Autumn Abandon.

October 23, 2012 in creativity, writing with 7 Comments

“All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.”
- Donald Miller

They stand, half naked with skirts of vibrant orange, bright yellow branches reaching like hands outstretched to a gray sky.

They are exuberant in the losing, brilliant with abandon, and I am both awestruck and jealous.

…

His use of the word whiny actually made me smile, even though (and maybe because) it was about my writing.

Criticism is what I crave right now. I need someone to correct my grammar, to straighten my crooked reasoning, to remind me not to be too precious with my posts.

What a relief it is to hear someone say, you can do better.

…

I want to paint like the branches, bursting in cadmium, crimson, cabernet. Iron oxide, ocher, olive, emerald.

I want to shed my words like those leaves, unafraid of what I am losing, so to let my soil mature for spring. The right words will come back to me later, when I’ve grown up a little.

We are most vivid when we’re willing to let go of our laurels.

Etsy and the Problem with Pink.

October 19, 2012 in breast cancer, etsy, mom with 24 Comments

I love the month of October for a lot of reasons, but it’s also a month that I dread every year. While the leaves are vivid with color, retail stores everywhere are awash with pink, because it is “breast cancer awareness month.”

Most of you reading this know that I lost my mother to metastatic breast cancer in January, so it’s not my disregard for breast cancer awareness that bothers me about the pink ribbon. The reason I am so sick of the pink ribbon is because in my experience, the pink ribbon does more for the person that purchases it than those affected by the disease.

Nowhere is the problem with “pinkwashing” more evident than with Etsy and their “Tickled Pink” email and subsequent corporate cop-out.

Two weeks ago, Nicole Smith, a member of Etsy’s marketing team, curated an email full of sellers’ items clad in the ubiquitous pink “breast cancer awareness” ribbons. Though I have my qualms with the pink ribbon for all it does and does not represent, the email seems innocent enough until you click through each of the listings. Only 8 out 24 items listed in the “Tickled Pink” email actually claim to donate to the cause they tout, yet Nicole’s email encourages Etsy users to purchase the pieces as a way to “show love to the women in your life.”

In short, these Etsy sellers have happily capitalized on a sensitive issue, thoughtlessly tacking pink ribbons onto their products without supporting the cause itself. Etsy’s celebratory endorsement of the sellers’ deplorable opportunism only adds insult to injury. Since Etsy earns money from each item sold on their site, both they and their sellers are profiting from others’ pain, and from their consumers’ ignorance, because let’s face it – not everyone is going to read the fine print to make sure their purchase donates to the cause.

And herein lies the issue with pinkwashing, as Etsy has so finely exemplified for us :

When there is no charitable action behind the product – on the part of the seller or the buyer – it turns breast cancer awareness into a trendy parade of pink shit, making breast cancer awareness about the appearance of generosity, rather than actively making a difference in the lives of those in need. It gives consumers buying bags of pretzels and footballs and tennis-shoes – or in this case, mugs and iPhone covers – the feeling of having been generous, without their actually having to do anything.

But as Hila so aptly states,

“Consumerism is not ‘awareness’ about cancer; it’s consumerism. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

That realization alone is enough to make blood boil, but then there is Etsy’s dismissive and impersonal response to the criticism over their “breast cancer awareness” marketing tactics. For examples, see Nicole Smith’s tweet to Acacia, Mary Andrew’s forum response and quote for the Daily Dot. As if those responses weren’t bad enough, there’s Marie Kelly’s response to my forum inquiry, which makes it sound like I’m just another Negative Nancy trolling the internet. And then there’s Nicole Smith’s reply to my private message on Etsy, which although I can’t reveal its contents due to Etsy’s site policy, was nearly verbatim what Mary Andrews published publicly, with zero acknowledgement of my personal story as a daughter of a breast cancer patient or as an Etsy seller that actually donated a portion of my profits to my mother.

Etsy has had ample opportunity to express solidarity with those who have been directly effected by breast cancer and hold themselves accountable to their brand as a “community of artists, creators, collectors, thinkers and doers,” but instead, they have chosen to make excuses for themselves and label criticism as “negative reference to other sellers,” as if voicing our frustrations and concern equates to hate speech.

This, ultimately, is why I have lost faith in Etsy’s brand, and it is the reason why I am choosing to close my Etsy shop :

They have made it clear that my voice doesn’t matter, nor do Acacia, or Jane, or Hila, or anyone else that is disturbed by their actions.

I’m not just upset by their ignorant and insensitive attempt at marketing to those affected by breast cancer. I am angered by their continued disregard of the voices in their community asking them to be accountable for their actions.

Nothing says corporate cop-out like a deliberate blind eye to someone else’s pain.

I’ll finish this post by saying that Etsy and other corporations like them are only partially at fault. As consumers we have to acknowledge our responsibility in this issue by being active in our charitable efforts. The pink ribbon on your bumper, Facebook profile picture, sweater, cereal box, means absolutely nothing if you are not reaching out to the people around you.

True generosity is radically active.

It is not fluffy or pink or cutesy or marketable. It is not the over-sexualized saving of second base. It is not the color of your bra in a cryptic Facebook status. It is tangible, it is personal, it is scary, it is unnerving. It is ugly-crying on the couch with your friend as she (or he!) discusses their diagnosis.

If you know someone battling breast cancer, or any other terminal illness for that matter, then reach out. Make them a meal, run a marathon for them, hold a benefit for them, send them a card, cry with them, promise to care for their families when they are gone. THAT is how you support a breast cancer patient.

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Poem : Penumbra.

October 16, 2012 in poetry with 1 Comment

I think now to the velvet coat, the mug, to the snowflake-small diamond stud in my ear, to the prized Michael Khors dress that somehow magically fit me that you never got to wear, though we oo-ed over it when Lisa dropped it by. I think to the tiny paper and tin music box I bought you as a gift in Austria that plays, “The Sound of Music,” to the worn VHS of that film, which we watched every Saturday, a ritual we held even unto the two days before you passed.

These things, they mean nothing and everything to me at the same time.

Penumbra
By Amy Lowell

As I sit here in the quiet Summer night,
Suddenly, from the distant road, there comes
The grind and rush of an electric car.
And, from still farther off,
An engine puffs sharply,
Followed by the drawn-out shunting scrape of a freight train.
These are the sounds that men make
In the long business of living.
They will always make such sounds,
Years after I am dead and cannot hear them.

Sitting here in the Summer night,
I think of my death.
What will it be like for you then?
You will see my chair
With its bright chintz covering
Standing in the afternoon sunshine,
As now.
You will see my narrow table
At which I have written so many hours.
My dogs will push their noses into your hand,
And ask—ask—
Clinging to you with puzzled eyes.

The old house will still be here,
The old house which has known me since the beginning.
The walls which have watched me while I played:
Soldiers, marbles, paper-dolls,
Which have protected me and my books.
The front-door will gaze down among the old trees
Where, as a child, I hunted ghosts and Indians;
It will look out on the wide gravel sweep
Where I rolled my hoop,
And at the rhododendron bushes
Where I caught black-spotted butterflies.

The old house will guard you,
As I have done.
Its walls and rooms will hold you,
And I shall whisper my thoughts and fancies
As always,
From the pages of my books.

You will sit here, some quiet Summer night,
Listening to the puffing trains,
But you will not be lonely,
For these things are a part of me.
And my love will go on speaking to you
Through the chairs, and the tables, and the pictures,
As it does now through my voice,
And the quick, necessary touch of my hand.

I decided to tackle my overflowing library, starting with Woodlief’s Somewhere More Holy. I found Penumbra in its opening pages. I have a feeling it’s what I need most to read right now.

Have you read any good poems lately? 

On My Bookshelf.

October 15, 2012 in books, Uncategorized with 10 Comments

My library is bursting at the seams with new reads. It started with Story Conference. They gave us one free book after another from all the presenters who have been published recently – Makoto Fujimura’s refractions, Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Inciting Incidents, curated by Sarah Cunningham. I’ve been reading chapters of each of those here and there. Then Lore decided to send me two of her favorites – Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath and Tony Woodlief’s Somewhere More Holy. And then, when I was supposed to be picking up mushrooms and wine for risotto the other night and I wandered into another part of the store, thinking about how to spend my birthday money, J.K. Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy, leapt out at me, and I knew I had to take it home. So now I have nearly a dozen new books to read. My only problem is that I want to read them all at once, and don’t know where to start. It’s a good problem to have, I think.

What’s on your shelf right now? Have you read any of these yet?

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Guest Post | Preston Yancey

October 4, 2012 in faith, guest post, writing with 7 Comments

Today’s post is by Preston Yancey, and it is truly a privilege to host his words here in my space. I hope it fills you as deeply as it has for me. 

~

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

Rilke, in one of his vagabond turns of verse in the collection of prosody he commended as prayer to God.

It is a line of good faith for me, one I read and know immediately I consider believed, but to tell you the reason behind the trust of the rhyme would be to violate the belief itself. I read it, pray it, and it seems the most true of things I could say. Perhaps this is danger; perhaps this is faith. I think the line hard to discern at times.

When I signed the contract for my first book, a lay-friendly exploration of the Scripture as the foundation for our theological imagination, I did not sign with a degree of presumption. I was aware, to the point of petrification, that at twenty-two it was highly likely that no one much cared what I had to say about God and, moreover, at twenty-two I didn’t have very much worth saying. But I signed the contract as an act of faith in the yet to be spoken while two of my best friends watched and whispered promises that this was meet and right and even bounded duty.

But the contract I signed came with a generous portion of time affixed to it. The book was yet to be written and I had signed for the promise of words before there were words to offer. Again, belief in those things yet to be spoken. The yet was the turning word, the tuning word, the word that was vouchsafe and promise, perhaps even covenant, which I wound like rosary up to the vaulted heavens, up unto the throne of God.

There is a misconception, I have found, by some who stand on the other side of the text. Readers as exclusive beings, taking in for leisure and not for generative work tend to think that the theleological triumph is vested in the book contract itself. The signing. The obligation to be published. This is touted as the great victory. And I concede that it is, to a point. I ordered champagne and bought an icon, updated my blog page and admitted politely when declining an invitation that I needed to work on a chapter. (At first, I did this to the point of nausea, God and my friends forgive me, but I have since abandoned the practice.)

But you can only drink so much champagne and buy so many icons before you actually have to do something about that contract you signed which obligated them to publish you as much as it obligated you to actually write something. Then comes the panic. Then comes the staying up into the wee hours and the frantic calls to best friends in which you rather frankly and ungraciously complain that everything you write is horseshit and you have no idea why anyone, ever, would have considered you a wise investment.

And you worry about revealing that too openly, because you don’t want that call from your publisher or your agent asking, kindly—too kindly—Are you alright?

I’ve wound my way to this, you see: the question of qualification.

At a certain point, we have to believe that if He has put before us a thing that needs doing, it is He who makes us able to do the thing that needs doing. I could turn and churn the frantic fear of not being able to write well for days and weeks and end up with blank, lifeless pages. And I did, for a time. But there came a moment of quiet epiphany, in the rustle whisper revelation of the Scripture.

In his epistle to the Romans, St. Paul speaks the poetics of our faith: and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

It turns there, like Rilke’s yet, all on He.

There’s a lot of theological technicality in the wording, of what we call justified and glorified, but if the Scripture can speak to us on the very surface, is it not inviting us to accept this: that He who began a good work—see, we return again to its own words—is in fact seeing it to completion; that He, who called us according to His purpose, is fulfilling the calling in us; that He, not by our works of righteousness but by His sustaining, is bringing about exactly what He would will be done?

So we are left with this, the question of qualification.

It is God who qualifies. It is God who sees through. It is God who can take credit for any good word ever printed on a page. Should I ever say anything of worth about or concerning Him, it is by His scandalous grace. And it is only by that I am able to take up a pen or place fingers to a keyboard.

Such that I believe in all that has never yet been spoken, if I grasp however feebly to trust in Him.

~

Preston Yancey is earning his Master of Letters at the University of St. Andrews in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts from the St. Mary’s School of Divinity. His first book about a reverential approach to Scripture, ‘Tables in the Wilderness,’ is due out with Rhizome in Summer 2013. His second, ‘A Common Faith: A Memoir of God Found, Lost, and Found Again’ is being written now. Follow his writing at SeePrestonBlog.com and on twitter @prestonyancey.

Fall’s First Batch Of Applesauce.

October 1, 2012 in cooking, family, Michigan with 2 Comments

Heaven will smell like hot apples cooking on a fall day. This is the scent of our favorite season, mingled with smells of shepherd’s pie and pumpkin spice anything. Oh, and the creaking sound of the furnace as it remembers how to heat the house again. The light is dim in the house each morning, the sun rising later and later while we wait for Swiss Miss and cereal before school. We stand on the vent in the kitchen, the heat billowing our robes and warming our slippers.

This is my childhood. This is the month of my birth. This is how I remember life at home.

We try to replicate it now, apples in a pot on the stove, their perfume rising to bless our memories.

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Inspired By : STORY 2012 Edition.

September 28, 2012 in inspired by, story with 2 Comments

The auditorium was silent at the end of Mako’s speech. Ian Cron took the stage to close the session, and instead of ruining the silence with too many words, Ian asked us to put away distractions, close our eyes, let Mako’s words “find purchase” in our hearts. In that silence, it felt like the whole crowd had unanimously noticed the common bush afire, and collectively taken off their shoes. The room felt heavy with holiness.

It’s been a week since that moment, a week of returning to the everyday, to the online-only relationships, to the reluctant routine. Yet even a week later, my heart still feels that holiness and wholeness, that sense of having tread on sacred ground.

The conference was wonderful, yes. But the deeper thing, the thing that I still am speechlessly in awe of, was the community formed. It was already there, in tweets and emails and links and comments, but sitting together at dinner tables, talking late into the night on my couch with Lore, hugging each other tight before we headed home, those are the moments for which my heart still seeks purchase.

In the spirit of that, a few STORY-themed lovelinks that say it better than I ever could:

A bridge across the chasm.

The voices, or finding your people.

1,000 posts.

What I Quit.

It is Good.

“After all, my lawyer told me love does.”

“We’ve made our home 45 minutes from the heart of humanity. And there is something utterly tragic about that.” City, Suburb, and the Myth of Christian Art.

Ultimate e-book recap of Story 2012. (Free for everyone, even if you didn’t attend. There’s some serious genius in it, so get on that download.)

“Take all of the time you look at your blog analytics on your phone, and use that time to develop your skill in storytelling. The world doesn’t need another “top blogger” — it does need your story.” Darrell tells it like it is.

“Because desert shrubs were meant to live in the desert and they have all they need to live on there. Their roots spread out to the stream too, and do not fear when the heat comes. It thrives in a year of drought and what if the only fruit it bears is to bear the weight of thirty blackbirds? Is that not still fruit?”

“Ex Nihilo”  and “Who Broke Africa?”  by Micah Bournes.

Mason Jar Music, featuring Josh Garrels. (I’ve been listening to this on repeat pretty much all week.)

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After 25 Years, She Learns A New Trick

September 27, 2012 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

To eat breakfast in the morning, at a table adjacent to my husband, before I leave for work, without being late to the office (mostly).

In a small but significant way, I’m finally learning how to show up for the day, coffee already downed.

And if this isn’t me conquering fear, I don’t know what is, but morning has finally become my friend.

(I think the promise of pumpkin butter over an English muffin has helped.)

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STORY 2012 : Sower of Seeds.

September 25, 2012 in creativity, faith, story with 13 Comments

It wasn’t always this way. When I was a little girl, I lived in a world of crayons and crepe paper, paint and pencils, making messes of my imagination and exploring worlds made of words. But like all artists – all children, really – the encroaching world of productivity suppressed my instinct to create just because. Even now as I write this post, my thoughts are disjointed and my words fragmented by the big picture, the full post, the comments and the stats and the why am I really doing this mentality that always ails my writing and blogging.

One over-arching theme that I took away from STORY was the idea that expectation can cripple my work. When I cannot see the fruits of my labor, when my expectation for growth and productivity is centered on accolades and attention and conventional success, my well runs dry.

If I create for my own glory, rather than as an outpouring of relationship to my Creator, my work will only appear dim, fragmented, broken.

Of all the STORY sessions, Makoto Fujimura’s message left the deepest impression on me. He drew a parallel to the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13, and though I grew up hearing that story, I love how he used the metaphor of soil to speak, not trite words about individual hearts and salvation, but about the work of creating art to cultivate culture.

“Real artists don’t think about 15 minutes of fame. They think about 500 years from now, what kind of culture will our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, live in?”

and also :

“Culture too is an environment, an ecosystem; it needs stewardship. Artists cannot survive in this culture.”

An artist’s purpose is to plant the seeds faithfully, to write words and paint pictures and melodize stray notes into music. Yet we do this not for the seed’s sake, or for art’s sake.

As sowers of seeds, we have to know our soil and yet plant faithfully, writing the words, painting the pictures, melodizing stray notes into music, whether or not we can predict the outcome.

“The Parable of the Sower is not about the seed. Where the seed lands matters more. Soil is layers and layers of dead things – ground zero. Good soil has gone through many winters. Spring is coming!”

Mako gave the example of Emily Dickinson, whose cache of work lay undiscovered in a box beneath her bed until after her death. Though she had a few poems published while she was alive, most of them were significantly altered, stripped of her slant rhymes and em dashes – all the things that made Emily’s work unique. She never saw her seeds come into full bloom, yet she still created over 1,000 poems because she was devoted to the act of creating, the art of sowing.

“Emily Dickinson’s desk was 17 1/2 inches by 17 1/2 inches. This is all the space you need to change and shape culture.”

Over and over again, STORY reminded me that my purpose as an artist, a sower of seeds, is to create even when the effort feels fruitless. Our work is important, vital even, to the culture we cannot even envision yet.

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11

[Images : 1, 2] [All quotes listed by Makoto Fujimura, as transcribed furiously by hand in the dark of the auditorium at STORY 2012. Please forgive any variances from actual speech.]

STORY 2012 : Returning.

September 24, 2012 in creativity, story with 6 Comments

I always think that I know why something is important before I do it. I thought STORY 2012 was an important conference to attend because I wanted to hear speakers I respect, like Anne Lamott or Bob Goff or Rachel Held Evans. I thought it would be a great opportunity to connect with my Prodigal family and the bloggers and writers whom I’ve come to regard as friends, kindred spirits. I went thinking that if I could just put myself in a room with other more successful creatives, then my dry well of words would be filled with advice and insight that would fix my dreams, teach me how to create better.

All these things took place this weekend and touched me deeply, yes.

But after the last session ended, after the last remnants of tapas at dinner were shared on Friday night, after I hugged everyone goodbye and after I dropped Lore off at O’Hare early yesterday morning, sunrise bursting across the sweep of Chicago skyline behind me, I realized :

My reasons for going to STORY 2012 were not the only reasons God brought me there.

Tomorrow I will share more about what I took away from the STORY experience, but for today, I will say : I took away so many quotes and ideas and I solidified friendships. I left with that rare and oft longed for stirring in my heart that the people I had communed with not only understood who I am, but why I am, and what I was created for. But I also came away from it with the reminder and the challenge that my work is of more importance than mere ambition. My creativity must begin as an act of worship, as an outpouring of my relationship to my Creator and my relationships with the people around me. I have forgotten that, and maybe that is why I needed to be there, to find my way back to the Source of my creativity.

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” – Elizabeth Barret Browning

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