Every month, I get that little Google Analytics email that lets me know people are visiting my website. And then I remember that the first thing they see is a Christmas post. *facepalm*
So, if you have wandered here... welcome! I’m on a bit of a blogging hiatus. I’m looking into redesigning this website, so I haven’t really been blogging so much this year. Plus... new job + pandemic brain + freelance writing, you know?
In the meantime, here are the basics: I’m a writer and spiritual director. I live in Fall River, MA with my English prof/poet husband and my melodramatic terrier. I write Alongside Letters to my email list, and I would love for you to subscribe. (Poke through the archives to get a feel for the kind of things I write about.)
I am on Twitter, but I don’t like hot takes, so I mostly share random observations, dog stories, and weird things said at Hotel Yokel. I am on Instagram, where you can see pictures of my melodramatic terrier. I am on Facebook but I don’t post anything there ever. ;)
I hope to unveil a new website in this spot soon! But in the meantime, please say hello, subscribe to Alongside Letters, or follow me on the social medias.
This year, my church put together a collection of Advent lectionary reflections from writers in our community. Thought I’d share my piece here as well! If you’d like to read them all, you can grab a pdf here. Thank you Jenny Currier for making this happen! As hard as it is to be away from friends this Advent, I’m so glad we can still make beautiful things together.
----------------
Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
— 1 Corinthians 1:7-8
The final days of a difficult year dry up and slip away, like autumn-crisped leaves from a maple tree.
You may say good riddance. By all accounts, 2020 was a hard year. Bring on the Christmas lights and cheerful songs. Or maybe you will end this year with the disappointment of canceled travel plans or uprooted traditions.
This dying year leaves us with the same old griefs — a nation split along political fault lines, the marathon against injustice, our personal battles against loneliness, isolation, and weariness.
How do we dare to hope as each day ends earlier and darker? How could we dare to hang our decorations and pretend, for a few short weeks, that everything is merry and bright?
In 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Paul begins his letter to a church plagued with problems, but he starts by calling out their true identity. They are “enriched” in Christ, not lacking any spiritual gift, called into fellowship with Christ. But more importantly, he highlights the truth of God’s character — faithful to see them through, to keep them “firm to the end” as they “eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.”
In Advent, we remember a world waiting for the Messiah to be revealed, and it reminds us we are waiting still. This waiting isn’t passive, sitting back and hoping for things to get better. Instead we wait with full attention, trusting God to sustain us.
We join God in the work of healing each other’s loneliness, dismantling injustice, and mending our divisions with courage and grace. We lament and call for God to “rend the heavens and come down,” to once again do “awesome deeds that we did not expect.” (Isaiah 64:1, 3) We repent, for the things we have done and left undone, on our own and as a family.
And we stay awake, nurturing the spark of hope.
Whatever comes next, may we go forward with courage and confidence.
May we remember, in lengthening nights and colder days, that our God will keep us until the end, when the first dawn breaks over the New Creation.
Well, hello. I have written two new things and it just so happens they are both on the Internet today! Neither has anything to do with politics or viruses. You’re welcome. :)
New Thing #1: At The Rabbit Room, an interview with my good friend / most excellent writer Janna Barber about her long-awaited memoir Hidden in Shadow.
I met Janna at Hutchmoot 2011, and over the years have found in her a kindred writer spirit, someone who desires to grow in her craft and offer hope through her words.
It’s been an honor to support her through the process of writing, revision, and preparing for release day. We had a conversation about the eight-year making of Hidden in Shadow, the challenges of vulnerable storytelling, and her hope for the readers who experience her story.
New Thing #2: At She Reads Truth, talking about Love for their brand new Fruit of the Spirit study. It’s only Day 2 if you want to jump in!
The famous “love chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13 outlines many attributes of this love: patience, kindness, not insisting on its own way, rejoicing in truth, hoping and enduring everything. Enduring wars and disease and hatred. Outlasting empires and buildings and movements. In this litany of love’s attributes, I see the face of God. I hear God’s invitation to make ourselves at home in this love and let it transform us through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Popping in real quick to say two things...
1) I have been taking quite the break from Twitter and Facebook lately, because I just... can’t right now. I’d like to write about that. But well, writing for things other than work has been sort of hard in pandemic times. However...
2) I have written a handful of poems over the past few months, and one of them is published at Foundling House today! Thanks Janna Barber for making room for this piece.
If you’re feeling a little bit weary with carrying the weight of 2020, this one’s for you. 💛
Read “In Praise of Limits” at Foundling House
(Photo Credit: “Small Tortoiseshell” by Wendy North, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)
The first draft of this blog post was written on a beautiful May 5th, parked at Allen’s Pond in Westport, MA, part of the traditional territory of the Wampanoag People. An appropriate place to write this reflection/book review.
Just before I sat down to write this, I saw an email listing a few ways to support my Mashpee Wampanoag neighbors this week. In the middle of a pandemic, the Indigenous people best known for their role in our Thanksgiving mythology are fighting to hold their claim on the little bit of their original land on Cape Cod. As they prepare for federal hearing on May 20th* in a bid to keep their land, Danielle Hill, a member of the tribe, has asked members and nonnatives to join her in a Sacred Fire Prayer Protest, one way to show solidarity before this critical hearing. As awful as the circumstances are, she notes the power of prayer to unite native and nonnative people, and says, “It’s a good thing for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. People are learning about us.”*
This was meant to be a book review, but I think it needs to begin with a confession. If it weren’t for Kaitlin Curtice and her work, this whole story might have gone unnoticed to me, just one more piece of bad news in the orbit of my life. I don’t know that I would have had the language or context for that deep connection between a land and its people, or remembered to lament with people who have already lost so much.
That’s painful to admit, but confession and repentance is part of the healing. I am grateful for the way Kaitlin leads the way with her voice and bridges the space between my white evangelical world and the lives of my Indigenous neighbors. We don’t know each other, but she has taught me so much: about the importance of knowing and acknowledging whose land I live on, the ongoing traumas experienced by Indigenous people, and the beautiful cultures and spiritual practices that live on through them.
So there’s the preface. That’s why I was excited for the chance to be part of the launch team for her new book Native, a reflective memoir about Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God. And whew, I will be thinking about this one for a while.
In this book, Kaitlin writes frankly and poetically about the intersections of her Indigenous identity and Christian upbringing, and the tensions that live in that space with her. Kaitlin grew up in the midst of white evangelical culture, where her Potawatomi identity was constantly erased. Native is the story of reconnecting with her heritage and discovering what it means to belong to the land and her people, exploring themes of creation care, politics, colonization, and decentering whiteness along the way.
If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. As a memoir, it’s a work of raw vulnerability, one that she has noted was incredibly difficult to write. “I feel deep within my bones what it means to be one who is removed, one who is assimilated, one whose people remain invisible.” she writes. “And yet, our stories will always carry us, because that is exactly what they are meant to do.”
You could say this is a book written from the middle of a painful journey, where she recounts the dismantling of her comfortable faith, and the rebuilding into something new and more whole. She speaks of her ancestors, of hearing from them in dreams. She writes about laying tobacco on the water as she prays, and teaching her children about the ways of their ancestors. No doubt some Christian readers might squirm a little at this language. I found it beautiful to witness a young woman coming home to herself.
So there’s the story of her own personal experience, and, in the background, a bigger, darker story of colonization, Native erasure, mistreatment of the land, and white supremacy. If you aren’t familiar with the language of social justice, it might be a lot to take in. Maybe you’ll wonder, what exactly does it mean when she talks about settler faith or decolonizing our perspective? Rather than a book written to educate you or spell everything out, Native is an invitation to sit still, listen, and perhaps be uncomfortable.
Another confession: I sometimes felt weary with passages about current events and politics. I wanted to hear her story, not more of the ugliness that I see in the news, in the day to day life in America.
But that is my privilege talking, isn’t it? All of this is her story too. All I can do is stop thinking about what I want to hear, listen, and risk being changed. If the book feels all over the place, that’s because true stories are like that. Rather than a linear beginning, middle, and end, real lives are what we have as scattered pieces come together in a slowly evolving whole.
“Telling our experiences, like I’m expressing my experiences to you in this book, is a sacred kind of work, and as we pass our stories and experiences down to our children, we are changing our children, changing ourselves, and changing the world.”
Tonight, I will pause to pray for my Mashpee Wamponoag neighbors. It’s a small thing, but if I, like Danielle Hill, believe that prayer could actually move something that seems unshakeable, or at least unite us in some mysterious way, it’s something worth doing.
And while I do this, I’ll give thanks for Kaitlin Curtice — for the painful work she does every day as she remembers herself, for the way she bravely lets us in on her journey, for the ways she calls us to change our hearts and change the world.
This book is a lot to take in. But it’s a journey worth taking with this thoughtful, brave writer. And if listening is how we open the door to change, then let us listen closer.
* This article states the hearing is on May 7th, but it has sense been rescheduled.
Native is out now! Thanks to Brazos Press and the author for the review copy of this book. Consider buying a copy to support Kaitlin and her work, preferably from Bookshop.org so you can support indie bookstores too!
Yes, I stand by my statement that you don’t have to be creative and productive during weird quarantine times. But also, I fulfilled a nerdy dream and started a podcast with Chris, just in time for National Poetry Month. Pleased to introduce The Poetry Pubcast is now live for your listening pleasure and edification!
Back in 2018, we started a little Facebook group called The Poetry Pub just so we’d have some friends to join us for November Poem-a-Day. Since then, a handful of members have released books, we’ve published a few community digital chapbooks, and over 200 people have joined us to share the joy of poems! It’s crazy and lovely and I’m so glad to be part of it.
For Season 1, we called up some of our wonderful poet friends to share about their adventures in writing poetry and self-publishing, and read a few poems too! It’s currently available on Stitcher and iTunes, or you can check out the first two episodes right here:
Some days, this isolated life is a well of beauty and kindness. I do my work, spend time reading, check in with friends and family, and make a beautiful, tasty dinner. And then there are the days when the to-do list stares back, but all I see are the constant news articles, the social media notifications, the monotony of homebound life where time loses meaning.
In this strange, slow new world, where many of us are working from home, deleting canceled events from our calendars, suddenly homeschooling, or finding new stretches of unfilled time, it’s tempting to feel a need to do things. And as I try to find the shape of my life for now, I’ve had to give myself permission to go a little easier on myself. If you need to hear this too, may I extend the same grace to you.
We are halfway through Week 5 of social distancing/quarantine/self-isolation/whatever you call it at Hotel Yokel. It feels like I’m finally settling into a rhythm, finally figuring out how to live in this new normal of limited movement.
Sunny days aren’t so bad. There are walking trails and parks, and you can still get to go coffee if you know where to look. Gray days like today involve lots of list-making and staring at the computer screen and wishing I could even just... I don’t know... wander a mall or something. (I don’t even like malls. This is where I am folks.)
Anyway, I digress. Yesterday, I had a new essay up at The Rabbit Room, a little dose of encouragement for all the creators out there who are really just hanging on, never mind writing the new King Lear or whatever. If you’re on my TinyLetter list, it will sound familiar. (If you’re not, well... this is the sort of thing I test drive with my email readers, and you are welcome to join the party.)
Some days, this isolated life is a well of beauty and kindness. I do my work, spend time reading, check in with friends and family, and make a beautiful, tasty dinner. And then there are the days when the to-do list stares back, but all I see are the constant news articles, the social media notifications, the monotony of homebound life where time loses meaning.
In this strange, slow new world, where many of us are working from home, deleting canceled events from our calendars, suddenly homeschooling, or finding new stretches of unfilled time, it’s tempting to feel a need to do things. And as I try to find the shape of my life for now, I’ve had to give myself permission to go a little easier on myself. If you need to hear this too, may I extend the same grace to you.
Regardless where you are right now, I hope this is helpful. You can read the whole essay at The Rabbit Room.
Mary weeps
in the garden,
asks a gardener,
where is he?
He whispers her name.
In an instant she hears
the quiet coming
of a new empire
where we are
no longer
numbers.
VII.
While they mourned for
the revolution lost,
the King seems to
wait in silence.
They couldn’t know
his rest was wrestling
that tyrant Death
who rules even Caesar
readying for morning’s
final victory.
Artwork: Harrowing of Hades, fresco in the parecclesion of the Chora Church, Istanbul, c. 1315
In the face of mockery
questions, violence,
his silence was
the only answer,
his blood and burden
the only example,
his final breath
an echoing protest
against power
that crushes
what it cannot
own.
Artwork: Christ before Pilate, Mihály Munkácsy, 1881
V.
The Servant King
Before the cleared plates,
the clatter of swords,
the clink of silver,
he did not call to arms,
but to the floor,
and wiped the dust
of their journey
from their tired soles.
Artwork: Orthodox icon of Christ washing the feet of the Apostles (16th century, Pskov school of iconography).
IV.
She wept
like she knew
what was coming,
like someone
who’d seen
death arrive
and reverse.
Some called it
a waste, but
she’s done
a beautiful thing:
burial anointing
fit for a king.
Artwork: Christ in the House of Simon, by Dieric Bouts, 1440s
(Nerdy Writer’s Note: If it sounds a little familiar, this is an abridged version of my poem “Excess,” trimmed down to fit the 33 word constraint. If you’d like to hear me read the original version, follow this tweet!)
Rabbi says
give Caesar
his due —
coins, roads,
power, borders
to fiercely defend,
wealth to be
eaten
by moths
and rust.
And what is God’s?
Fields, forests,
oceans, galaxies.
Almost nothing.
Somehow
everything.
Artwork: Peter Paul Rubens, The Tribute Money (public domain)
Behold
your king —
not striding into
the city, with sword,
shield, and ten
thousand men,
scowling down,
astride a
war horse.
Behold
the empire’s rival —
on the back
of a borrowed
mule.
***
Last year, I learned about the medieval practice of 33 word devotional poems from Andrew Roycroft’s 33 Poems for Lent. (The idea being one word for each year of Jesus’ life on earth.) So I took some inspiration from this practice and began writing a poem cycle for Holy Week, meditating on they ways Jesus subverted Caesar’s Empire and his own people’s expectations of the prophesied King.
Easter and Holy Week are already feeling odd this year. I hope that as I write and share these poems, they might help you find a little sacred space, a fixed rhythm as we move toward the hope of resurrection in these strange times.
Earlier today, I accidentally discovered Indoor Voices, a super weird, mostly amusing, and somehow comforting group blog created out of quarantine life. Currently it has 173 posts in just a little over a month, ranging from stories about temporarily adopting kittens from Instagram to a NYC mom musing on the weirdness of going outside to a caterer who has somehow acquired a massive amount of canned black beans. It’s even on blogspot, with a boring basic blogspot layout. It is decidedly trying to NOT go viral. (but maybe it will? Because I, an internet rando, landed there via a 57 Things to Do With Friends When Social Distancing listicle.)
Reader, it made me so nostalgic for old school random nonsense blogging. How nostalgic? I dug up the old version of my blog and checked to see what I was up to 10, 11, 12 years ago.
Could we be due for a blogging renaissance, where we keep a random semi-public diary with no one to impress but Internet savvy friends and no expectations for Internet fame? Because I would totally be down for that.
Happy National Poetry Month! For better or worse, most of the world is trying to stay safe, social distance, flatten the curve, etc. And because times are weird and I never seem to do well with November Poem a Day, I’m joining my Poetry Pub friends for April poems.
I can’t promise I will write one every day (or post them all), but I figure I’d toss the more promising ones up on the blog. I’m working on a Holy Week poem cycle that I hope to finish this year and start sharing on Sunday. For now, here’s my Day 1 poem, following the prompt “new world” from the Poetic Asides blog.
***
First comes the shock
the denial, the clinging
to some shred of normal.
Then the slow shuttering
of life as we know it.
The businesses folding in
on themselves for protection
(of themselves? of us?)
The highways emptying of
rush hours and running
running running.
Then come the joggers,
the dog walkers
the bike riders
once more around
the block, venturing
into the sunlight
for a reminder
the world is
still here.
***
PS: Join us at The Pub! Our Facebook community is lively, free, and super encouraging. And we have a fun little quarantine project I’m excited to share soon. :)
