The Bus – 2015 Writing Contest Runner Up

By Carly Gelsinger

I discovered the danger of my body on a packed bus in Timisoara, Romania. I stood with fifty American teens on a mission to share Jesus, and probably another fifty Romanians trying to make it to work on time. I could smell intense body odor from people reaching up to grip the arm handles. The bus driver swerved around tiny European cars down narrow cobblestone streets.

I was out to change the world.

I wore loose-fitting denim shorts and a camouflage print Christian T-shirt that said “God’s Army Girl.” My hair was pulled into a thin French braid on the back of my head. I felt warm drops of sweat on my cheeks from my thick-lensed glasses.

I thought I was so grown up, a missionary spreading the Gospel to the ends of the Earth, but really I wasn’t more than a little girl in braids.

I landed in Romania because I went to a teen conference six months earlier and checked a box on a brochure that said I was interested in going overseas to spread God’s word. I spent the following months scooping ice cream for seven dollars an hour and selling mistletoe bouquets during the holidays to raise money for this trip. I read the entry for Romania in the “R” book from my dad’s 1964 encyclopedia set, and studied the basics of their economy and government and customs. I counted down the days and prayed for the Lord to prepare the hearts of the lost in Romania.

I was prepared to do hard things for the Lord, but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

I was staring out the window, daydreaming about my dog back home when I felt something rough inside my underwear. It was moving around in circles, and it took me a second to realize that I was feeling somebody’s fingers. I whipped my head back to find a skinny middle-aged man with large black pupils reaching up my loose-fitting shorts and fondling me.

“Stop. That’s gross,” I said, stunned. I didn’t know how else to respond.

“Moolt,” the man said, as he pulled away, which is Romanian for thank-you. He slunk to another part of the bus and exited at the next stop.

Woozy and faint, I was unsure of what had just transpired, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

The girls who were huddled around me on the noisy bus hadn’t noticed what happened. The bus kept speeding down narrow streets, and my hair was still in braids, and the Americans around me were still laughing and the Romanians were still trying to get to work on time. The world kept going around me, but something inside me had stopped.

The rest of the day played out like a dream. We got off the bus and passed out tracts to the peasants feeding pigeons in Timisoara’s town square. I prayed with a toothless woman in a headscarf to accept Jesus. I played tag with some street kids, who wanted their picture taken. They posed, giving each other bunny ears and flashing huge grins to show their gold teeth, as I snapped photos of them with my disposable camera.

That afternoon, we ate at McDonald’s. I ordered a Filet O’ Fish sandwich, which was crispier and more flavorful than McDonald’s fish sandwiches at home. I sat with outside with my teammates, eating my sandwich and Orange Fanta, shooing the pigeons away and watching Romanian teenagers sniff something from a paper bag.

It was a regular day for us in Romania, just like the last twenty before. Except for this day, I couldn’t shake the feeling of that man’s touch on my body. The scratchiness of the fingers, the roughness of his movements kept playing in my mind over and over again.

I had to tell someone.

I approached my female team leader Whitney in our dorm hallway that evening about the man who assaulted me, only I didn’t use those words. I told her someone made a move on me, and I explained that he put his hand inside my private part, careful not to be too graphic or inappropriate with my language. She fiddled with her lanyard necklace that held the whistle she blew at the group during the day. Although my voice quaked, I didn’t cry. It felt strange to hear myself talk about it, almost like I was telling someone else’s story.

“He came from nowhere, and then he was in my under pants,” I said.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Whitney said, but she didn’t look very sorry. She yawned and tossed her long brown hair behind her shoulders. At twenty-one, she was in charge of all the day-to-day operations of our trip, along with her 22-year-old male counterpart. They both seemed worn out all the time.

“I can’t stop thinking about what happened,” I said. Now I was starting to tear up. “He said moolt.”

“Well let’s not get too emotional about this. What were you wearing?” she asked.

“Khaki shorts,” I said.

“Shorts? Honey, you know you’re only allowed to wear shorts on non-ministry days,” she said.

“I know,” I said, feeling embarrassed. I realized I put myself in a tough spot by admitting I had broken the organization’s dress code. According to our handbook, repeated dress code violations could warrant getting sent home.

“So that man was wrong to touch you, but instead of dwelling on it, maybe we can use this as a good lesson on modesty. As sisters in Christ, we have to help our brothers to not stumble,” she said.

“OK,” I said. “You’re right.”

“If I had noticed you were wearing shorts earlier, I would have asked you to change. I take responsibility for that. But isn’t it amazing how God can use bad situations to teach us things? He is so good.”

“Yeah, very amazing,” I said, without feeling amazed at all.

“If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to talk to me. I’m here for you,” she said. She patted my knee, stood up, and said goodnight.

I lay in bed that night, trying to pray myself to sleep. I apologized to God for disobeying the dress code my leaders laid out for me, and asked God to help me forget what happened to me earlier that day. I fell asleep peacefully, but woke up in a sweat a few hours later from a dream where I was stuck on a bus in my khaki shorts, a legion of skinny men with dark pupils closing in on me.

The remainder of the trip, I glanced behind me often when on a bus. I crossed my legs, even when standing. And I never wore shorts.

I didn’t tell my parents or anyone back home about the incident on the Romanian bus. I showed them pictures of the cute street kids and talked about the people who accepted Jesus, and how good McDonald’s is in Europe, and all the things God taught me. The following year, I signed up to go to Romania again.

I buried the incident deep in the recesses of my mind in a dusty box marked failure because I never wanted to think about it again.

###

Ten years later, I sat by the window at my kitchen table on a snowy day in Boston. I flipped through the Boston Globe and my eyes landed on a story about a man who was arrested for groping high school girls. It all came back—the sweaty bus, the rough hand, the fish sandwich, Whitney’s reaction, and the nightmares that followed.

“I think I was sexually assaulted as a teen,” I blurted to my husband Joe, who was reading the sports section next to me.

“You think you were assaulted?” he asked.

I told the whole story for the first time, for him, but also for myself.

“They blamed you for wearing shorts?” he said, curling his lip.

“Well, they didn’t really blame me,” I said, but paused as the weight of his words hit me. I buried my head in my hands over our wobbly unfinished pine IKEA table.

“Wow,” I said without lifting my head. “They did blame me.”

I punched the table and screamed. All these years I spent in misplaced shame for something that should have made me mad. But as I bucked beneath my overwhelming rage, I recognized it like family. The anger had always been there, I realized, deferred to rot and stink under the surface. Now it was released.

I didn’t get better instantly or magically after that day. But I learned to hush the voices that want to keep me bound to shame and silence. I began to dare to believe the Other Voice who whispers grace and hope into a fragile heart.

I am not done healing, but I am released to begin.

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Carly Gelsinger is the 2015 Faith & Culture Writing Contest Runner-Up in the non-fiction category. Find her writing at Carly Gelsinger website

March 18, 2015April 7, 2015

God doesn’t need another book – And other lessons learned

By Leanne Sype

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “So when are you going to write a book?” I would be a kazillionaire.

My response is: “As soon as God gives me a book to write.” Usually my remark elicits a reply of, “Oh” or simply a blank stare. Somehow the qualification for being a writer has come to mean either one has written or is writing a book and/or is also published or seeking to be published. Well, if this is the case then I guess I am not a writer because not only haven’t I written a book, but I don’t want to.

I’ve spent the last 14 years editing other people’s written works, yet I have been writing all my life. I have thousands of pages sitting in my office that I’ve written; essays, poems, journals, letters, etc. I have a few articles and newsletters that are published, but probably not in anything you’ve ever seen. And I have a blog. I’ve been writing on my blog since 2009; sometimes I post regularly and sometimes I don’t.

I am essentially unknown in the writing industry. Does this mean I am not a writer? Of course not! Does this mean I am not a “real” writer? Of course not!

Look, I went through the (10-year) internal battle of “Am I a real writer even though no one knows who I am and may never know who I am because there are…

…a million people who write way better than me,
…who have published a book,
…who have at least 35,000 followers,
…who blog five times a week,
…who guest blog three times a week,
…who speak at conferences,
…and who are now working on their second book?

Oh my gosh, I need to write a book, something really good so I can be the “real” writer I know I am supposed to be. ”

This was stressful for me because I didn’t want to write a book, and I am not a believer in writing or doing anything merely to fit in with cultural expectations. Yet, I knew I was a writer. Something wasn’t lining up.

Then I heard angels sing a harmonious “Ahhh” when Wm. Paul Young spoke at the 2013 Faith & Culture Writers Conference. He said:

“God doesn’t need another book. Or a movie. Or a song. It’s you He loves . . . He is a God who loves you with relentless affection, who does not need you to write a book . . . You don’t need it for identity if you know who you are. You don’t need it for security if you know who’s your provision. You don’t need it for worth if you understand how you’re loved.”

Young’s words changed my life. I became comfortable, in that very moment, with who I am as a writer. I am a daughter of God who writes out of pure love for her Father. (And I am the weirdo writer who doesn’t want to write a book. So what?)

Culture gives us mixed messages:

You are writer, own it—but you are not really legitimate until you are published and noticed by zillions of people.
Be a headline, shoot for the public by-line—but write something worth reading and be “authentic.”
Build your followers, grow your audience—but create real and meaningful relationships.
Find your voice and use it proudly—but don’t add to the noise because no one will pay attention to you.

Culture was driving me to build my own kingdom and it wasn’t lining up with my heart—my faith.

I am not interested in building my own kingdom; I am interested in inviting people into God’s kingdom. God gives us a different message: You are mine alone and I love you. All I want is a relationship with you.

From this perspective, God is my one and only—He is my audience, he is my publisher, he’s my editor. When I write for God, the pressure is off to adhere to worldly formulas and expectations for success. I am better able to find my voice and confidently use it to express my honest thoughts. I am a better writer when I write for God because I’m writing in response to and for the purpose of a deeper relationship with Christ. When I write to please God rather than to please culture, I give the Spirit within me permission to speak freely and the ability to connect with a reader better than I could have in trying to manufacture something I think a reader may want to hear.

Writing for God means this: before I write anything I pray, “Lord, I just want people to know you the way I know you. Instruct me in the way I should go.” I don’t worry about stats, I don’t worry about comments, I don’t worry about notoriety. I trust my work will land where He needs it to land and it will connect with whomever it needs to connect. God has been faithful in blessing me with a humble little audience and delightful conversations with people all over the world. Somehow in writing to connect with God, I also connect with other people. Everything lines up beautifully when God is in control, and I don’t have to work so hard.

God created me to be a writer and it’s through writing I grow closer in relationship with him. That’s all that matters. He does the rest. I confess God has recently given me a book to write. Why would a God who doesn’t need another book ask me to write a book? Have I mentioned I don’t want to write a book??

The book itself isn’t for God. It’s for me. Somewhere in the process of writing this thing, I’ll grow even closer to Him. That’s what He needs. I still don’t want to write a book, but I do want to be obedient. Now when people ask, “When are you going to write a book?” I’m working on it. But it doesn’t mean I will necessarily publish as culture would expect. After all, God has only asked me to write the book.

With this goal in mind, I am looking forward to Faith and Culture Writers Conference 2015 as a daughter of God seeking to be inspired on how to be better in her craft, for the purpose of lovely and pure obedience to a Father who doesn’t need another book but only a deeper relationship with me.

—————

Leanne Sype is an editor, writer, mom, daughter, and student of God; she’s a lover of coffee, writing, and orange pens. True to her word-nerdy, book-wormish nature, she adores editing and has been doing it for the last 14 years. This is her third year speaking at the Faith & Culture Writers Conference. Portland is her favorite place in all the land, but she’s living and learning life in the suburbs, writing everything down as she goes, and encouraging others to do the same. She attends a local church and lifts her best worship to the One who guides her life and my pen. Follow her on Twitter or at her blog.

February 8, 2015March 3, 2015

When writing, find your Nancy

By Jody Collins

When I began blogging almost 3 years ago I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Maybe you’ve felt the same way?

I was welcomed by a few new online friends into the High Calling network and encouraged to pursue my passion. In just three years, God has shown me a few things about the path I’ve chosen, this ‘writing for the world,’ and given me some perspective-makers to keep me focused:

1. Find Your Nancy

As you’re tapping and typing away at your laptop or desktop computer, there IS no audience, it’s just you and Jesus and your words. You send them out into the blogosphere and pray for a connection. You hope they’ll land somewhere, maybe touch a chord and speak to somebody. At least that was my prayer.

Lo and behold, one day I got a comment on a blog post. (Yay! It’s Okay to do a Happy Dance when someone leaves a comment.) Someone actually read what I wrote and told me about it!

It was an encouraging precious word from a woman named Nancy. And she showed up every week, to read whatever I’d written. In spite of my fears that my words were than less-than-profound, she’d remark on their depth or how encouraged she felt. Every week since then she has read and commented on my posts.

Now I have a very small crowd of ‘regulars’—fellow writers/bloggers and readers who encourage me as well. But I always remember Nancy—to write just for her—as if she was the only one listening. It personalizes my writing, which makes it more relatable. It also gives me hope.

2. Choose Your Words

Not everything is a blog post! Like the nurse logs in the Washington Coast rainforest, some things just serve as detritus for new growth. You know all those sticky notes and backs of envelopes? Those inspired scribbles from a Sunday morning sermon you wrote on the back of the bulletin? The scraps of paper you found just in time to scratch a revelation on? Yeah, you’re probably not going to write all that down…

Not everything gets into print—much of it is practice for the process, part of the pile—a paper detritus that is the growth medium for what you DO write. The Holy Spirit will quicken in you the words that need to see the light of day. Some of it will serve as markers, sitting in your notebook or under a paperweight, reminding you of how far you’ve come. Just keep writing. Persist, and then choose the honest, compelling words to share.

3. Build Relationships.

I am no professional marketing person to speak to what ‘platform’ is. I am a believer and a writer and simply offer my words back to God to use as He sees fit. Looking past all the social media skills and conferences and platform building, I think the core truth is this: Building your blog (or your writing audience) is all about relationships.

I am not concerned with numbers or stats, really. For me, it’s all about connecting. But how can you extend your reach? Widen your audience? By reading other peoples’ words, commenting when you can and having them click back and find you. That’s how others will find what you have to say. There are other voices that share your passion and vice versa. Maybe it’s Patheos, maybe it’s The High Calling, maybe it’s an online magazine—like Ruminate or Relief Journal or of course, where you are at now, the Faith & Culture Writers Connection!

There becomes an overlapping of the circles that you find yourself touching, an ever-expanding Venn diagram of comments and topics and people. I personally am interested in keeping my reach small so I can go deep, rather than being wide and therefore shallow. You’ll find what feels right for you. But wide or deep, it’s all just relationship connections.

As you write keep these three things in mind. Find your Nancy and write for her. Choose your words and persist. Build relationships. Do this consistently and you will see your writing and creativity move forward and impact people you never thought possible.
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Jody is the Volunteer Coordinator and Administrative Assistant for the Faith & Culture Writers Conference. She blogs at threewaylight.blogspot.com.

January 26, 2015January 30, 2015

Three Essentials for Writing Words that Matter

By Emily Freeman

I recently watched a four and a half minute video where author and pastor John Ortberg remembers his friend, Dallas Willard. One quick segment shows a clip from a conversation John and Dallas had only a few months before Dallas passed away.
John: “How do we help people – if somebody wants to think about, “How is my spiritual life going or how is my soul doing?” – how do we help people ask and answer that question?”

Dallas: “Well, very slowly. One at a time, we listen to them . . . I think the next thing is a question and not a statement: What’s bothering you? Start there.”

They talk some more and then John makes a joke.
John: “What’s bothering you? could be an interesting liturgical question – to start the church service asking, What’s bothering you? And the people could respond back, And also you.”

I laughed out loud when he said it and so did the audience. Then, as the clip ends, Dallas can be heard saying, “That would be absolutely revolutionary.”

I had to pause the video at that moment, three minutes and fifty-five seconds in, Dallas’ deep voice and thoughtful statement hanging there in the air over my desk. That would be absolutely revolutionary. I knew I agreed with Dallas but it took me a few minutes to figure out why.

I don’t remember being expressly taught not to be bothered, but somewhere along the way I learned it anyway. To ask myself or someone else what is bothersome seems like a self-focused, self-indulgent invitation to rant or complain. But what if we were willing to look deeper in? Instead of manufacturing peace by shooing away my frustration or smoothing out my ruffled feathers, I am learning the importance of getting quiet enough to honestly consider what bothers me – not just on the surface, but deep within my soul. Sometimes what I learn is ugly or uncomfortable. But there are other times I discover right next to my frustration lives a drop of passion I didn’t realize was there and a spark of hope I didn’t realize I needed.

What does this have to do with writing words that matter? When it comes to uncovering my authentic voice as a writer, the first thing I have to know is what is bothering me. Once I’m able to honestly access my frustrations, I can begin to uncover the passion and hope that live close-by. This is how all four of my books were born.

Being frustrated doesn’t make me qualified or ready. But it does wake something up within me, something that compels me to move and want to get ready. The frustration rolls into a compulsion towards change, passion to communicate and to move into the chaos of the questions even if I don’t have all the answers. But being frustrated about an issue and compelled to do something about it won’t sustain the message for the long-term. For me, what really keeps me moving is the hope of something better. It’s important for these three things to work together – frustration, passion, and hope. Otherwise, my voice will be something I don’t intend.
Passion and hope without frustration feels inauthentic.
If I’m not bothered deeply enough, no one else will be either. Frustration is the spark that fuels the passion and the hope. Without it, my writing won’t have enough life to meet a strong enough felt need or to tell a compelling story.
Frustration and hope without passion leads to detachment.
If I’m frustrated and have hope for change but I’m not passionate about the issue, I won’t be able to engage it with enough heart to make a difference. Love is tucked deeply inside passion, and we don’t want your loveless art.
Frustration and passion without hope leads to cynicism.
In my experience, when I am frustrated and passionate without hope, I’m vulnerable to cynicism. If I don’t have hope for change, despair creeps in and my writing feels too dark and filled with angst. Without hope, I write afraid.

Frustration wakes me up. What frustrates you? Passion gets me moving. What compels you? Hope keeps me going. What do you most hope for? I’m thankful for Dallas Willard’s revolutionary question: What’s bothering you? As writers, may we be brave enough to answer it, passionate enough to engage it, and hopeful enough to influence change.

Emily is the author of A Million Little Ways, Grace for the Good Girls, and Graceful. She shares her words and photographs on her own website at www.ChattingAtTheSky.com. We are honored to welcome Emily as one of our featured speakers at the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference.

January 5, 2015March 3, 2015

Tell your naked honest truth

By Marc Schelske

I started calling myself a writer a little more than a year ago. The truth is that I’ve been writing all of my life. I’ve got a stack of book starts buried in lost corners of my computer. I’ve been writing original content in the course of my employment for almost 20 years now. I self-published a book on Amazon almost exactly 2 years ago. (Man, was that cool!)

Then, at last year’s Faith & Culture Writer’s Conference I pitched a book and ended up with an agent! But even still, it took a little stern encouragement from Jeff Goins to push me over the emotional line of actually referring to myself as a writer.

One of the tasks I started thinking about as I started taking my writing more seriously was the serious quest that all writers must embark on: “Finding my voice.”

I worried about my writing voice as I blogged. I fretted that I might invest so much time building a blog, then discover I was writing in the wrong voice all along. Then what?

I started paying attention to the voice of writers I admired. What were the secret ingredients? How did Ann Lamott come off so self-effacing, so honestly-insecure and hilarious? What made John Gruber’s technology writing so engaging? What allowed him to be so darn opinionated and yet not off-putting? I was thinking about my voice, and then I was thinking about my thinking about my voice. That’s a stressful mind-game if ever there was one!

Then I remembered something. I had already found my voice once.

I’ve been a professional speaker for… well a little more than 20 years now. I’m closing in on a thousand presentations. During that time, I went through a host of stages.

There was the “Karaoke stage” where I tried speaking in the style and tone of various famous speakers I admired.
There was the “Memorized Perfection stage” where I not only wrote the presentation word-for-word, but then memorized the tone, the gestures, the whole darn thing.
For a few years I was in the “Speaking Factory stage” where I presented three different original talks every week for two years straight.

Through all of that I’ve tried on a pile of different voices. I’ve channeled African American preachers, comedians, TED talk presentations, professors, and the voice I imagine favorite authors speaking in. In all of that time, I was building skills. I was building experience. I was building courage. But I wasn’t really finding my voice.

I found my voice when I decided what I really had to offer.

I’ve been a preacher for most of my public speaking experience, so I had the authority of scripture and the buy-in of congregations that wanted to be taught. But we’ve all heard preachers. We’ve heard preachers talk about the very same scripture. What makes the difference between one you connect with and one you don’t?

At first I thought what I had to offer was great scholarship. So, I’d study and research and prepare so I could understand my material as deeply as I could. That helped me be accurate and thoughtful, but it wasn’t my voice.

Then I thought what I had to offer was well-crafted material presented with excellence. So, I’d write and re-write. I’d practice and practice. That made my presentations less painful for the audience for sure, but it wasn’t my voice.

At one point I thought what I had to offer was a twist, a new way of looking at an old truth. So, I’d hunt and pray and reflect on my material, always looking for a new angle. That made my work more interesting — sometimes in a helpful way, sometimes not so much… It also wasn’t my voice.

I found my voice when I learned that what I have to offer, my unique view, was my honest authentic vulnerable truth.

Over and over I experienced this. I’d put hours and hours into a presentation, crafting every edge, and the audience would be unmoved. Then I’d take a risk, push past the very visceral panic in my gut, and share something from my own journey. Some moment of insecurity or fear, a place where I blew it, my own weakness and doubt. Those moments? Every. Single. Time. People responded. They were moved. They were challenged. They grew.

I found my voice when I started telling my truth.

As a writer, I’m re-learning this lesson. I’m re-learning what it looks like to offer great content, to do it in a way that connects with people—but most of all, to do it in the most honest, authentic, vulnerable way I can bear. That’s where my voice resides.

It’s a scary place to write from. But it’s also when you start writing things that matter, things that will move people. Write as much as you can. Master the technical skills. Blog, because blogging is to writers what gigging is to musicians—it’s practicing in public. But most importantly, tell your naked honest truth. That’s where you’ll find your voice.
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Marc Alan Schelske attended his first Faith & Culture Writers Conference in 2014, and returns this year as an important member of the leadership planning team. He serves as the email and launch coordinator as well the scribe.

Marc is the author of Discovering Your Authentic Core Values, an upcoming online course called, “How to read the Bible to Hear God and Grow without Having to be a Legalist, a Theology Professor, or a Crackpot,” and has a book in development about the intersection of faith and emotion, and is represented by the DC Jacobson Agency.

Marc grew up in Ohio, but he’s lived in the Northwest long enough to feel like a native. Marc is a husband, dad of two, speaker, writer, hobbyist theologian, recovering fundamentalist who drinks tea & rides a motorcycle.

Visit him at: MarcAlanSchelske.com |Twitter: @Schelske

December 30, 2014January 9, 2015

The Quest for Epiphany

by Tony Kriz

There is something that happens when pen hits the page, when pixels populate the screen. It is like the unknown becomes known. It doesn’t always happen that way. In fact it is the categorical opposite of predictable, of formulaic, but when it happens, it is magic.

Writing transcends consciousness.

I am not a genius writer. Far from it. I have a simple formula that guides the majority of the chapters of my long form writing (books). It goes like this (I can’t believe that I am admitting this):

You start with a story. The magic of a story is not its drama. It is not its otherworldliness. It is not that it is exceptional. The magic of a story is found in its meaningfulness. You may ask, “Meaningfulness for the reader?”

No. The magical element is the meaningfulness for the author. Magic and meaningfulness exist in a delicate marriage. When a writer writes out of their own visceral meaningfulness and into honest expression there is the real hope that magic will happen.

One more thing… When I write a book, I am essentially asking myself one formative question. When I wrote Neighbors and Wise Men, I was asking myself “What are my formative memories when non-Christians taught me how to follow Jesus?” In my current book, Aloof, I was asking myself “What are my formative memories about God’s presence and God’s troubling absence?”

Once a story is identified, I often don’t actually know exactly WHY it is formative, I simply know that it is. I begin the chapter by teasing my best guess as to what the stories formative lesson might be; that is my introduction.

Next I tell the story. I write very existentially. If you were to happen upon me writing a chapter in a corner booth at a local pub or coffee shop, odds are you would see my face contorting with the emotions of the story I am writing. You might see my eyes filled with moisture or a hotly furrowed brow. That is how I write.

When the story is fully told, including a well-imagined setting, sympathetic characters and a believable conflict and climax, I move to the chapter’s conclusion.

This is where the magic happens. It does not happen every time, but when it does, it is one of the great endorphin cocktails. Suddenly, as if I am an observer and the chapter itself is a seducing character sitting across the table, the true meaning of the story blossoms right before my eyes.

I rarely see it coming. How could I? And the surprising frequency that this newly realized meaning is harmonious with my spackled-together introduction (bringing new meaning I could not have predicted) is soothing, comforting and arousing.

If we were to flip together through the pages of my books, both of us would probably be surprised by how many chapters I would admit “I did not know where this chapter was going to end when I started it.”

Keep writing. Write viscerally… existentially… and dare the magic.

Let the epiphanies come. That’s how we move from the blank page to something beautiful.

Tony is the Writer in Residence at Warner Pacific College, the sponsoring host for the 2015 Conference; Tony is also on the Faith & Culture Writers Conference advisory board, and a speaker at this year’s event. He has been at every single Faith & Culture Writers Conference, either as an attender, speaker, keynote speaker, advisor, or leader. His new book Aloof: Figuring Out Life with a God Who Hides is coming out in January, 2015. Tony writes at www.tonykriz.com.

December 24, 2014January 9, 2015

Allowing peace to be an overflow offering this Christmas season

By Ashley Larkin

I’m guessing you’ve heard the song “We Need a Little Christmas Now.” For me, its commands to fill stockings, bake fruitcake and deck the halls embody the bossy pressure I feel to make everything happen during the Christmas season.

Not only do many of us experience stress in the attending and tending, gifting and hosting, baking and making, but we also know the pressure to make the holiday meaningful, magical and memorable for ourselves and for others.

And by this point in the season, we might very well feel too exhausted to enjoy or even care about the day itself.

Brennan Manning asked, “What rules our lives as we prepare for Christmas? What has power over us?”

If I’m honest, more often than I would like to admit, it is compulsion to do more and fear that I will disappoint. Yep, I’m worried I will fail Christmas.

The world yells its accusations and demands, but on this Christmas Eve I am straining to hear the whisper of what I believe might be the most forgotten gift of Jesus’ birth: PEACE.

If you stop for a moment, you might hear peace in the whistle of the wind through bare branches. Or see it in the stillness of your children snuggled up under their winter covers. Or glimpse it as you look upon the glittering lights of the Christmas tree when, for a moment, all is calm and bright.

Yes, peace is a gift to you right in the middle of this day, whatever it might hold for you – in the midst of things that do not seem right and are not right at all. Peace comes as a gift to hold in both settled spaces and fleeting moments. Peace is an assurance in the midst of the storm.

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When Love came down in human flesh into a stable reeking of animals, into a long-waiting and hopeless world, the common shepherds were the first to know. The newborn King, they were told by the angel, would be in the feeding trough.

Then a huge number of angels filled the sky, praising God for the gift of Jesus, known in the book of Isaiah as the Prince of Peace. The multitude proclaimed “PEACE to all those touched by God’s favor.”

Songs of peace on earth, goodwill toward men flooded the heavens.

On this day before Christmas, how do you need to know peace’s flood? Where do you need peace to be born, like the newborn one in the manger?

Today, I will choose to find peace in giving thanks when stresses press. I will pray for God to carry the burdens of those suffering under grief, oppression, injustice, war, sickness and fear. I will light another candle. Read Christmas stories with my daughters. Gather around the table with those I love. Sing of hearts preparing him room, and hopes and fears of all years being met in him.

I will slow to feel the peaceful rush of breath moving into and out of my lungs. I will allow Christ’s peace to settle down deep.

And then, when some of the activity of the season has died down, I’ll snuggle up with my pen and journal, and then my laptop (though it’s a bit less snuggly), reflecting and musing and creating, allowing peace to be an overflow offering.

Isaiah 54:10 tells us that the Lord’s promise of peace will never be removed from us. This Christmas, might you know the truth of that gift: peace on earth, goodwill toward you.

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Ashley Larkin is a dear friend of Faith & Culture Writers. A member of the Advisory Board, Ashley will co-lead a workshop on blogging at the 2015 Mini-Retreat-Breathing Space Pre-Conference, April 10. She has served as the Agents and Editors Coordinator, scribe, and mentor at past conferences. She can be found sharing her heart at her Draw Near blog: AshleyMLarkin.com

December 21, 2014February 6, 2015

Overcoming Writers Block with the Rough Draft Mindset

By Kari Patterson

Hell hath no fury like a woman with writer’s block. Or so my husband says.

He has a right to say it, as he has endured my endless rants as I attempt to draft book chapters in the midst of life. Creativity is such a beast, yes? So untamable and infuriatingly elusive, yet intoxicating and life-giving once the muse mercifully makes her visit and you find words pouring out onto the page.

This process of writing, it can be absolute madness, especially when it “matters.” When the stakes are high, a contract is on the table, a deadline is looming, expectations soar and we find ourselves desperately hunting down that elusive creativity with such intensity we’re crazed. The more desperate we are for inspiration, the less likely we are to find it. The muse is shy.

There is, however, a gentle way to coax her out of hiding. It is a simple: the Rough Draft mindset.

This year’s Faith & Culture Writers Conference is Rough Draft: From Blank to Beautiful. I love this. It reminds me of the freedom-filled approach to writing and life that relaxes the pencil-grip and lets creativity come alive.

In her brilliant book, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, Henriette Anne Klauser explains our trouble with writing stems from the fact that we are taught to write and edit simultaneously, rather than letting ourselves loose with words without worry for conventions, then going back later to edit and rework. She tells a fabulous story about a little boy who wants to write a story about a mouse and a motorcycle. The problem is, he doesn’t know how to spell motorcycle, so he writes a story about a mouse and a bike, but somehow when he’s done it wasn’t quite the same story he had in his heart.

Haven’t we all been there? We had something sacred inside that we so wanted to share, but we knew our limitations and feared failure, so we smash the story into something more manageable and lose the sacredness of it altogether. The boy was afraid of seeing his teacher’s red marks slashed across his paper, so he produced a lesser work, and wasn’t true to what was in his heart.

How much better would have been a rough draft about a mouse and a motorcycle!

Klauser also explained that the brilliant Russian pianist Franzk Liszt produced not only Tarantella, Don Juan Fantasy, and Liebestraum, but also more than 700 works, most of which were “uneven in quality, superficially composed or down-right dull.” The point? Even the greatest writers and composers spend the majority of their time writing less-than-stellar material. Can we allow ourselves to try something and do it imperfectly?

This is the Rough Draft mindset. It is the only way to go from blank to beautiful.

Here’s the thing: What’s true of writing is also true of life. An expectation comes such as, let’s say, Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year. The time when your kids’ dreams should all come true. Then company comes and the cameras are clicking and that blasted Facebook feed is just chock-full of everyone else’s perfect life and the pressure to “compose” the perfect holiday can choke the joy and inspiration straight out. We do well to remember, every day is only a rough draft.

The most sacred holiday moments are those when you just live. Not when you’re striving to craft the perfect moment. Not when everything’s orchestrated and choreographed. When my son and I were curled up on the couch last Friday night, just sitting in silence staring at the tree-lights, savoring the last few hours of him 7-years-old, I thought to myself, This is the highlight of my year.

The only way to discover the deep well of inspiration is to live. Not live looking for a tweet or a title or a clever catchy phrase, live looking for life. For beauty. And not only for the sake of writing it, but the sake of living it.

The ever-present danger we writers face is to skip straight to the telling without the living.

So this Christmas, let’s embrace the Rough Draft Mindset It is the way to overcome writer’s block and the way to overcome life block. Let’s relax our way into our imperfect holiday, because Christ is our perfection, once and for all. Let’s write and give and and live and love, scribbling beautiful fragments from the depths of our souls.

Merry Christmas.

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Kari is one of those people who has been to every single Faith & Culture Writers Conference since the first one in 2011. She loved it and got involved. She’s been our communication coordinator, an emcee, and now she’s on our advisory board. This year she’s co-leading a workshop at our pre-conference mini-retreat. Kari is a writer and speaker who loves seeing sacred in the mundane, and writes about it at karipatterson.com

December 16, 2014January 9, 2015

Rough Draft – Our conference theme, our lives.

By Cornelia Becker Seigneur

I love the quote by Maxwell Perkins that goes like this: “Just get it down on paper, then we will see what to do with it.” Perkins, as the editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, knew what he was talking about.

I just wish I would live by those words, as I should.

The blank page. Why does it haunt us?

Just begin.

The perfectionist in us perhaps, or the fear of being criticized or the fear of the painful memories we channel when we begin to write. But, the quote by Perkins reminds us to just begin, just get it on paper, onto the computer, into that journal.

That’s why we are really excited to announce the theme of the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference:

Rough Draft: From Blank to Beautiful.

We want to gather friends of words and story and The Word together to give them permission to create. To not be afraid of the blank page. To know that it’s okay to know that our work is in progress. Because aren’t we all rough drafts, creations of God whom He’s working on?

Every year as we think through, pray over, and dream about the theme for the Faith & Culture Writers Conference, we come up with five words that represent our vision for the year. This year, to go along with the Rough Draft theme, we wanted to have those five words reflect the nature of the creative process. Those five words this year are:

Decide, Dare, Prepare, Persist, Release.

Follow these 5 words, and you will find your creativity expand and your writing career moving forward.

Decide. We need to decide we are writers, dreamers, artists, activists, authors, entrepreneurs, believers. It starts with a yes. An, “I can do this, I will do this, I start today.” It is a simple yes, packed in deep dreams and beliefs and that you-know-you-are-called vision. Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission, to tell you you are good enough. You do not need their permission. God has already given you permission. He has shaped you and molded you and made you into a creative being. He is a creative God. His first words, “In the beginning, God created.” Decide. Begin.

Dare. To write that first word. That first story. That first blog post. That first article. That first book proposal. That hundredth book proposal. Let’s face it, It takes courage to get our words and story out there. It takes guts. People may not like our work, they may not appreciate our story, they may think we are not good enough. That’s okay. Do it anyway. It’s your calling.

Prepare. Yes, you do need to decide that you are a writer with something to contribute, and you then need to dare to get your art out there, to have courage. But then, you need to find a way, get some advice, seek out the expertise of others, learn how to write moving blog posts. As a writers’ conference, we want to help you prepare for that launch of your words, your art, your story, your creativity.

Persist. Okay, you’ve decided to begin, you’ve said yes to the dare, and you’ve begun to prepare for what that means. Perhaps, it’s twice a week blog posts, meeting with a friend, seeking out an editor, attending a writers conference. But, then truth be told, it takes persistence. It takes sticking with it! There really are no one–book wonders or one-blog-post-goes-viral-and-you-are-famous wonders, or one-anything-wonders. Most of those authors who “make it” have been writing for years. When no one was noticing. Until one day, they got noticed.

Release. It’s time. You’ve decided to get your words out there, you’ve dared to be creative, you’ve prepared and you’ve stuck with it. Now, let it go. That’s it. Let people read it, and keep getting it out there, and leave the results to God. If one or a million or just you are changed by your words, your story, your art, it was worth it.

Cornelia is a freelance journalist and the mother of five children and finds her pen often turning to the chaos and craziness and beauty in her family life. She is the Founding Director for the Faith & Culture Writer’s Conference, and blogs at www.corneliaseigneur.com.

July 1, 2014January 9, 2015

2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference dates and location announced!

The date and location of the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference have been announced!

On Friday-Saturday, April 10-11, 2015 we will hold our Fourth Annual Faith & Culture Writers Conference at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon.

Warner Pacific College reached out to our founding conference director, Cornelia Becker Seigneur, who met with Warner’s Writer in Residence Tony Kriz and FCWC executive admin Bethany Jackson along with key Warner folks to discuss details. We are excited to partner with this wonderful college. One thing that Luke Goble from Warner said is that Warner wants to be more involved in terms of the planning and presence of the event on their campus. I love this! More details to follow. 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference Date and Location announced!