Meeting God for the First Time . . .

I was five, and had spoken rudely to my mother when she scolded me.  Cora was there that day, and was ready to pounce.  “Don’t you speak to your mama like that!  You better tell God you’re sorry. .  . Go on.  Now.  Tell God.”

I wasn’t sure how to go about making such an apology.  My parents had not explained much to me about God, even though they were Southern Baptists!  I went outside, looked at the sky, figuring God must be up there somewhere, and saw a cloud shaded with darkness.  Maybe that was God frowning at me?  I scuffed my feet in the Arkansas dirt for awhile, and then looked up quickly.  “I . . . I’m sorry,” I said as fast as I could, and ran inside.  It was a strange encounter with God, only later to be more carefully defined.

Theologians might put that incident under the rubric of “Repentance.”  My unschooled mind would not have defined the moment as anything but a way to say “I’m sorry.”  It must have been significant for me, however, because 74 years later I still remember it.  I’ve even used it as a sermon illustration at times, but the major actor in the scene turned out to be Cora, not me.  I credit her as the one who introduced me to God, even though it was to the God Who Judges.

Not long after that, my next-door neighbors, the Catholic twin sisters three years older than I, attending parochial school, informed me that the trees and all that was in our back yard belonged to God.  Thus I learned of God the Creator.  For several days after that, I wandered through the yard pointing to each thing: “This is God’s tree; this is God’s bush; this is God’s grass; this is God’s dirt.”  I was becoming a theologian.

My next encounter with God was when I entered first grade.  Miss Briggs, our teacher, began each day with a story from a book of Bible stories for children.  One day she read about Samuel’s call in the Temple. Samuel, a little boy, was awakened one night by repeatedly hearing his named called.  Thinking it was the old priest Eli, the one he was apprenticed to, he would run to answer.  Finally, Eli told him it must be God, and to answer with “Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.”  When Samuel heard the call in the night again, he answered as he had been instructed, and received God’s call to him and the message of what he was to do in response.

That afternoon I was again in my favorite spot, the back yard, when I heard ever so softly, “Jean! Jean!”  I answered with the words Samuel had used in the Temple, but finally realized the sound was only a breeze through the trees.  Again, however, I heard, “Jean! Jean!”  and  answered, “Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.”  But this time it was the sound of a truck in the distance.  Once more came the voice, “Jean! Jean!”  and my answer was again that of Samuel’s.  I then discovered it was the swish of small branches rubbing against each other.  Thus ended my Divine calling for that time.

It was 37 years later that the actual call came to me, not as a voice speaking my name, but through an inner sense, and this time I recognized it as valid. I answered by enrolling in divinity school.  Since then my journey has been in response to what I understood was God’s message to me.  It may not have come to me at all.  But it was why I continued believing in what I was doing, and in some manner keep on doing but in new contexts. 

I sometimes ask myself, (but no one else), if God still calls in the middle of the night, or while I shuffle and glance upward toward the dark clouds.  The answer does not come.  I’m no longer five years old, but now I continue life acting as though I know I’m under a call, even though it may be a fantasy.  It’s better than the paths I did not take.

In his sermon titled “The Calling of Voices,” Frederick Buechner says, “You hide your face in the little padded temple of your hands, and a voice says, ‘Whom shall I send into the pain of a world where people die?’  And if you are not careful, you may find yourself answering, ‘Send me.’  You may hear the voice say, ‘Go.’”  Just go.

And so I did.

 

What I’ve Learned about Writing and Other Stuff

Now that I’m just a year short of my 80’s, it’s a good time to reflect on what has been an important part of my life for close to 78 years: stories.  My first recollection of stories goes back to sitting in my mother’s lap as she told me about the Little Red Hen, Lambikins, and others.  Summertime in Hot Springs, Arkansas and the sound of cicadas and the sweet smell of  mimosas, the day dimming into night on the front porch, and the rocker where my mother held me, all blend into indelible memory and the beginning of my love for stories. 

I loved books because of the mysteries inside them.  Before I was able to read, I would thumb through my picture books, making up stories about what I saw there, some of it remembered from what my brothers and parents had read to me, some from my own inventions.  The mystery of those letters of the alphabet that told of so many wonders thrilled me and I have searched the mysteries ever since.  By the time I was able to read and write, the stories became my own as I developed plots and rhymes and people to inhabit them.  I learned about writing because I wrote.

Eventually poems began to join the stories I developed, and my deeper life became that of writer regardless of what my outer life was experiencing.  My first published piece was an essay in a magazine for high school girls.  Added to that was a prize for an essay about peace in a national high school publication.  My career was on the brink of being launched.  A ninth grade assignment was to report on a lifetime career that we were interested in, the values of such endeavors, the requirements for entering that career, and reasons for wanting to take that road.  I chose to report on being a free-lance writer.  No one else in my class had any such interest.  My playwright uncle was willing to give me pointers for the project, and somewhere in a trunk is that completed assignment.

In college I wrote for two magazines and the student newspaper, serving as editor of the paper my senior year.  I was certain my future was clear.  In a file cabinet stored in our garage are folders containing everything I’ve written since I was 12.  The files bulge as I added more and more.  I began submitting articles to magazines.  I wrote my first novel.  These were conceived as I was also conceiving four children, so it was a productive era for me, at least in offspring.  The writing, however, seemed to offer up nothing but rejection slips.

I then turned to poetry almost exclusively and had some success in contests and publication, but nothing spectacular.  A poetry group provided critiques for me so that I learned more and gained some skills in that field.  But no grand break-throughs as a recognized poet.  I did gain more knowledge as I began to be part of various poetry groups and programs.  These experiences were to serve me well many years later when I returned to that genre.

My first professional venture outside the home was in teaching English, finally attaining a master’s degree in that field, which was to be a great help for future endeavors and helped me hone my own writing skills.  In my 40’s, I answered a call to the ministry, and I was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. The bulk of my writing then consisted of sermons, newsletters, and letters to the editor of nearby newspapers.  I learned during those years that to be a dedicated writer was not possible while working full time in another field, and so the literary efforts were put aside for the most part, although I continued my letters to editors.  These were to get me into trouble at times with church folks, but I continued to express my concerns for peace and justice in public venues.

It all began to come together after my retirement.  Computers were available—a great aid to my writing, helping me keep track of my efforts.  By this time I was also able to draw upon what I had learned through my experience in ministry and enrich stories and poems with new insights.

That experience led to publishing books, both as self-published with lulu.com, and through an independent publisher, All Things That Matter Press.  In the process of publishing book-length works my education broadened rapidly, as I accumulated many new insights into what is required in publishing for general readerships.  

In a nutshell then, here’s what I have learned about writing and the little I might add about being published.  It doesn’t vary a great deal from what other writers have also learned, but it took me a bit longer to figure out all the corners and twists to this adventure with words.

1)      Authors, like actors and legislators, don’t find success overnight.  Stardom is achieved through hard and constant work at our craft.  A first draft isn’t worth much.  It requires revision after revision.  This blog has been revised many times, re-writing sentences and getting rid of sentences and paragraphs.  Unlike sculptors in marble, our first cuts can be redeemed and polished until we have something worth sharing with the public, or at least with a few others.

2)      There is a gold nugget in what we have conceived, but we must mine the words and hone our language until it is visible.  We do have a gem somewhere in that pile of lines and paragraphs, but we must persevere to uncover it.  Don’t give up before you have completed the task of developing your piece.  It may not be a masterpiece for the ages, but it is your creation and deserves its proper editing to become what you envisioned.

Our human nature seeks a story.  We learn through stories and we teach through stories, if we are wise.  We also know when we have read or heard a good story that does not cheat us by leaving out important details, or swamp us with unnecessary details.  A poem can tell a story just as prose writing can, but in a different way.  We seek to know who we are and why we do as we do.  Good stories will lend light to that search.

As for publication, the countless ways in which that can take place is more than I will enumerate here, other than to note the categories.  Of course traditional publishing by a corporate publisher continues to be possible.  New opportunities, however, exist.  One can self-publish through a choice of these methods.  I have done so through lulu.com.  There is also online publishing known as “e-books” as well as various magazine publications.  My choice is to be published through an independent publisher, such as the one I have found:  All Things That Matter Press.  It is located in Maine, and takes on both established and new authors.  My book on the experiences of children during World War II is with ATTMP, and another one, about rescued animals, will be coming out with them soon.  The authors are encouraged to promote one another’s books, and we have an active community doing just that.  I have learned much about the opportunities for publishing my own work through the experiences of others in our ATTMP group, as well as simply browsing the internet to see what might be of help.

The best part of writing, I have learned, is the satisfaction of seeing your hard work, created by persistence, at last in print.  Not all that is published is of Pulitzer quality, but it is our own work and we have proved to ourselves that we need no longer simply to tell friends that we are “writing a book,” that never seems to be finished.   My advice to anyone who has something to share with others from your research and creativity is Go For It!

Remember

A recent issue of Poetry magazine contains an essay by Mary Ruefle titled, “I Remember, I Remember.”   The title is from a poem by the poet Thomas Hood, who begins his poem with “I remember, I remember,/The house where I was born.”  Hood, a contemporary of Keats but of lesser fame, was one of my favorite poets, as was this particular poem.  Ruefle uses those opening words as a prompt for the long list of her own memories, each one using Hood’s words to begin a memory.

Through many pages, she chronicles her life in memories rather than dates, although they seem to run chronologically.  She refers to numerous poets who influenced her, some whom she heard read and others she found on the written page.  One comment struck me, when she remembers the “single, simple reason” that she became a poet: “I liked making similes for the moon.”  My own reason for my early poems had more to do with the boys I loved while in high school than something so ethereal as poems about the moon.  It was only in the past year that I wrote my own moon poem, which had nothing to do with romance.

What would you write, if you began each paragraph with “I remember . . .”?  As I thought about trying it for myself, the memories so quickly flooded into me that I was too swamped to decide just where to begin.  Instead, I just let each one settle in my thoughts and then move on out so that the next one could enter.  Do you remember your first grade teacher?  Mine was Miss Briggs.  Two years later, my mother, brother and I were back in Hot Springs, AR, after having to leave Honolulu following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  I was in third grade then, and to my joy, Miss Briggs had in the interim since 1939 been promoted to third grade also.  She had me visit other classrooms to tell of what it was like to be in Hawaii at the beginning of that war. 

I remember what my high school years were like when we lived at Ft. Lewis, WA.  My father had been assigned to Madigan General Hospital as a pathologist.  We “Army brats” were shuttled back and forth to high school ten miles away, and formed a kind of community of commuters during those years.  When our 50^th class reunion took place in 2001, a few days following the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11, several of us thought of visiting Ft. Lewis for old times’ sake, but the heavy security at that time prevented our doing so.

Other memories are fed by our family photo albums: our wedding, the birth of our four children and their accomplishments over the years, beach and lake vacations with family and friends, our many pets who were very much a part of our family, and trips we took.  I remember, I remember, all the joyful times, the times of grief and loss, the moves from one house to another and the changing neighborhoods.  Charlie and I began as a family in Bremerhaven, Germany, and have since visited our old stomping grounds.  The return jolted our memories, for so much had changed in the intervening 50 years.

During the years, our careers changed, the children grew up with their own memories of family, and we remembered former homes as places we could not find again in the same way as they had been for us.  We learned that even though we cannot go home again, home is still there in our memories, embellished perhaps by what never really happened, or the way rooms did not really look, but they are what we remember.

What are your memories?  How would you list them, beginning as Mary Ruefle did, and Thomas Hood did in his day, with “I remember, I remember . . . .”  Take your time.  They will all come flooding back, the difficult memories, the good memories, all of them.  They are yours forever.

The Language of Trees

I have loved trees since I was old enough to swing from a branch, or sit under their shade, or climb them.  Finally I completed my collection of poems about trees, which are published through Lulu.com, complete with color photos.  I include two excerpts here to give readers a glimpse of what is in the collection.  First is my foreword and then a picture and poem from the season of summer, for a quick snapshot.  The book itself can be found on www.lulu.com and will soon also be available on www.amazon.com and some other sites.

       

Prologue

            There is no better time to study trees than now.  Trees live in the moment, drawing upon the earth for sustenance, from the air, from the sun, from the rain.  I have always loved trees.  As a child, I sized up every tree in sight on the basis of whether it was a good “climbing tree” or not.  When we lived in Honolulu, I loved to play on and under those wonderful Banyan trees.  They constituted a playground in themselves, touched by mystery and nurture.

            My life has always sought the solace of trees:  a hideaway where I could read without interference, a place for a swing, the shade from a Southern summer sun, the scattering of fruits, pecans, walnuts and chestnuts out of their abundance, the statuesque quality in a landscape of snow.  When one must be cut down in the interest of commerce and street building, I weep.  When others fall after buffering by storms, I grieve.  When a forest is felled for its lumber and commercial value, I am enraged.  Trees belong to this planet as gifts to honor and care for, to increase our connections to the world around us.  I give thanks daily for the trees I have met, known intimately, played under and in, blessed for their shelter of birds and squirrels and cicadas.  This collection is my thanksgiving to the trees of this world.

Backyard in Summer

Trees rise from our lower lot, towers

of poplar and beech wrapped round by ivy.

Their arbor of leaves screens the sky 

so that I catch only glimpses of blue or gray

through weavings of green.                           

Today the leafy sky becomes my pleasure,

while below, all in this slight forest have purpose:                  

squirrel and crow, even black snake

find highways along bark and root

below the abundant quilt of August.                                      

From the dead branch reaching over wood stairs

dangles a clay pot, nesting place for wrens.

At night, Venus travels above this summer canopy

with Polaris, Cygnus, Pegasus, to rise

in the darkening sky, summoned by the spin

of our earth home, curtained by summer.