New website

Dear Friends,

At long last, I have a new website!!! Oh joy! And, as part of that website, my blogs have also found a new home. I'm merging both blogs into one on the new site, which will be some essays and some book reviews. I hope you'll make the move with me. I do love hearing from you.

As well, you can now buy my books directly through the website, which will make things considerably easier on those of you who don't happen to live in Canada. Heck, I'll even sign a book for you, if you'd like.

And so, please come and see my new digs by clicking here.

Thanks so much!

Lauren

When you want to give up

There comes a time when every writer wants to give up, to crumple those pages into tight little balls and toss 'em in the basket, or better yet -- burn 'em. In fact, when I'm teaching I often tell students this in the first class, so they won't be blindsided when it happens to them.

If you happen to be feeling just now like it's hopeless, like you should just give up those silly dreams of being a Real Writer and get back to something more sensible and less emotionally draining like say, alligator wrestling or land mine detection... You're not alone. Happens to all of us. Yes, even the Published (snort) Author!

Allow me to share the following --

Consider this scene. I am in my office, head on my desk, surrounded by scraps of paper and half-drunk cups of tea. I am making small snuffling noises.

"Aha, so you're there, are you?" says My Best Beloved from the doorway, which is, quite sensibly, about as far as he dare enter when I'm in such a mood. He smiles, equal parts amusement and sadness, and I want to pinch him, because this is what he says whenever I tell him any of the following:

- This book is crap.

- I can't write.

- Maybe I could write, but that was the last book. I'll never write another.

- I have nothing to say.

- I'm a fraud. They (critics/agent/editors/readers) just haven't found out yet. But they will with this book if I'm stupid enough to try and finish it.

- Other writers, like ___________ are brilliant. I am a talentless hack.

And each time My Best Beloved says "So, you're there," I reply, with wide-eyed astonishment, "I've never felt like this before. This is different. It's horrible. I'm going to quit. Nobody's waiting for my next novel, believe me."

And he says, "Uhuh. You're there all right." And then he reminds me of the extract I once read to him by Pulitzer Prize winning Robert Olen Butler. It's an exchange between Butler and his wife that sounds awfully like the exchange we're having, which ends when Mrs. Butler says, "Well, you're certainly filled to the brim with self loathing, dear, which means you should be writing again soon."

Blech. Oh, bother.

Quite right. I am filled with self-loathing. And, yet, shockingly, it passes and I do start writing again, and my husband smiles Cheshire Cat-like and waits for my next bout of self-doubt and self-loathing.

Hear me on this: All writers feel this way now and again. Some years more. Other years less. But it's always there, and any writer who tells you different is a Big Fat Liar. It's part of the territory of being a writer. I have published four books - 2 collections of short stories and 2 novels with a major house. Bestsellers. Short listed for a lovely prize. Longlisted for others. Recipient of 2 Canada Council grants. I tell you this not to brag, but to tell you the experience is universal and has no regard for accomplishment. (I bored my husband stupid for three months last year when I repeatedly insisted I was ready to give it all up and go back to being a really good reader.) You have to accept that now, as an emerging writer, and learn to deal with it, because if you are anticipating a time when you'll be forever free of such emotions, you'll really be disappointed.

The truth is that if you think it's tough before you publish - you will be shocked at how hard things get once your book is out there in the world. As Anne Lamott says,

"Being a published writer will make them (unpublished writers) long to be ONLY as mentally ill as they are now. Their current level of obsession and doubt and self-loathing will look like the good old days. Honest."

Cheery, no?

But what the hell, why not just accept that fact that part of the writers bag-'o-tricks is a huge brick of doubt and go ahead and write anyway? Take it as a sign of the Serious Writer. (Although I don't recommend losing your sense of humor, either!) I tell my students, if you can do anything else, do it. Writing's tough. But if you can't do anything else, if you MUST write, then just get on with it. You can always lie on your back and be paralyzed by self-pity and doubt later. In the meantime, why not look out the window and be dazzled by that late afternoon light slanting through the red and yellow leaves -- turning the world such a celebratory shade of rosy gold -- and write about that until something better comes along.

Keep writing.

From this broken hill...

I recently heard of an internationally acclaimed author whose work I admire IMMENSELY, having his newly finished novel turned down. (And no, I'm not going to name names.) I don't know why the book was turned down, although I can't imagine it was because it wasn't well written. This man is simply incapable of writing a bad sentence. I've been thinking of him a lot. You can imagine the pain of working so hard for so many years to develop a readership; how you might deservedly feel, after lots of praise and attention and prizes and so forth, that you've earned the right to keep on publishing, and then...it stops; you're silenced. Agony. I pray he'll find the inner resources to come back from this, to keep the faith, to write again, but who knows. A blow like that can silence you forever. It can send you into depression's bottomless pit; it can break you.

One of the things emerging writers (and some established writers)frequently talk about is how to sustain oneself as an artist, psychologically, emotionally, even spiritually, during these times of diminished publishing and reviewing resources. Fewer books are published overall, weighted in favor of the celebrity tell-all or self-help books rather than fiction. The novels publishers lust after these days seem to be of a commercial, plot-driven type. Now, there's nothing wrong with plot-driven commercial fiction per se, it's just that if you happen to write more literary, quieter, character-driven books, for example, it's slim pickin's out there. There are exceptions -- Per Petterson's OUT STEALING HORSES comes to mind, as does Elizabeth Strout's OLIVE KITERIDGE, but if you're a reader who enjoys that sort of novel you have to root a little deeper through the piles of Vatican-Masonic-mystery books.

You don't have to be a writer to ask this sort of question, of course. How to spiritually, emotionally and psychologically sustain oneself during lean times is a conundrum to everyone, regardless of vocation. How to earn money is a different subject. Writers have always had to struggle for cash, it seems.. think of Faulkner in the post office, Cormac McCarthy getting tossed out of a $40/mo hotel because he didn't have the rent, Jane Austen struggling to put food on the table. What I'm talking about here is how to keep on going when there doesn't seem to be a good enough reason to do so.

Well, as writers, we write. Real Writers are not necessarily measured by their publishing history, but by their commitment to the work. I know, you may be muttering to yourself, "Easy for YOU to say; you've already published a few books!" Well, that's true, I have been lucky in that regard, but publishing is like the movie or music business ... industry tastes change, some bright new thing comes along to grab the spotlight, or for inexplicable reasons your particular kind of writing falls out of favor... the truth is that unless you are a major prize-winning author, publishing your last book does not ensure it won't, in fact, be your last book, if you see what I mean. And in some cases, as in the unnamed writer whose book has just been turned down... not even previous accolades are insurance against rejection.

The publishing landscape can feel pretty bleak at times.

And then there's my friend who's been working for eight years on her first novel. She's had a couple of agents interested, but they ultimately passed. She wonders if she should bother anymore, or if she should just stop and take up knitting or gardening or something.

So, that's the sort of thing that was on my mind last Thursday evening when My Best Beloved and I went to Philadelphia to see Leonard Cohen in concert.

The story goes that a few years ago he returned from a long time spent in retreat at a Buddhist monastery, only to discover his manager stole his life savings. He was 71 years old, everything he had put aside for retirement was gone, and someone he considered a friend had betrayed him.

In an interview with CTV he said:

"It's enough to put a dent in one's mood,'' he says of the betrayal by his manager, who'd looked after him for 17 years.

"Fortunately it hasn't,'' he adds after a short pause as if to show that while he's dejected by the situation, he's not completely undone.

So, he took to the road again, and has been performing around the world for the past couple of years. I had heard from musician friends in Toronto, Paris and Geneva that this was the concert of a lifetime, an extraordinary experience not to be missed. They were right.

It was a three-hour concert the likes of which I have never experienced before -- generous, uplifting, moving, poignant and inspiring. If you have a chance to see him before he stops touring, I urge you to do so. Still, I wasn't expecting how tremendously touched I was by his rendition, along with the sublime (his word) Webb Sisters, of his song, "If It Be Your Will." He began by saying the piece had been written during a time of obstacles, when he had been silenced, as happens from time to time. He said it was a poem, a prayer... Here's the version they did in Dublin:







For me, that prayer is the essence of what it means to be a writer... a Real Writer. All writers are silenced from time to time, some by the business of writing, some by writer's block, some by addiction, illness or infirmity, some by conflicting obligations... there are any number of reasons. Those of us who aren't writers are 'silenced' as well ... we lose our voices, we lose our way, we lose our faith, our freedom, sometimes even our hope. We find ourselves on the broken hill in the deepest night. And then what?

Leonard Cohen has said, of his dark night, "At a certain point, that background of anxiety and anguish lifted." I suspect that before it did he may have stood on that broken hill, in his "rags of light" and prayed, as he does in that song.

If it be your will that I speak no more, and my voice be still, as it was before, I will speak no more. I shall abide until I am spoken for, if it be your will. If it be your will, that a voice be true, from this broken hill, I will sing to you...

(Photo: Laurent Gillieron/Keystone/Associated Press)

Thanks, Lenny. A lot of us join you on the broken hill, our voices true, praying for the end of night. Because of you, I for one don't feel so alone.

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Chaos vs Stillness - Writers' Habits

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said "One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star." Well, that‘s a poetic and hopeful concept for those of us who come from chaotic backgrounds. However, I'm not convinced that the life of such a tumult-born star can be sustained and nurtured in the same environment. Certainly, as a writer and someone who wants to extend my 14 years of sobriety, chaos -- either external or internal -- is no longer my friend.

My younger years were highly chaotic and sometimes dangerous times, fueled by alcohol, irritability, restlessness and discontent. I found it hard to stay anywhere or with anything or anyone for very long. This was largely because that sort of stillness resulted in having the occupying landscape or activity lose its newness and shine, and therefore its ability to distract me from my deeper self, or what Jung calls The Shadow Side -- which, according to Carl Jung, is the part of the personality one chooses not to see.

"Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life. We meet our dark side, accept it for what it is, and we learn to use its powerful energies in productive ways." -"Romancing the Shadow," by Connie Zwieg, PhD., and Steve Wolf, PhD.

Unacknowledged and ignored, The Shadow can pop up in all sorts of unpleasant ways, and psychoanalysts theorize it is responsible for all sorts of behavior we'd rather not exhibit, as well as depression's black-crow swoop and the malaise which seems to arise for no apparent reason.

For me, twitch and run as I might, I inevitably came face to face with myself and that, being a highly uncomfortable reflection, meant I was on the run again. Eventually, however, when I became so exhausted I could run no longer and that old Shadow caught up with me. I see that now as a moment of grace, even if at the time it felt horrible.

I could no longer deny that my life wasn't working. I was addicted to alcohol, I was depressed and I had writer's block. Lovely. Left with no alternative I faced that old Shadow and, in the parlance of Alcoholics Anonymous -- admitted I had a problem. (I find much of the language and symbolism of AA is compatible with that of Jungian psychology and, as it happens, Carl Jung corresponded with Bill Wilson, the founder of AA.)

It wasn't an easy path, nor was progress made overnight, but progress was made, and continues to be made. Still, even after all these years, sometimes The Shadow pops up again, albeit in a new way, at a new level, and I have to sit down and make friends with it all over again.

So, the question is -- how does, exactly, one do that? Well, running away from discomfort doesn’t work, so it will come as no surprise that sitting still and not avoiding it just might. Perhaps it sounds too simple, too unsophisticated, but I can't tell you how much the gentle ebb and flow of regular habits and routines can comfort you during a rough time, and return you to your healthy, creative and productive self. When life-on-life's-terms piles up round your door and makes it difficult to go on, the simple, uncomplicated, quiet things can be incredibly healing.

“Our task is the opposite of distraction. Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God’s active presence.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

There are times when a retreat from the jagged edges of the world is required, when it behooves us to pay attention to the day we’re in, and sometimes the pain we’re in. There’s quite a good book called “A 12-Step Approach to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius” geared to those in recovery, obviously, that provides meditations for staying focused on simplicity and The Sacred. I suggest you don’t need to be “in recovery” to benefit from it. I also like “Saint Benedict on the Freeway – a Rule of Life for the 21^st Century.” This book helps us formulate a “rule” for our days – which is to say a daily pattern of life arranged so that there are particular moment in the day when certain things are done.

“Typically, we rule ourselves with habits of serial behavior that make our lives flow more easily, and follow sequences that help us to remember what comes next.” - Corinne Ware (Saint Benedict on the Freeway)

It doesn’t matter so much, in my mind, whether you believe in any particular form of Higher Power or not; what matters is that you find a way to live safely and peacefully within the world in such a way that you maintain your creativity and your health, both mentally and physically.

I used to think drama and chaos were the twin muses of creativity. Now I try to keep them out of my life, for when my life is in chaos it’s very hard to focus on the writing, which is my form of spiritual practice, and my most healing activity. And so I try to keep regular habits of sleep, food, exercise and solitude etc. I lead a very quiet life, for I’ve found that’s best for me. It’s not easy sometimes, since my thoughts can sometimes get quite snarled and tumultuous. When that happens I try naps, going for a walk, or, if it’s really out of control, I watch a film called, “Into Great Silence,” about a Carthusian monastery in Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps, considered one of the world's most ascetic monasteries. (In fact, that's not a bad metaphor for my creative journey -- beginning with Nietzsche and ending with a contemplative monastery!) It never fails that after watching these men leading their quiet, simple, peaceful lives, I slip back into peace myself.

I have a coffee mug that reads: Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. I agree, but sometimes I need a little help getting there.

In case you do as well, I’ll leave you with this clip:

The God of Small Things

“Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.” - William Zinsser

A friend of mine is taking a writing class with William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well. I was surprised when she told me several of her classmates quit the class when Zinsser gently insisted on talking about the process of writing, rather than how one might get an agent; on writing well about the small details of life, rather than on big abstract ideas, and when he suggested that forgiveness was more important in a memoir than revenge. Apparently these folks did not want to hear that writing is hard work, that it is best to actually write the book before approaching an agent, and that if you are writing a memoir, don't forget the humanity bit.

"Writing is out. Whining is in." William Zinsser.

I wonder if Zinsser is saddened, as I am, by students who arrive in class wanting only to be told how to get their work published, and not terribly interested in how to become better writers, or how to find meaning and grace in the writer's life.

"Intention is the writer's soul." William Zinsser

What is your intention as a writer? Is it to be famous and to have your books in the windows at Barnes and Noble, or is it to use writing as a way to find meaning in the world? In his book Writing Places, Zinsser says: " I never let writing define my life; I want to be a person first and then a writer." Especially now, when the publishing business is in such a muddle, this is an important concept to hear. If you are truly a writer, then it is the act of writing will sustain you, not the act of publishing, which is a completely different experience.

Writing is not therapy, I tell my students, although it can be healing. However, it will be neither if you insist on using your writing only as a vehicle for ramming your beliefs down the reader's throat. Writing should not, in my opinion, be a tool for revenge. It should not be a pedestal from which one flaunts one's victimization, which is often what happens in modern memoir; nor should it be a soapbox from which one shouts one's theories.

The great southern writer Harry Crews once said:

“I don’t have the answers to the questions raised in my books. I’m not supposed to have them. If I had them I’d be writing tracts. I’d be writing things like Jehovah Witnesses hand out.They have the answers.I have no answers.And writers who have answers are usually very, very, very bad writers.No matter how well they use the language they are bad artists.An artist is outside that. In many ways the artist is apolitical and amoral, not immoral, amoral, outside it. Otherwise you’re writing tract fiction, tract literature, literature that has a point to make. Any fiction that has a point to make is bad; it’s going to be bad, because nobody knows what the fucking point is...”

Well, Harry’s pretty adamant there.But I agree with him.The worst books I’ve ever read were the ones that we trying to persuade me of something – and a lot of religious literature does just that, so be warned. Books that try to cram a philosophy or a theology or a political point of view down my throat are about as much fun to read as being force-fed is fun for the foie gras goose.Chekhov said that it is not the job of the writer to provide answers, but to properly frame the question.

Whether you are writing memoir, or trying to figure out what your novel is really all about, I think this advice from Zinsser is terrific:

As for how to actually organize your memoir, my final advice is, again, think small. Tackle your life in easily manageable chunks. Don't visualize the finished product, the grand edifice you have vowed to construct. That will only make you anxious.

Here's what I suggest.

Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that's still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn't have to be long -- three pages, five pages -- but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday's episode doesn't have to be related to Monday's episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.

Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don't be impatient to start writing your "memoir," the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer's best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it's not about. They will tell you what's primary and what's secondary, what's interesting and what's not, what's emotional, what's important, what's funny, what's unusual, what's worth pursing and expanding. You'll begin to glimpse your story's narrative shape and the road you want to take.

Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.

It may seem as though that advice is pertinent only to memoir writers, but if you apply the same theory and practice to your fiction writing, you'll be amazed at what begins to happen. Themes will emerge, and you will be writing in evocative scenes, rather than static abstractions. Again, the trick is to think small, to observe the small things, the details, the sense impressions of our lives. If you relate those simply and faithfully, you will begin to be a better writer. As Chekhov said:

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

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We don't do that here

Last week I was down in Trenton with an organization called People & Stories, a reading and discussion program that (according to their mission statement) "creates unique access to literature. Adults and young adults who have had limited opportunities to experience the power of literature work in small groups led by a trained coordinator. Participants draw upon their own experiences to discuss complex short stories. As they examine the poetics, issues, and values the stories explore, people can discover ways to see things differently."

Now and then they ask me to join their classes and read one of my stories. The participants this time round were enrolled in a program called "Operation Fatherhood." Fathers of welfare children, they are trying to leave street life behind and learn how to become responsible parents, wage earners, maybe even husbands. Most had been incarcerated at one time or another, some recently.


I like these men. They're funny and smart and talkative, and their resilience is admirable. Okay, one guy got cranky when the organizer asked his name, promptly went to sleep and when he woke up halfway through the class got up and walked out without so much as a polite nod. However, the other guys made it clear they thought he was a jerk.

"Why'd he have to say it like that?" asked one young man.
"Like what?" I said.
"When you asked him if he was coming back, and he said, 'hell, no.'" The young man frowned and cracked his knuckles. Disrespect is taken seriously here.
"He didn't say, 'Hell, no,'" I clarified. "He said, 'I don't know.' Although, let's be clear, I suspect he was thinking, 'Hell, no."
And everyone laughed then.

Sure, these guys done some things they're not proud of, and have had some pretty hard experiences. One had been shot by someone with a .22 seven times, and when that didn't kill him, the assailant went home, got a bigger gun and then 'really lit me up,' as the man put it.. I didn't ask what had started the altercation. None of my business really.

What is my business here is trying to find common ground, to find myself in the experience of these men, and to have them find themselves in my experience, and in my writing. One man had apparently challenged the usefulness of such a program, saying he didn't see how reading stories and talking about literature was going to help him get a job. I can understand his feelings, but here's why I think this program is useful... let me give you an example....

Last year when I visited People & Stories, it was a few days after my brother Ronnie went missing. Ronnie was a drug addict and alcoholic who at 46 had been living with my father and step-mother as he tried to get clean... again. When he disappeared we all feared the worst, especially since my other brother, Bernie had killed himself a few years before.

The story they'd chosen for me to read that day was called, "Drop in Any Time," a tale inspired by a home invasion that happened to a friend of mine. It's a tough story, and upsetting, and I wasn't sure I'd get through it, skinless and raw and scared as I was, so I told the class what was going on in my life, including the fact I was then clean and sober myself for a number of years, and asked them to help me out if I fell apart. Immediately, people were asking me if I was okay, and giving me hugs and asking if they could help and talking about suicides and addiction in their own families.

I got through the story and then we talked for about an hour. Without reservation I tell you that I got more compassion and kindness in that room than almost anywhere else. Why? Because they GOT it, and they aren't afraid of pain, accustomed as they are to dealing with it, and they don't shy away from the messy parts of life.

My brother's body was found hanging from a tree down by the river a few days later.

Since then, I've written a story called "Neighbors" about a father dealing with his son's death by drug overdose (because that's how writers deal with things... we write about them) and it was published in a book called "An Unrehearsed Desire." In the story the father goes to the home of the local drug dealer with a rifle, thinking to take justice in his own hands, although it doesn't work out the way he expects (thank goodness). The men in Operation Fatherhood didn't know why I'd written this story, but of the stories offered to People & Stories, that's the one they chose to read. Hmmmm....

So, I told this group the history of the story and how this was going to be only the second time I'd read it publicly, and I hoped they'd have patience with me if I couldn't get through it. And again they were kind and compassionate and they listened more politely than many of the audiences I've read for. When I was finished we talked about addiction and violence and dealers and how you try and protect your kids and clean up your neighborhoods. We talked about what responsibility we might have for our neighbors. One man talked about how impossible it was when one family teaches good morality to the kids, but then has to send them out into an environment where no one else gives a damn.

He's right, of course, it is hard.

I remembered the story of Father Jean Vanier, who founded the remarkable l'Arche Communities wherein people with and without disabilities live together, sharing their lives as equals. In one of his books about the founding of these communities, he talked about a young man who came to live with them. He was in his early 20s. He was severely mentally and physically disabled -- mute, deaf, blind, paralyzed -- and had been cared for all his life by his mother, who had now died. Think about that. The only thing this young man knew was the scent and touch of his mother, who was now gone...and nothing could be explained to him. Not death, not change, not who these new people were, with the new touch and smells of a new place... how terrifying it must have been. And the young man began to make a noise, a terrible loud noise in this throat and he kept making this noise hour after hour after endless hour, from day into night and day and night again. In his hideous desperation, worn out and without a single nerve left, Father Vanier recalled wanting to go into the boy's room and putting a pillow over his face until he stopped making that noise.

Father Jean Vanier, (right) founder of the L'Arche communities, and one of the community members.

He didn't. But the question Vanier asked was, why not? And he thought about the men he regularly met with in prison. Men who were convicted of murder, many on death row. He had always loved these men, as he believed God loved them, but a tiny part of his heart didn't quite believe he was exactly as they were, for up until the moment this boy began making that terrible noise, he had never contemplated killing someone. But now he had. And so what stopped him from actually taking that terrible step? It was quite simple: in L'arche, they didn't do that. It wasn't possible. If he wanted to stay in this group, he could not do this awful thing. We don't do that here, a voice in his head said. But in the world where the men convicted of murder had been born and raised, people DID do that. People were gunned down, stabbed, beaten with bats and bricks, with unspeakable regularity. In the world they lived in, murder was possible. It happened. In Vanier's community it wasn't possible.

Father Vanier understood that had he been born in a different place, raised in a different culture -- such as the gang-banging, death-worshiping, nihilist, dog-eat-dog, turf war culture so many young people grow up in -- he might just have acted on his urges.

I told the men this story, and they told me more of their stories and we talked about how we are the same, really, down in the marrow, full of brokenness and hope, dreams and despair and a great longing to be known, and touched by someone who loves us and cares for us. When the class was done there were hugs and handshakes and laughter and I know I felt that on this day literature had done a great thing -- it had brought us together, people who might otherwise feel we had little in common. Prompted by literature we had made ourselves vulnerable to each other, we had showed each other who we were, and had been accepted. I think all our spines were a little straighter, our steps a little springier, when we left the room and looked forward to seeing each other again in a few weeks.

Taking that kind of risk with a stranger, and doing it with confidence and honesty, is just the kind of skill necessary not only for forming the bonds of community, but for getting a job, and keeping it, for stepping up and being a responsible, useful member of the world. So is being able to communicate effectively; to see the nuances in a narrative, either written or spoken; to present an argument, to find common ground, to accept compromise for the common good, to build a bridge between people...And so if ever anyone wonders if People & Stories offers anything to a man hoping to leave street life behind and become a responsible father, wage earner and husband, I'll say, hell, yes. HELL, yes.

I'm honored they invite me, and deeply enriched for the experience. Thanks.

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Today the trees are coming down

The old silver maple
God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, "Ah!"- Joseph Campbell

This morning I woke early, made a cup of strong, fortifying coffee, and went outside to say goodbye to some friends. In about an hour a troop of men with chain saws will come and cut down seven old trees on my property, among them three I consider close friends: a lightning-struck silver maple (above) and two white birches.

I write looking out at trees. I consider them co-creators, friends, and teachers. I agree with Willa Cather, who said: "I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do." (O Pioneers) and with William Cullen Bryant who, in A Forest Hymn, said, "The groves were God's first temples." When my spiritual director, the fabulous Sister Rita, asked me where I felt God's presence, without hesitation I said, "In my garden, with the trees and birds."

Every morning I wake up and head into the kitchen for the first cup of tea of the day. The birches, white against the green curtain of the garden, are the first things I see outside my kitchen window. In fact, they're one of the reasons I fell in love with this house when I first saw it. I restructured the kitchen in order to have windows that focused on the birches and the big old maple beyond. When I saw them, when I fell in love with them, I forgot that all things come to an end, and that birches and maples, like people, will die. Some by old age, like the birches, some by violence, like the silver maple.

The birches, greeting me from the kitchen window

I love birches. Always have. The birch is the first tree of the Ogham, the Celtic tree alphabet, associated with purification, fertility and witches' brooms. In an earlier time, bundles made of birch twigs were used to drive out the spirits of the old year. The birch tree is one of the first trees to come into leaf in the spring, and thus is often used as a symbol of new beginnings. As I did research for the book I'm presently writing, set in 7th century Anglo-Saxon Britain, I learned that the deities associated with birch are mostly love and fertility goddesses, such as the northern European Frigga and Freya. Eostre (from whom we derive the word Easter), the Anglo Saxon goddess of spring was celebrated around and through the birch tree between the spring equinox and Beltane.

To First Nations people, trees have always been sacred, of course. They shelter, they give themselves for our warmth, they provide nourishment, they are in balance - the same above as below. In Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tradition, when the Peacemaker planted the Tree of Peace more than a thousand years ago to symbolize the divine law which he and the people of the confederacy had put into practice, the "White Roots of Peace" were said to extend out in the four directions from the Tree. The Peacemaker told the assembled people that anyone who desired to live in peace might find one of these roots where it grew near their feet and trace it back to this Sacred Tree.

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The Tree of Peace -- you can see the hatchet buried beneath it, which is where the expression comes from.

(illustration by John Kahionhes Fadden)

"Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops hat made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy." -- Black Elk, 1931

In the Anglo-Saxon belief system the great tree of life is called Yggdrasil, the giant ash that links and shelters all the worlds. Beneath the three roots the realms of Asgard, Jotenheim, and Nifleim. . Three wells lie at its base: the Well of Wisdom; the Well of Fate (guarded by the Norns); and the Roaring Kettle, the source of many rivers. Four deer run across the branches of the tree and eat the buds; they represent the four winds. There are other inhabitants of the tree, such as the squirrel Ratatosk ("swift teeth"), a notorious gossip, and Vidofnir ("tree snake"), the golden cock that perches on the topmost bough. The roots are gnawed upon by Nidhogg and other serpents. On the day of Rganarok, the fire giant Surt will set the tree on fire.

The Ghillie Dhu is a solitary Scottish elf who lives in birches. His clothes are woven from leaves and moss. Like the Dryads who live in oak trees, I am told he will die with the tree. Oh dear.

A few weeks ago, on the full moon, I found myself wakeful at about 3:00 a.m. and so came downstairs so my tossing and turning wouldn't disturb My Best Beloved. There were the birch trees, shining, glowing in the moonlight. I just stood there staring. They were like young girls, dressed in silver.

Ah, but they were not young anymore. They are old ladies, bald and brittle. Every time a wind blows branches crash down on the roof and terrace. They are dying. And today the men will come. Tomorrow I'll wake up and go to the kitchen and look out and they will be gone.

I wrote about the silver maple in another blog, talking about the night it was hit by lightning. We've spent a couple of years trying to save it, but this year huge hunks turned gray and dry and fell to the ground like cannonballs. It's dangerous now. It's fought a valiant fight, but it's tired. And half of it's gone. It's time. I know. I burned some sweetgrass at the foot of the trees this morning, to send a prayer with with, and to thank them. I stood for a few moments with my hand on the great scar that pythons around the trunk of the old maple.

The lightning scar on the lower trunk - wider than my two hands. It's even bigger higher up.

Do trees know, can trees sense? In the excellent book, "Tree" by my friend Wayne Grady and Dr. David Suzuki, it says this:

"Trees are communal, sometimes to the point of being communistic: they grow together in large groups, as though for comfort or protection. They have relationships -- including sexual relationship through cross-pollination -- and even communicate with other trees within their stands, including trees of their own kind as well as those of other species; they function for the benefit of the whole in sometimes startling ways; and they enter into mutualistic partnerships with other species -- even other species so distantly related they belong to different orders -- as surely as human being raise beans for food. 'Far more than ourselves,' writes John Fowls in THE TREE, 'trees are social creatures and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit.'

And as I read on, I was astonished to learn this:

In an experiment conducted in 1979, three groups of willow trees were planted in pots and placed in sealed rooms, two groups in one room and the third group in another. Half of the trees in the first room were infected with leaf-eating caterpillars. After two weeks, the immune systems in the infected plants had been cranked up to repel the caterpillar invasion, and so were the immune systems in the uninfected trees in the same room; the trees in the isolated room, however were unaffected. Somehow the infested trees in the first room alerted the other trees in that room -- and not my mycorrhizal communication, because the trees were in pots.

Mysterious. As so much of life is. And if I chose to believe that the trees know I celebrate them, and grieve their passing, perhaps that's not so far fetched after all.

Ah... the sound of chainsaws. I can't bear to watch. I'm going to take a walk in the woods.

Before I go... although the season is wrong, the sentiment is right. From Charlotte Mews, I'll leave you with this.

The Trees are Down

by Charlotte Mew

—and he cried with a loud voice:
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees—
(Revelation)

They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens.

For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall,

The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves,

With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all.

I remember one evening of a long past Spring

Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive.

I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing,

But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive.

The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough

On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain,

Green and high

And lonely against the sky.

(Down now!—)

And but for that,

If an old dead rat

Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again.

It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day;

These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem:

When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away

Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them.

It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes;

Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains,

In the March wind, the May breeze,

In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas.

There was only a quiet rain when they were dying;

They must have heard the sparrows flying,

And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying—

But I, all day, I heard an angel crying:

‘Hurt not the trees.’

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You're wrong! I'm right!

I will not stand and fight all night. I will not shout, YOU'RE WRONG, I'M RIGHT!

A few years ago, my Best Beloved and I had an argument. It was a real corker, a rip snorter. Tears were shed and doors were slammed and some very unhappy things were said.

My Best Beloved had, some years prior, promised me that by a certain date he would see to it I had a little place of my own, a little cabin in the woods somewhere, or by the sea...a place to call home. That date had come and gone, and he had not made good on that promise, nor did he understand what the big deal was, since we were leading a terrific life, in PARIS, for God's sake, and why wasn't I appreciative?

Now, I do understand that he had a point, and furthermore, it is not the responsibility of My Best Beloved to buy me a little cabin in the woods, that if I want one so darn bad I should just go and work hard and save some money and buy it myself. But he'd promised, you see, and I'd believed him.

I thought he understood how important it was to me. I have this thing about home, a fear of never finding a home, or of losing my home, which no doubt stems from being raised in a family where my mother often feared she would, because of my Dad's alcoholism, lose hers.

It was a hard fight, and it took some time to figure out that I wasn't really arguing about the cabin in the wood; I was arguing about my sense of safety in the world, and of belonging. He wasn't really arguing about why he shouldn't have to live up to his promises, but about being valued for who he is and all the wonderful things he does.

We both lost our emotional balance in the midst of that argument. Thank God, we loved and respected each other enough to not merely list all the other person's faults and shortcomings and become immovable in our positions. We loved each other so much that we wanted to see where our own faults lay and we looked for common ground, for shared values, trying to figure out why the other person felt the way they did.

I still don't have that little cabin in the woods, but I don't feel so much like I need it any more. I feel safer in the world, due in large part to My Best Beloved's capacity to love me for precisely who I am, flaws and all. I know my home isn't really found inside a structure, but rather in the condition of my soul in relationship to all Creation. Maybe I'll find a little house by the sea one day, or on the top of a mountain... it will be nice, but I don't NEED it anymore, because the fears that drove the need are (pretty much) evaporated.

In these times, when people are hollering in the streets, waving signs (and occasionally guns) and calling their neighbors all manner of nasty names, it's not easy for any of us to maintain an emotional balance, but I'm certainly trying.

Still, I'd like everyone to calm down. I'd like everyone to be respectful. Not to shriek, "Liar!" Not to hold up signs suggesting bad things should happen to people with whom we disagree. I'd like not to have to block people from my Facebook page because they bully others.

In short, I'd like people not to be so frightened. That's right, frightened. Just as with that old argument between My Best Beloved and me, I believe fear is at the root of all such bad behavior and always has been. Fear of change. Fear of the other. Fear of losing something. Fear that there are only so many seats on the bus, that there isn't enough of the good stuff of life to go round.

I think the argument most people are having in this country isn't really about health care or who has the right to talk to school kids; it's about deeper fears. Fear of death. Fear of poverty and want. Fear of being excluded. Fear of losing control.

And sadly, most of the people who seem to be the most afraid are people who say they're Christians. What does that say about the quality of faith in this country? I'm not suggesting we shouldn't speak up if we feel there is an injustice in the world, or in our homes, for that matter... what I'm saying is that the level of fury and venom (not to mention weird misinformation) by people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (who I really think should talk to his AA sponsor!) indicates these people feel they live in a dangerous and uncaring universe, in which they are pitted against enemies at every turn. They behave as if they're being attacked and that they are utterly undefended.

Really? That's not what my experience of God has been, even when bad things have happened to me, and believe me, like everyone else on the planet, bad stuff has happened to me and the people I love. But even in the midst of bad stuff, I sense the God of my understanding is so vast, so mysterious, and so present, everywhere, always, that I feel as though I have a Companion on this journey and that this journey has a point to it.

In a wonderful sermon by Ian Lawton of Christ Community Church he says:

Susan Jeffers wrote a powerful book called “End the Struggle and Dance with Life”. In the story, an old woman is asked why she is always calm and cheerful. Her answer is beautiful. "Well, I wear this world just as a loose garment." To wear the world as a loose garment means to embrace life with passion, but neither to smother it, nor be smothered by it. Wearing the world as a loose garment speaks of comfort with what lies beneath, accepting life is it evolves, but not expecting it to stay the same. It implies no judgment, for everything is as it should be.

Wearing the world as a loose garment is a metaphor for holding the balance between embrace and detachment, intimacy and autonomy, the present moment and impermanence.

In striving for this balance, you discover within all the help you ever wanted and all the comfort you ever desired.

If you want to name an experience God, then you are free to do so, but know that it is only a name and putting a name on God is as restricting as putting an elephant in a rat’s bathing suit.

In the immortal words of Duncan Littlefair- “You don’t find God. You realize God.” You don’t find God. You can’t fully name God. You can’t adequately speak of God. You don’t find God. You realize God in art, metaphor, story, music and experience.

That's my experience of God... a realized experience... if I am in good spiritual condition I have a sense that all is as it should be; there is no need for all argument. I will talk with you, respectfully, about what I think and what I believe. I hope you will let me know, respectfully, what you think and what you believe. Then, perhaps we'll even stop being afraid long enough to be kind to each other..

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the Truth has a Price

I am most grateful to the Globe & Mail for publishing my essay, THE TRUTH HAS A PRICE, wherein I discuss the responsibilities facing writers and how memory and the truth may be far more fluid things than they appear.

You can read it here.

The Magic (Music?) of Storytelling

Where do you get your ideas from? How often I've been asked that. How do writers begin? How do we get past the surface of the blank page, down to the place Robert Olen Butler calls "From Where You Dream"? Which is the name of his excellent book on the process of writing fiction. In a chapter from that book entitled, A Writer Prepares, Butler says:

There is no intellect in this world powerful enough to create a great work of novelistic art. Only the unconscious can fit together the stuff of fiction; the conscious mind cannot.

But the question remains... how do you consciously drop down into the unconscious?

A few months ago I sat in a restaurant in St. John's Newfoundland and had a chat with an acquaintance who is writing his first novel. He asked me when I knew what the ending of a book would be. I told him I began writing, urged forward by a character I'd created, someone who intrigued me, someone I'd put in an interesting, dramatic situation.

I said by "drama" I mean desire + danger = drama, and just as 'desire' doesn't necessarily mean sexual desire, by 'danger' I don't necessarily mean physical danger -- psychological danger is just as interesting, if not more so, than car chases.

I said that once I'd written, oh, say one hundred pages or so, an end scene began to form in my mind...a place, the character, something happening in it...and most importantly, an atmosphere, an emotional resonance. Perhaps it is a woman standing alone, looking out over a landscape, thinking a particular thing, feeling a particular emotion. Huh, I say to myself at that moment -- so THAT'S what I'm writing about. And then I start arcing the narrative toward that end point.

"So you know what the ending is by the time you've finished the first five chapters or so?" my acquaintance asked.

"Well, I know what I'm writing about, and I know how I want the reader to feel at the end of the book, but the exact details of the final scene, including who's in it and what they're doing, may change by the time I read the end. But thus far, with every book I've written, the atmosphere and emotional resonance has been exactly as I first imagined it."

I see it....I see it....an ENDING!

The fellow fairly shrieked. "WHAT? That sounds like hocus pocus! Magic! But how do you DO it?"

Good question.

What I'm about to say does not address the nuts and bolts of writing, of course. (I can address some of those in different essays, if you'd like.) This isn't about how to reveal character or write in significant details, or any of the rest of literature's mechanicals -- I'm assuming you know all that. This is about, having educated yourself on how to use the tools of the trade, you actually begin to WRITE.

What I'm suggesting is that you go into a sort of writing dream...a kind of self-hypnosis. Now, the truth is that how you get there is going to be different for everyone. Just like prayer is different for everyone..just like they're aren't any right or wrong ways to pray, there aren't any right or wrong ways to get into the waking-dream state necessary for deep writing -- although there are perhaps ways with are more effective FOR YOU than others. Eric Maisel, a psychotherapist who works exclusively with artists, has written a book by that very name, DEEP WRITING, and in it he suggests some good ways of getting into that creative state, including simply saying "Hush, hush," to quite the mind. He says:

"...managing the mind is both a loosening and a tightening of one's grip. But you don't need a set of complicated instructions to know when to loosen and when to tighten or how to do both at once. The principle is simple. Orient toward thought, engage your brain, let old habits of thought slip away, silence any demons that have the temerity to howl, say "Hush" and mean it. You will then experience both qualities simultaneously, the tightening and the loosening, as if a bowstring were pulled taut and an arrow let fly all in the same instant."

Dr. Maisel then gives a very good "hushing" exercise, which I'm not going to repeat here, because really, you should support his work by...oh, I don't know...buying a copy of his book!

Writing from the Body by John Lee is another quite good book full of useful tips for getting down into what Lee calls "the grammar of the gut, the syntax of the sinews, the language of the legs."

What do I do? Well, first I go to my writing place, which is a quiet place and away from distraction. If you don't have one of those you need to get one. Unless you're one of those odd people who can write in cafes. Now THAT'S a mystery to me! But I digress... what do I do? I do actually pray. There are a variety of prayers I use, and sometimes I simply sit quietly and listen for 15 minutes or so. Or, I might say this prayer for stillness:

God of stillness and creative action, help me to find space for quietness today that I may live creatively, discover the inner meaning of silence, and learn the wisdom that heals the world. Send peace and joy to each quiet place, to all who are waiting and listening. May your still small voice be heard in the love of the Spirit.

I also sometimes light candles, burn incense, ring bells (Good Lord, you'd think I was Catholic!) and drink a quart of tea. I recommend reading poetry for a few minutes, just to get the taste of good language in your mouth. Another thing that helps is the right music. I suspect this is a common tool for writers, evidenced by the special feature in The New York Times' book blog, "Paper Cuts" entitled "Living with Music" wherein once a week a writer shares their writing play lists. I check in on a regular basis -- it's always fascinating, with such diverse entries as Charlie Mingus, Asha Bhosle and Bob Seeger, although there's a shocking lack of classical entries, for my taste.

I have a play list on my iPod named: "Dream." I play this as I try to work my way into the trance state conducive to deep writing. This play list consists of songs without words, although sometimes with vocalizations, and a couple with lyrics in a language I don't understand. Jonathan Elias' The Prayer Cycle, Ludovico Einaudi, Lisa Gerrard, Arvo Part, Azam Ali, Anouar Brahem, among others.

I close my eyes; I sit; I breathe; I listen; I wait...I breathe...hush...hush... after a few minutes images begin to form...without analyzing them I pick up a pen...hush...hush...I wait some more. And to be honest, some days there's an awful lot of waiting involved.

Once I've got a good writing buzz on (if you will) I choose something appropriate for both the novel's overall theme and for the particular scene on which I'm focusing. For this novel I'm writing set in the Anglo-Saxon 7th century, I'm listening to a good deal of atmospheric Scandinavian music: Lauri Vainmaa, Annbjorg Lien, Bukkene Bruse and Jukka Lincola -- all artists I discovered in the course of the writing process.

Every book is, of course, a different soundtrack. I'm so inspired by music that in my last novel, The Radiant City, the readers' notes in the back contain a soundtrack play list.

So -- prayer, hushing (meditation), music, and finally, actually picking up the pen. You can't forget that last bit, you know. Very little gets written until you write it. No magic elves, I'm afraid. And really, although it may all look like so much abracadabra, magic wands and rabbits-in-hats, it isn't. It's patience. Trust. Faith. Intention. Discipline. Meditation. Desire. Breath...silence...a soupcon of creative imagination...divine intervention,... and well, maybe a little magic.

Patience for a writer is more than a virtue -- it's a necessity

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