Encounter with "Greatness"...

So on the first day of the Festival, I was crossing the street to rejoin my NWC cohorts when a man stopped me.

"You don't happen to know your way around this place, do you?"

"Nope. Sorry." I glanced down at his name badge and read "Scott Cairns."

Ever since Judy introduced me to his work, Scott Cairns has been one of my favorite poets -- I used four of his poems in our large group prayer times at this year's Good Friday retreat.

"Mr. Cairns!" I gushed, "What a pleasure to meet you!" He looked down at my nametag.

"Jeff!" he said in what seemed to be an equally appreciative tone, "Nice to meet you, too!" I must have looked confused, because he said "You have a website or something, don't you?" I managed to stammer, "yes, a blog..." I must confess, I have no idea what he said after that point, beyond that it was somehow complimentary.

Scott Cairns has read my blog!

I immediately rushed to rejoin my mates and tell the story. Manders said, "well, that would make my year." Thus began what H. Jane started referring to as my "nonsexual crush" on Scott Cairns.

In all fairness, I wasn't the only one. By the end of the weekend, Susan was referring to him as her "new boyfriend."

The sessions and readings of his I went to only confirmed my impression of the man as a remarkably intelligent, witty, and thoughtfully Christ-centered artist. Mr. Cairns, if you happen to read this, thank you again for your generosity in words, time, and artistry. Hopefully, we'll meet again in the future.

For those of you whose curiousity has been peaked (in line with my intentions for this post), check out this interview with Mars Hill.

God, Too, Uses Boxcutters

Well, here I am, y'all, in sunny Grand Rapids, MI at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing. It should be called "Feast" for all the chewing I've done in only two sessions. I had a somewhat embarrassing epiphany in the first. Phillip Gulley is a Quaker pastor who writes fiction and essays that are homespun and charming and delightfully real. I hadn't heard of him before today, but I went on the recommendation of a friend.

It was great. He read from a forthcoming collection of essays and then opened the floor to questions. I felt like the kid on the short bus as people made pithy and insightful queries about his characters and settings and, in short, had clearly read his stuff. I, on the other hand, kept dwelling on a comment he'd made about Quaker services -- a few hymns, a brief sermon, and then thirty minutes of silence. It resonated so deeply with my spiritual direction experiences and the heart of Abbey Way, so I popped my hand up.

"Mr. Gulley, I come from an evangelical, conservative, very cognitive-based tradition and I'm finding the older I get, the more contemplative my personal spirituality is becoming. I'm wondering if and how the rhythms of silence in your spiritual tradition inform your writing process?"

He looked me dead in the eye for a long second, and said "That's a really good question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before. To answer, silence is absolutely indispensable to my writing. Most of my ideas come either on my quiet morning walk or in Meetings."

Now, if you've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know one of my favorite rants is against the "western" compartmentalization of life. I HATE this concept of church is a place you go and set of routines you perform on Sunday, the sense in which we become different people depending on our environment.

So imagine my shock when his answer prompted me to think, "Wait. Maybe God is leading me to Abbey Way in part to help me be a better writer." It was like a solar flare in my skull. The more I looked into the light, the more I started to think, "Well, duh... If He's calling you to write and calling you to Abbey Way, they've got to be connected." I was chagrinned to think that here I am, Mr. Holistic, and God still has so many of my boxes to slash open, walls to tear down before my life is an open, spacious, and ordered sanctuary for His holiness.

Who knows? Maybe more will even be shattered this Festival weekend. Stay tuned to find out.

Let the renovation continue. Amen.

A quick quote for the world...

"We are all wounded inside in some way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.

Yes, the highest things are beyond words.

That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something highter. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions."
- Ben Okri, "Beyond Words", A Way of Being Free