Paul Mariani on writing and faith

Last October, Paul Mariani, a professor at Boston College and one of the founding faculty members of the SPU MFA program, presented on the topic “But Who Is That Other One Who Walks Beside You?” as part of Boston College’s Church21 Center’s “The Art of Believing” series.

You can view the webcast by going to the center's webcast page. Scroll down to the search box and search for “Mariani.” Alternatively, click here to download webcast directly to Real Player.

From the program’s promotional copy: "But Who is That Other One Who Walks There Beside You?" is a paraphrase from TS Eliot's Wasteland. How can and does the experience of the written word interact with faith? How does the creative act of writing strengthen or express faith? How can and does the experience of actively 'receiving' art strengthen, challenge, or move to faith? Professor Paul Mariani, BC University Professor of English, will speak of the poets and poetry that have influenced his believing heart and mind, and comment on how writing has affected his faith. Professor Mariani has published over 200 essays and reviews and is the author of sixteen books, including five biographies and six volumes of poetry: Timing Devices, Crossing Cocytus, Prime Mover, Salvage Operations: New and Selected, The Great Wheel, and Death & Transfigurations: Poems. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts, and two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships. In 2009 he received the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. He has lectured and read from his own work across the United States, Canada, and Europe. This event is part of C21's 'The Art of Believing,' celebrating how the arts can express and strengthen faith."

On a personal note, I think Mariani is a truly great man.

Scott Cairns on Suffering

Scott Cairns' most recent book,The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, is included in Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2009. I haven't read it yet, although a new clean copy is near me, waiting. Several years ago I heard him speak on this topic in a keynote address at the Glen Workshop and have never forgotten his call within that address that we not waste our suffering. The video below is of Cairns reading from his book during an event at Wabash College commemorating 9/11.

Light for cold

This morning started out at four below zero. I'm not sure what it is now but my quick stroll outside a few moments ago suggests the mercury hasn't risen much. Compensation for the cold is light. The coldest days are the brightest.

A book with two stories

Stories behind stories are always fascinating, including stories behind how stories are written. On a trip last month, I took along Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky for my plane reading. I'd bought it earlier this summer knowing nothing about it (or its author) other than a friend loved it, but I hadn't opened it yet. I didn't like the cover as it looked like a movie set. Books with covers from the movie based on the book somehow seem like not the real thing and just a passing current fad and so there is a barrier to the opening. I was wrong about this book, however. Not only is it not a movie (at least I don't think it is), it was written over 60 years ago. That's where the story behind the story comes in. You can read about it in the book's supplementary material, which contains not only extensive introductory material, but also excerpts from Némirovsky's journal, where she wrote her thoughts about crafting this book, as well as related correspondence, all of which are as captivating as the book's created story set in France during World War II.

The book was handwritten in tiny script in a notebook in occupied Paris. Némirovsky, already a successful French novelist, would retreat to the nearby woods to sit on the ground, on her jacket, and write.  She was eventually taken to a concentration camp where she was killed. Her daughters took the notebook when they fled Paris. Decades later, one of her daughters used a magnifying glass to transcribe what they thought was simply a journal and found it contained a book comprised of two novellas. I love this back story, and I loved the book.

You can read the first chapter here.

Community generosity

Over the years I've taken a good number of community education classes. If I include church adult education classes the number would significantly increase. My husband and I learned how to buy our first house from a 6-week class taught by a local realtor named Mae. We almost learned to ballroom dance. I've learned about computers and writing and knitting.

Here's what I'm continually amazed by: the generosity of the teachers. They stand in front of a group of students whose only qualification to be there is that they paid money (or not) and showed up. The teacher has no guarantee that anyone in the group will make them proud someday by applying what they taught. There is no worthiness threshold to prove you deserve to receive the teacher's hard-won knowledge and instruction.

This was again my experience this weekend. I took a class at The Loft, an incredible literary center that has been in Minneapolis for 35 years. Mary Carroll Moore was the teacher, and she poured out what she knew, which was a lot, for the 30 or so of us that paid our money and showed up.

Parents as people

There's a website called "My Parents Were Awesome." No words, only pictures. People send in photos of their parents, separately or together, when they were young. The photos are posted with only the subjects' first names. The cumulative poignancy is amazing and terribly moving. Every parent could be a movie star or a teen idol or a heartbreaker, or the smartest or most popular kid on the block. Parents are dating and in love, courting even. They are people, not parents. If one of my sons were to send in a picture I'd like them to send the one of their father at 17 or 18--long wavy hair, jeans--sitting alone on the low porch of an old abandoned farmhouse, his feet sunk into the overgrown field of a lawn.

Free juice and cookies

They give you free juice and cookies. There’s a choice of apple, orange, or cranberry-apple. There’s a choice of Lorna Doones, Fig Newtons, or Oreos. Peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies--bakery-style--are in a large Tupperware. You can choose multiple varieties of tea and coffee with flavorings from a little machine that makes it one cup at a time. The people around are all smiles and warm hellos. All this in exchange for 500 mL of blood.

After donating blood only occasionally for a number of years, I decided last fall to make it more regular. Life as we knew it seemed to be falling apart according to the evening news, economically speaking first and foremost, but you know how that trickle-down-and-around effect works. I decided that not ignoring the blood bank next time it called but to instead pick up the phone and schedule an appointment and do it again 56 days later was a positive act of citizenry. I couldn’t save Goldman Sachs, but I maybe could help save a child. I’ve tried to donate regularly since then but unintentionally skipped one or two intervals. I was there again last week.

I find myself collecting--maybe latching on to--images of hospitality. Maybe that’s because I was raised by a mother who made hospitality---not in an entertainment sense, but the welcoming sense--an art form. The basis of the television show Cheers stands out as an image of hospitality. Flaws and all, the bar’s patrons have a place and “everyone knows your name.” The blood bank is another image of hospitality. I was 40 years old when I gave blood for the first time. I had worked in hospital labs for years where blood--not donated in bags but drawn into test tubes--was our stock and trade, and I had a growing sense of guilt over not contributing my own to this system of caring for the sick that employed me. I confessed this to the phlebotomist at that first donation. “I’m feeling guilty because I’m 40 years old and this is the first time I’ve ever given blood,” I said. She smiled, touched my arm, and said, “All that matters is that you’re here now.”