Novel Preaching<\/em> I tell of having lunch with the chair of the English Department at SMU. C.W. Smith. Dr. Smith is the award winning author of several novels and short stories, most recently the novel Purple Hearts, a story set in a small Texas town during W.W. II. Dr. Smith commented to me, \u201cThe most difficult thing in teaching 18 year olds creative writing is getting them to notice what they see. The second thing is to get them to have the confidence that what they notice has some significance.\u201d<\/p>\nWhen he said that, the phrase \u201cknack for noticing,\u201d came into my mind. I had the thought: that\u2019s what preachers need to cultivate too. Hence KFN. Natalie Goldberg, in her book Writing Down the Bones,\u201d calls this \u201ccomposting.\u201d \u201cWe collect experiences, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grins, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heart, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is no new notion. The mystics of a variety of religions have recommended attentiveness to the present moment as a source of insight. The Bible is full of the fruits of its writers\u2019 attentiveness to what God is doing in their daily lives: images, metaphors, scenes, conversations, and memories. I\u2019ve been working on a sermon series on 2 Corinthians for a Presbyterian Women\u2019s Conference I\u2019m preaching for at Mo Ranch, Texas the first week of June.<\/p>\n
In meditating on 2 Corinthians 4:7 (\u201cWe have this treasure in clay jars\u2026\u201d) I had the insight more clearly than I have in past readings that Paul was a composter. His image of earthen vessels (cheap, ordinary, easily breakable) is a metaphor for our embodied existence, our imperfect, pain- filled lives, our frail, expendable, temporary bodies. It came to him somehow, from somewhere. I say it came to him when he put his imagination in the service of the Holy Spirit as he went about his daily life. He exercised his knack for noticing. So did the prophets. Jeremiah\u2019s visit to the Potter\u2019s House features a potter and a clay pot, as metaphors for our lives and the way God shapes and reshapes them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord;<\/p>\n
Come, go down to the potter\u2019s house, and there I will let you hear my words. \u2018<\/p>\n
So I went down to the potter\u2019s house and there he was working at his wheel.<\/p>\n
The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter\u2019s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.\u201d(Jeremiah 18:1-6)<\/p>\n
If it weren\u2019t for the fog\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\nA friend of mine, Deb, told me about her trip to Copenhagen years ago. It was raining and foggy while she was there. She and her husband had booked a bus tour of the area. They assumed it would be cancelled or postponed. But no, the guide went ahead with the tour. They got on the bus and, as they rode through the fog-shrouded landscape, the guide would point out the window and say, \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for the fog, you would see over there \u2026.. and, a few miles later, \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for the fog, you would see out the left side of the bus\u2026\u2026.if it weren\u2019t for the fog, you would see\u2026.<\/p>\n
The Church as a light house<\/strong><\/p>\nI know a man who is in his late 70\u2019s. He lost his wife and daughter the same year about 5 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in the Navy,\u201d he told me. \u201cAnd so I tend to think of things in images from that service. So the church to me is a beacon, a lighthouse. Sometimes, during that year, I would just come and sit in my car in the parking lot. I didn\u2019t need to go in and bother anybody. I\u2019d just sit there and that was a comfort to me\u201d<\/p>\n
No speeches needed, just believe<\/strong><\/p>\nIn his wonderful book, On Writing, novelist Stephen King talks about a discouraging time in his life, when, as a young father and husband, he was teaching creative writing in a high school in Hampden, Maine and working part time in a Laundromat. He says this of his wife Tabby.<\/p>\n
My wife made a crucial difference during those two years I spent teaching at Hampden (and washing sheet at New Franklin Laundry during the summer vacation). If she had suggested that the time I spent writing stories on the front porch of our rented house on Pond Street or in the laundry room of our rented trailer on Klatt Road in Hermon was wasted time, I think a lot of the heart would have gone out of me. Tabby never voiced a single doubt, however. Her support was a constant, one of the few good things I could take as a given. And whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There\u2019s someone who knows. Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don\u2019t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough. (pp. 73-74)<\/p>\n
James Bond at Blockbusters<\/strong><\/p>\nA while back John Stewart interviewed Daniel Craig, the British actor who plays James Bond. \u201cHave you ever made a bad movie?\u201d Stewart, using slightly different language, asked Craig. \u201cI was in Blockbuster one time and saw one of my early films. I picked it up and hid it behind the display counter.\u201c<\/p>\n
If even the ever-suave, perpetually cool James Bond has made a mistake that continues to embarrass him. There may be hope for the rest of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m starting to think it\u2019s me.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nI read an article about rocker Gregg Allman in Rolling Stone a while back. On the subject of his many marriages, he commented, I think this is my 6th marriage. I\u2019m starting to think it\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI began to see more clearly as I lost my sight.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMy friend Helen is 89. I visited her a few weeks ago. I knew she was nearly blind, but wasn\u2019t aware of how long she had dealt with the condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI began to lose my eyesight in 1980,\u201d she told me. \u201cBefore that I\u2019d been a half hearted Christian. But sitting in the doctor\u2019s office, as the eye doctor was telling me the bad news, I experienced God saying to me \u2018It\u2019s better to lose your physical sight than to lose your spiritual sight.\u2019 My immediate thought was \u2018How about I don\u2019t lose either?\u2019 And It has been very trying to live with limited vision. But from that point on, I began to have a clearer sense of direction, of priorities, and a stronger sense of God\u2019s presence. I began to see things more clearly as I lost my sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Visit Alyce McKenzie\u2019s Expert Site<\/a> at Patheos.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my book Novel Preaching I tell of having lunch with the chair of the English Department at SMU. C.W. Smith. Dr. Smith is the award winning author of several novels and short stories, most recently the novel Purple Hearts, a story set in a small Texas town during W.W. II. Dr. Smith commented to me, \u201cThe most difficult thing in teaching 18 year olds creative writing is getting them to notice what they see. The second thing is to get them to have the confidence that what they notice has some significance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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