Live Blogging from WriteAngles24

Just a very brief post from the WriteAngles writers' conference on the Mt. Holyoke campus in South Hadley, MA. Panels are a good balance between marketplace and craft and I have already run across one speaker (Bob Flaherty) whose work I simply have to check out. Really glad I was able to attend this year.

http://www.writeanglesconference.org

Civility: The Next Big Thing?

"Civility and conformity are not the same thing. Civility is what makes genuine diversity possible."

With all the talk about Kanye West and Joe Wilson this week, and the emergence of civility as a public aspiration, I thought I would exhume an article I wrote for Charlotte Magazine this past spring...

"Red State Refugee"

Some of it already reads as dated (did they even have the Internet six months ago?) but some of it is still kind of relevant. Even if civility was not the apparent buzzword of the week, the concept has a lot to do with why I got started writing this book, way back when.

One of the reasons I find the South so intriguing is that it actually contains, within a few hundred square miles, more extreme viewpoints than the rest of the country put together. Maybe that's why good manners are so prized. Of course there are exceptions (Wilson's "outburst" among them) but by and large, people try to get along.

Also, you never know who might be carrying a concealed weapon...

Where I'm At

Ok, so this isn't a real blog post.

It's more sort of a placeholder blog post...

I've actually had several ideas for things I have wanted to write about about over the last few months (everything from the Jon and Kate fiasco to Karen Armstrong's excellent memoir about her life as an ex-nun, The Spiral Staircase) but I simply have not had the time.

The reason is that my web design business has been keeping me quite busy -- which is a very good thing! In a few more months, I hope to be able to again take time to focus on revising and rewriting Southern Cross. But aside from work constraints, I think it's a good thing for me to take some time before returning to the project. I moved to Massachusetts from North Carolina a year ago, and my life has been in transition for the better part of two years. The dust is only just now beginning to settle -- from the move, from the divorce, from the economic downturn, from a serious illness, from everything else.

When I tried revising the book this spring, it was simply too early. It felt raw and painful. More importantly, I didn't know yet what I wanted to say. I am closer now, but not all the way there.

I will get, there, though -- I am too dang stubborn to give up. In the meantime, please email me if you would like to read a copy of the manuscript -- I welcome feedback and would post the whole thing up on the Internet if that didn't put my copyright in danger.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog for your encouragement, comments, and support.

Mother's Day and Star Trek

I was going to write something like a standard Mother's Day post, maybe with a few references to the Divine Feminine thrown in.

But then I went to see Star Trek on Friday night. Where is the connection, you may ask?

Now, the movie is stacking up so much critical acclaim you would think it was a Bollywood-crossover hit in Oscar season, and I won't deny Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are easy on the eyes. But that's not what caught my attention about the movie...


** SPOILER ALERT **














What really struck me was the central role that birth, mothers, and motherhood played in the movie. Just think about the opening sequence, where Jim Kirk's mother gives birth in a shuttle, under attack from enemy spacecraft -- when was the last time you saw that in a science fiction blockbuster?

Amanda Grayson, Spock's doomed mother (played by Winona Ryder) gets mega screentime. Via flashback, we even see the pregnant wife of the villainous Romulan spaceship captain.

Birth and pregnancy are common motifs for director J.J. Abrams, as anyone knows who has even casually followed the television show Lost. He must be aware that these are themes with immense emotional resonance, that have been largely ignored by traditional male modes of storytelling.

A small number of action films, such as the Terminator and Kill Bill movies, feature mothers as lead role ass-kickers. But I cannot think of another action movie where protecting or avenging the hero's mother is important to the plot. Compare to Inigo ("You killed my father") Montoya in the Princess Bride, not to mention the genre's other sacred text -- I mean, really, how can Luke go through nearly two entire Star Wars movies all hot and bothered about Darth Vader killing his father without it occuring to him that he killed his mother too? Adding insult to injury, the only dialogue about Luke's mother gets relegated to a scene in the third movie, in the sucky Ewok Village, of all places.

By contrast, in the current Star Trek movie, Spock's relationship with his mother is the emotional core of his character, at least as much so as his nascent friendship with Kirk. Spock only loses control of his emotions when his human mother is involved -- from schoolyard taunts to the anger and grief he finds impossible to contain after her death. By the end of the movie, Spock argues for leaving a defeated foe to die, rather than rescue him. His emotions have propelled him from cool Vulcan logic almost to a Romulan code of vengeance.

Could we finally be at a point in time where our storytellers value mothers as much as fathers? If so, that time has arrived not a moment too soon. The way in which the current Star Trek feature conflates the death of Spock's mother with the catastrophic implosion of her adopted planet is surely not accidental.

Tiamat was murdered. Eve was framed.

If we can conceive of a new and different set of myths, then perhaps our planet has a fighting chance to survive.

Postscript: Mad props to my mother and grandma and all the other amazing moms I know (including my friend Crystal, with whom I saw the movie) -- you carry out a truly heroic mission every day with courage, perseverance, love, and grace.

Happy Easter from an Egg Thief

Ok... so Easter Sunday 2009 didn't get off to such a great start.

I was just getting ready to go to church when a neighbor came up and knocked on my door to tell me that my dog had pulled her trolley loose. The hook had held for eight months, screwed into my back door frame, and it had to come loose today. Still have no idea how I'm going to fix it.

Luckily, my dog was ok, so after giving her a brief walk, I drove over to St. James Episcopal Church in Greenfield. After I parked my car, I saw a grey-haired woman with a cane walking toward me on the sidewalk. In the true Easter spirit of things, I decided to smile and wish her a hearty "Good morning!"

She gave me the finger.

Not deterred, oozing with Christian charity, I tried talking to her a second time. "I hope your day gets better from here."

"Piss off!" she yelled, flipping me the dirty bird once more.

I don't think she was headed to church anywhere. I imagined her frustrated with all the smug, smiling families going to church in their Easter hats and dresses. Come to think of it, I could empathize. Still never know quite which side I'm on.

A few steps later, I found a painted egg on the ground in front of somebody's house. It was a blown egg, meaning that the insides had been sucked out and it would last indefinitely. I didn't see any more like it, and concluded it must have been dropped or overlooked in an earlier egg hunt. I liked it for its colors (different from the normal Easter pastels) and the way that the blowhole resembled a tiny eye. I suppose the proper thing would have been to let it lie where it was, or else give it to some cute child after the service, but that's not what I did.

Morality and religion, these are open to debate. Beauty is worth stealing when you find it.

Not Knowing

It is one of the oldest stories we have.

The man rides in to the city, triumphant, greeted by adoring throngs. A few days later those same crowds turn on him, prompted by an elite who do not wish the current order disturbed. Things go badly. The man is captured. His followers disburse. He is mocked and tortured. He dies in agony and shame.

This is the part where I am supposed to skip to the Easter Narrative and talk about the promise of resurrection--how life follows death, joy follows sorrow.

Except that we're not there yet. I would rather spend a little more time where we are right now, today, on Good Friday.

Who exactly did Jesus think he was? How did he conceive his mission? It's an interesting question, whether you are talking about the historical person, the literary character, or the religious symbol. Whether he saw himself primarily as military messiah, social reformer, or divine savior, he must have had doubts along the way. In those final hours, did he wonder whether he had deluded himself? Whether his death had any meaning or purpose, after all?

"Eloi, Eloi, lema sabacthani?" "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34)

These are the dying words of Jesus on the cross. These are words of hurt and confusion. These are the words of someone abandoned by the very same God to whom he has given everything. This would feel like betrayal--an even worse betrayal than the famous kiss of Judas.

God must have a place for those of us who doubt, who feel used and betrayed, who cry out to the heavens in anger, bewilderment, and pain. After all, at the very end, Jesus himself was one of us.

On Being Tagged as the "Good Little Church Girl"

By now, if you have any kind of Facebook presence at all, you have probably seen a certain cartoon photo album making the rounds: you can tag it to show which of your friends is "The Grumpy One," "The Jock," "The Drama Queen," etc. (It's about time. All those "15 Things About Me" spinoffs were getting kind of old...)


A few days ago, I got tagged as "The Good Little Church Girl. " I think this was a joke. (Hi Rachael!) But it did get me thinking. A lot of people have made certain assumptions based on the fact that I was writing this book--like, that I would be shocked by the use of profanity or (far more disturbing) that I blandly approved and endorsed all forms and functions of institutional Christianity. This amused me, at first, but like all stereotypes, it wears a little thin.

I could try to lose the Good Girl rep by talking about my tattoos, my leather miniskirt, or the albums I have by Fugazi and the Sex Pistols. Except that nothing is sadder than Christian bloggers trying to prove that they are "hip," "edgy," and "relevant." (Just be yourselves, ok? Somebody's gonna like you...) Plus, somebody might confuse me with the Barlow Girls:


Revolution is not to be confused with its trappings. Rock n' roll is the health of the state.

Here's the thing about religion. It's not nearly as safe as people think it is.

For the most part, religious institutions prop up the existing social order, but its ideas have the latent power to transform (or destroy) that same social order.

Take Jesus, for instance. He was executed because he represented a threat to the status quo of first century Palestine. Re-read the Sermon on the Mount and you may begin to get a sense of why. Flash forward to Joan of Arc, George Fox, John Brown, or Martin Luther King Jr. All were able to move and mobilize for social change, precisely because they stood for something more than the existing social, economic, and military power structures of their time.

We don't have to talk about exclusively Christian movements, either. Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, anyone?

We don't even have to talk about movements whose politics or principles I agree with. The Ayatollah Khomeini was one heck of a revolutionary. At least initially, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran had huge popular support.

Religion is dangerous. For this good little church girl, that may be part of the appeal.