Us:  Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas , edited by Gregory Wolfe God is in the Manger , by Dietrich Bonhoeffer Advent and Christmas Wisdom from Henri J.M. Nouwen Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World?  by Rick McKinley, Chris Seay, and Greg Holder Preparing for Jesus , by Walter Wangerin Jr. Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent , by Enuma Okoro

This coming Sunday marks the beginning of Advent. Every year I try to take Advent as seriously as possible, and every year that seems to look a little different. I'm posting a few resources here for the similarly serious. Please let me know if any of them are particularly helpful to you. Creighton University's Praying Advent 2012  (This has almost everything you could want in terms of understanding the schedule of the season and praying through it.) The Advent Conspiracy  (Please check this one out - and share it!) Grace Brethren Church of Long Beach sermons from 2011 (Advent series at the top) Catholic Scripture readings for each day of Advent If you know of any others that have been helpful to you, please send them my way. I'm also "curating" a list of some good music for Advent, so let me know if there's anything you appreciate out of the cacophony of the season. To finish us off, here's every other Advent post I've shared in the p

Thanksgiving is a strange holiday. We talk about being grateful, but the day seems devoted to gorging ourselves on more food than we need followed by shopping for as much stuff as we can get for as little money as possible. We complain about family, travel, and weight gain. What we do not do, it seems, is find ways to be grateful. I say "find ways to be," because gratitude ought to be an activity, not just a feeling. It's perhaps because we treat it like a feeling that it holds so little influence over us. I don't know. What I do know is that it is an opportunity to shed, however briefly, our sense of entitlement, our resentments over things we don't have, and to redefine what it is we want during this season. More things? Newer things? Better things? Or something more? Image from Dishing Having said this, I do want to mention that food traditions are among my favorite of all traditions. There's a comfort to the consistency of Thanksgiving. The troubl

It's election day; I voted and so should you. As I was walking out of the polling place earlier, I thought, "There, now I'm responsible for what comes next." I took another step and corrected myself. "I'd be just as responsible if I hadn't voted at all." I was also thinking about responsibility yesterday, but in a different context. I was thinking about the difference between The Vampire Diaries and Supernatural (bear with me). In TVD , whenever something horrible happens, Elena (the main character) does a lot of stupid things and carries a lot of unnecessary burdens because this or that trauma is somehow supposedly her fault. In Supernatural , Sam and Dean do a lot of stupid things too, but rarely from a sense of guilt. They act out of a sense of responsibility for one another and they live (or die) with the consequences. Take a guess which characters are more compelling. So today, after my little responsibility thoughts, I was driving b

via Design Crush , origins unknown

on all hallow’s eve when the spirits of saints rise with a whisper and a rap on your door, we gather, we children who are not afraid, we gather  to send them all home. we send them all home  with fire and song, we send them all home with dancing.

A week ago I went to an open mic night at a local coffeeshop with a friend of mine. She sang along with a dozen or more other performers for about three hours, and I listened. The mic was open for poetry as well - or "spoken word," as it's apparently called now - but I didn't have anything with me, and I wasn't really in the mood to get up on stage. Sometimes developing your creativity requires stepping back and listening. Setting aside the urge to be heard, and opening your own ears. This is why the most oft repeated rule for writers is "read more." Because you do not develop an ear or an eye for your own work if you do not exercise that same ear and eye with other people's works.  I learned a few things last week. First, that it's a good thing to cheer loudly for everyone, whether they were any good or not. At the very least, you are cheering on their bravery. Second, that imitation really is an excellent starting point for any work (t

1. Stop measuring your work by word or page count. Write until you've said something and said it well. 2. Study grammar in your spare time. Put down the Sunday morning crossword and start diagramming sentences. 3. Only steal ideas from the Greeks. 4. Write with a fine pen on beautiful paper. Your words will be better. Guaranteed. 5. Don't sacrifice good storytelling for accuracy. Unless you're writing non-fiction, of course. 6. There are few books ( The Idiot , the Bible) that can get away with a protagonist who has no flaws. Your book probably isn't one of them. 7. There is no substitute for reading a good book. If you write but do not read, you're doing something wrong. 8. Be nice to people. 9. If everyone followed the rule "write what you know," our libraries would be very small indeed. 10. Every writer starts with people-watching. 11. Be careful pulling stories from your past. You may begin to confuse your memories with your manusc

Vaguely considering compiling Advent-related poetry here as we approach that season. Thoughts?

Designed  by Tim Easley .

Here's a slight derivation from the norm... I've been thinking lately what a pity it is that caring for the environment is so often associated with political inclination. There's nothing inherently politically liberal about wanting nature to be right and healthy, yet we frequently assume there's some necessary connection between preferring big government and collecting reusable shopping bags. I prefer small government because I love communities. And I believe that change begins on a local level, because you have to change a culture to change behavior. Also, I'm stubborn. I'd rather my neighbor and I partnered together to clean the streets than have someone in a city on the other side of the country telling me I have to. The danger for me is in assuming that because I prefer small government, I shouldn't care for all the causes the big government people care about. Saving the whales and lowering carbon emissions isn't actually just for democrats.

" To be a faithful writer is to contend with so many forces tugging on our fidelities. We can be faithful to experience, to language, to communities, to audiences, to the self, to forms, to traditions, to innovation, to family, to moral, political or spiritual convictions. But more often than we'd like, we cannot keep all these faiths at once." - by David Wright, from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Creative Writing Classroom , for Poet's Quarterly  

An excerpt from an excerpt : " To me it seems that at these moments, which are characterised by the sudden lifting of the burden of anxiety and fear which presses upon our daily life so steadily that we are unaware of it, what happens is something  negative : that is to say, not ‘inspiration’ as we commonly think of it, but the breaking down of strong habitual barriers — which tend to re-form very quickly. Some obstruction is momentarily whisked away. The accompanying feeling is less like what we know as positive pleasure, than a sudden relief from an intolerable burden." T. S. Eliot, from The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism , cited in Anatomy of Inspiration

Infographic by Sarah Tolzmann based on Swiss Miss talks at Alt NY

A few posts ago, I wrote that the one project both the creative person and the person of faith is involved in is the ministry of reconciliation. It's worth it to revisit the origin of that phrase. It comes from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians . He writes: Therefore, if anyone is  in Christ, he is  a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.   All this is from God,  who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us  the ministry of reconciliation;   that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,  not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us  the message of reconciliation. The words here recall the story of Eden, when God looked at all he had made and said "It is good." The creation story* is a narrative of drawing order out of chaos. "The earth was without form and void." But from this nothing came every living thing. The nothing did not make something. The Spirit of God made some

It was Louis Pasteur who famously said, "Chance favours only the prepared mind." I've been thinking of that recently. This past Saturday, I moderated a panel discussion on screenwriting and novel writing at Stan Lee's Comikaze . Vanessa Fewings and Mark Wheaton were on the panel, both with distinct perspectives based on significant experience in both camps of writing. One of the audience members asked about breaking in to the industry, a question which every hopeful screenwriter who doesn't have an "in" with Hollywood is desperate to hear an answer to. Mark's answer was not necessarily encouraging, but it was certainly a call to arms. Basically, he said to write, write more, and keep writing. The more material you have across a variety of fronts, the more prepared you are when an opportunity arises. I was reminded of this again when watching the Paley Center's Vampire Diaries panel from this year. Don't judge! It was playing in the bac

This fall I'll be hosting a reading group through my church in which we go through through the books of the New Testament using an edition from Community Bible Experience . There's nothing sneaky about the edition; it's NIV. But the books are arranged in a unique reading order, and the chapter and verse markings are removed. Obviously since this is something we're starting at the end of the month, I don't have anything specific to say about the reading itself. But the concept is a good reminder that some things we've grown very accustomed to occasionally require a fresh look. We don't need to make them new - there's nothing wrong with familiarity. But to readjust our vision, to remind ourselves that our perspective has been limited by any number of factors - that's important. I hope that the premise of "a fresh look" doesn't inspire everyone to throw out their knowledge and experience. But there should be a way to acknowledge tha

This past week my lovely company launched a brand new children's book, Escape from Hat , by Adam Kline. The book is scattered with illustrations from Brian Taylor, some in color and some in black and white. The book tells the story of a brave rabbit, Leek, who is determined to do whatever it takes to return to his boy, Cecil. Aided by a warrior she-rabbit, Morel, the pair travel through a perilous land without a sun, a place replete with monsters, dimmer-dammers, and the rabbits' arch-enemies - the black cats. I love all of ZOVA's book releases equally, but some involve a more unique vision than others. Escape from Hat is not like other books. It's incredibly hard to categorize, being most accurately described as a "fanciful epic." It stands on its own in a number of ways, not least for the artistry of its words, the strange fusion of its language and illustrations, and the tongue-in-cheek allusions peppered throughout the text. You may have noticed

While watching "Dead Enders" on Friday, I was reminded of something Jonathan Rhys Meyers said of his Tudors co-star Natalie Dormer. He said that more than any other actor he'd worked with, she knew how to use her whole body in a performance. I mentioned before that one thing I was struck by in watching the play was the investment stage actors have in every movement of their performance. They are aware of their slightest motion. Everything is intentional. No part of my work or play requires this. I am not an actor, dancer, or mime. But I can see a different reason why it would be helpful to practice such intentionality. The body is often referred to as an instrument. This is not a flippant acknowledgement of the difference between your head and your hands. Instruments are meant to be used. And if there is one project that the creative person and the person of faith is perpetually engaged in, it is the ministry of reconciliation. I'll talk about that more late

Last night, I saw " Dead Enders " (also titled "Orphans") at the Hudson Theatres in Hollywood. I brought my journal, a pen, my smartphone (which I tried not to use much), money for parking and a beverage at  intermission , lip gloss, and sunglasses that I didn't need (the play was at 8PM).   I arrived early, which is unusual for me, and sat by myself on the edge of the audience, a position which quickly became metaphoric for my feelings about the audience in general. "Dead Enders" stars three amazing actors: Michael Connors (who also directed), Jesse Allis, and Beau Mirchoff . Since most audience members came to see the latter, they were comprised almost exclusively of teenage girls. I felt old, and in feeling old, also felt a little creepy.  The performance began with the stage manager reading the audience instructions about turning off our cell phones during the performance. She read these instructions straight from her iPhone, and I did not

One of the things Julia Cameron advocates in The Artist's Way is weekly artist dates. These are one to two hour excursions with your inner artist to do or see something creative or inspiring. I tend to roll my eyes at talk of an inner anything. So rather than talk about my inner artist, I'll talk about my creative self. Ideally, the creative self would be the same as the regular self. The one that washes the dishes and puts gas in the car should still be the creative self, because even - and perhaps especially - in these mundane things, the creative mind should be at work. Of course, this is hardly ever the case. We tend to move through the mundane world on autopilot, and it often takes a very intentional transition to shift from that frame of mind to one of creative vision. The goal of the creative excursion (like "inner artist," I'm also not a fan of the term "artist date" - but feel free to call them whatever you like) is to make it a regular ha

I promised at the beginning of the summer that I'd write about Bob Goff's darling book Love Does . I finished it a while ago, but I'm not sure that I want to say much about its content. The purpose of the book is to encourage and inspire you to live more fully, and it works toward that purpose by telling stories of Bob Goff's own life doing exactly that. The title says a lot, reminding us that love is more than an ideal or a feeling, but an epic motivator. The book provides countless reasons to love humanity, and countless inspirations to turn that love into action. I'd say more, but the stories speak for themselves, and they are worth sitting in for a while. Each chapter tells its own story, and you could - if you felt like it - hop haphazardly between chapters, sampling whatever you have time for. I called the book "darling" a moment ago, not to be dismissive of its significance (and there are moments of great significance within), but because readin

At the spontaneous suggestion of a dear friend, I've started haphazardly going through Julia Cameron's "creative counseling" program (my own term), The Artist's Way . If anyone else feels like joining me in the venture, the book's on Amazon and in most libraries. I'd seen it before, sitting on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, and considered going through it. But the vague spirituality in the book's premise made me go squinty-eyed, and it took the aforementioned friendly suggestion for me to remember my first moment of curiosity and take the plunge. I say I'm going through it haphazardly, because I'm not remotely faithful to the most basic dictates of the program. I generally journal pretty regularly, but turning what's always been a natural impulse into a daily and regulated practice hasn't worked out as precisely as I'd hoped. If I look at my journal, though, I can see that I've written much more frequently, meaningfully, and

This article has got me wondering - how many people who should be keeping journals are keeping blogs instead. And how that might be unhelpful to them. Thoughts?

People have been making a great deal of Republican VP nominee, Paul Ryan's favorite book choice, Atlas Shrugged . Which is understandable, given that it's a political book with such a wide influence that no one bothers to actually read it (myself included). A few moments ago, I read a brief article/post asserting that Ryan now claims his favorite author is Thomas Aquinas, as though trying to cover up the highly controversial Ayn Rand business. I understand that a politician claiming a political book as a favorite is a certain statement about his own political persuasions. I get that. But I'd like to point out that if someone asked me who my favorite author was, I'd likely say "Dostoevsky," and I'd mean it. But if you asked me what book I have read more often than any other, it would probably be Cynthia Voigt's On Fortune's Wheel . Which, considering what that whole series has to say about magic, fantasy, and cultural narratives of belief, would b

Here are some photos of recent kitchen experiments, replete with links to the original recipes. All but one, I found on Pinterest over the course of the last few years, and have waited till now to attempt them. The board features many prettier pictures of future cooking attempts for you to explore. Rustic Plum Tart Brown Sugar Cookies with Browned Butter Glaze Spaghetti with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Chili Peppers Lemon and Sage Chicken Leek and Parmesan Risotto Lemon Spaghetti Cream Cheese Chocolate Cookie