Living the Comma #40

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Living the Comma #40

Face-to-Face Writing Group Update. PASTRIX. Nadia Bolz-Weber.

Hello Writing Friends,

As August approaches, I am turning my attention to planning for the start of the second year of the Living the Comma Writing Group. I will be available to talk about the group at Community Day at Virginia Highland Church this Sunday after church. The group is a journal club, reading group, and writers community seeking to connect people with a creative process, a writing practice, and a spiritual path. We will meet — beginning in September — once a month, in-person at Virginia Highland Church (a link is also provided for each meeting, so people can join us virtually, too.) No writing experience is necessary. All are welcome.

Conversations with Authors — Nadia Bolz-Weber, Part II

Building on last week’s Living the Comma newsletter, I wrote a study guide for Chapter 5, “Thanks, ELCA!” from Nadia Bolz-Weber’s PASTRIX. Take a look at the text, excerpts, and questions based on text.

Excerpt 1 —

• God’s grace is a gift that is freely given to us. We don’t earn a thing when it comes to God’s love, and we only try to live in response to the gift.

• No one is climbing the spiritual ladder. We don’t continually improve until we are so spiritual we no longer need God. We die and are made new, but that’s different from spiritual self-improvement.

• We are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time.

• The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority.

• The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can’t, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us. Most especially in the Eucharist and in the stranger.

(Write out these bullet points, memorize them, and you could save a lot of money not going to Lutheran seminary. — Tenants of Lutheran faith taught by Paster Ross Merkle in Bolz-Weber’s adult confirmation class — NBW, p.49

Bolz-Weber explains, “I have been a Lutheran since then [confirmation class] because the Lutheran church is the only place that has given me language for what I have experienced to be true in my life, which is why I now call Pastor Ross Merkle the Vampire Who Turned Me.” — NBW, p.49

· Do any of these faith tenants particularly resonant with you?

· Do you have any faith tenant/”language for what I have experienced to be true” outside of this list?

Excerpt 2 —

“I had never experienced liturgy before. But here the congregation said things together during the service. And they did stuff: stood, sat, knelt, crossed themselves, went up to the altar for communion, like choreographed sacredness.” — NBW, p.46

· What aspects of liturgy do you find most grace-full?

· Bolz-Weber writes about the unfathomable mercy of God tapping us on the shoulder. Could liturgy — in text and form and structure — be God tapping us on the shoulder? Why or Why Not?

· In what ways can/does liturgy show up in our everyday lives?

Excerpt 3 —

“What happens in the Kingdom of God parable I was given is that a landowner goes out and hires laborers in the morning and agrees to pay them the daily wage. But then every few hours he goes and finds more workers and brings them in. In the afternoon he goes again to the marketplace and sees folks standing around and is like, “Why aren’t you working?” and they say, “Because no one would hire us,” and he sends them into his vineyard to work the last two hours of the day. When the work is done, he pays everyone the same thing, which pisses off the upstanding early risers who worked all day in the scorching heat because he has made the slept-till-noon new hires equal to them. The land owner is like, ’Seriously? You’re angry because I am generous?’ and then the final line of the parable is ‘The last shall be first and the first shall be last.’ This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.” — NBW, p. 56

· Do you agree with Bolz-Weber that most people do not believe in grace?

· What is the relationship between grace and greed? Grace and doubt? Grace and indifference?

A Writing Prompt

During the month of July, Bolz-Weber has had friends offer weekly 15-minute “pep talks.” They have discussed life’s ebbs and flows and favorite books and grief and tubas and needlepoint, to name a few things. This week, write about a pep talk you have either given or received. Describe the context? Who is involved? What wisdom is shared? In what ways is the pep talk comforting, inspiring, healing, and loving?

Welcome August. Welcome a new year of writing together. Welcome imagining and creating. Welcome deepening and strengthening. Welcome to building community.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.