Dear Sugar,
Do you think there will ever be room for me in the art world? I love words, art, culture, ideas, and, most importantly, people. I read The Rumpus every day and my reading list savagely grows with titles I intend to devour. I am planning to go to graduate school within spitting distance of San Francisco because of its amazing literary culture. My dream is to take all the painful, gut-wrenching, soul lifting, breathtaking, fucked up and ordinary life experiences and turn them into stories that are beautiful and meaningful. I’m young and inexperienced and am desperate to learn and experiment with writing.
But there’s something that paralyzes me. I’m a Jesus-loving Christian.
The grad school I’m aiming for is a seminary because seeking understanding of my faith and reveling in its mystery is incredibly important for me. I don’t believe out of fear, but rather love. But I’m afraid that the beautifully open, tolerant writers and artists, like those I read circling in The Rumpus orbit, will not have room for someone like me because of what I love.
Christians have a terrible reputation in the art world now, with due cause, but it wasn’t always the case and I hope that starts to change. There doesn’t seem to be a place for people like me yet. We are too liberal for most other believers, and too conservative for most liberals of other belief systems. I want to be a part of that change, but I need the push. I don’t want to beat people with my Bible. I just want to share my story honestly and connect with others without having to strip my beliefs from my writing.
Do you think tolerance and love will ever go far enough to take in someone who reads e.e. cummings, soaks up Wallace Stegner, Deitrich Bonhoeffer and the Bible, and has books like “The Adderall Diaries” on my reading list? Or had I better prepare myself to start out without an audience and with a handicap? I’m standing at the edge. Should I jump or not? Is it okay for a Christian to “Write like a Motherfucker?”
Culturally and Spiritually,
Paradoxed
Dear Paradoxed,
It was one year ago this week that I implored Elissa Bassist to write like a motherfucker. That so many others took up the writing like a motherfucker call—even those who are not writers—speaks to an essential fact about art making and love making and life making: to do it well, to do it right, to do it like you won’t be sorry later, you must live out your truth.
Even if your truth is that you’re gaga over Jesus Christ.
To think that you will be alone at the Christian writer table tells me you’ve got some reading to do. There’s a rich and varied tradition of such writers. Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis, Kathleen Norris, Reynolds Price, and Mary Karr spring to mind, among many others. What they have in common, aside from their Christian faith, is that they write like motherfuckers: full-throttle, no excuses, with humility and nerve, with intelligence and grace, with exactitude and audacity and love.
That’s your job too. Which is, of course, the hard part. You must apprentice yourself to the craft, bow before the word. But most of all you must stop using Jesus as an excuse.
I don’t think you know this yet, sweet pea, but I’m pretty certain you aren’t writing to me to ask if it’s okay that you write about your passion for Jesus Christ and whether the generally heathen lit world will accept you into the fold. You’re writing to me for the same reason Elissa Bassist did last year, though you use different language. You’re asking me if it’s okay to be you. You want me to give you permission to write your truth with honesty and heart because doing so scares the living crap out of you. I’m here not only to give you permission, but also to say that you must. There is no other way.
I know because I’m right there beside you, walking down the same path. And so is every other writer on the planet, every other artist, every other person who ever felt outside of who they thought other people believed they should be.
In life, we have to make ourselves. In art, we have to make that self over and over again and present it to the world. We have to put it up on the wall or down on the page or project it on a screen or allow it to resound or glide or crackle across the room. And each time we do that, we must endure the sense that perhaps all has failed, that no one wants this, that we are too much that. Too ordinary or female or obsessed with turtles or experimental or rural or Jewish or derivative or slutty or neurotic or sentimental or gay or Jesus-worshipping or Asian or emotionally restrained or outside-the-whole-MFA-thing or linguistically dense or offensively lewd or just incredibly stupid and weird and boring.
Each time!
This is the reason I laughed when I came to the line in your letter that wonders if you should prepare yourself “to start out without an audience and with a handicap.” Yes, darling, you should. We all start out without an audience and with a handicap. And many of us end up that way too. But the whole deal with making art is you have to be brave. Which is different from not being afraid. You have to dare to inhabit the alternate universe of your original mind and create something for us from that and then stand by and hear what we have to say. The other side of fearlessness is fear. The other side of strength is fragility. The other side of power is faith.
You think writing this column doesn’t terrify me? You think I don’t have a constant loop of horrible words running through my head about all the things one could mock and condemn about my writing and life? You think I’m not self-conscious about my passions and obsessions? Every time I write about my mother, there’s a little voice in my head that says, Oh for the fucking love of God, would you please shut up about this! We know you loved her. We know she died too young. How many times can you hash this over? Enough!
And yet, at least so far, there seems to be no limit to the number of times I can hash this over when it comes to my mother—(look: here she is! even now!).
I had to struggle to be okay with this, to do what I call trusting the heat, to write what must be written in the way only I can write it. And everything about what you’re asking me has entirely to do with that, Paradoxed. Your Jesus is my mother is someone else’s turtle. Show us his light. Do it so righteously that we can’t help but look. Don’t worry. Don’t apologize. Don’t cower behind the defeated security of there is no “room for someone like me.” There isn’t room for any one of us. It’s up to you to make a place for yourself in the world. So get to work.
I went to graduate school with a small group of very talented writers. We wrote in a range of styles about a variety of subjects and we spent a lot of time discussing whose style and subject was most interesting or valid or important or artistic or financially rewarded or culturally sanctioned or critically condemned. I felt delicately crushed by many of these conversations, but now I see that they were good for me. They complicated my path, but they clarified the way. You could say those contrary, brilliant people baptized me. They pushed me to answer the question at the core of your question, Paradoxed—is it okay to be me?—and they compelled me to assert that the answer was yes often enough that I went ahead and became her: the writer of plainspoken prose who would not shut up about her grief.
Many of my grad school mates went ahead and became who they had to be too, as all of the writers I most admire do. They wrote about turtles if they were obsessed with turtles. They put their faith in the magic of heat. They worshipped the god of doing it anyway, even while their doubts and fears ran constantly alongside them. The thing that is so apparent and so very cool is that, regardless of our differences, we are the same. The thread that connects our work is that we did the work we had to do. Our writing rose out of necessity and desire and whatever it was that wouldn’t let us go.
And that’s a stronger thread than any of those things we argued back in the day.
I hope you’ll grab hold of that thread too, sweet pea. It’s yours to for the taking, but only if you have the guts to give us everything you’ve got. Doing that is more vital, more real, more sacred than anything.
Yours,
Sugar
69 responses
I genuflect to you, Sugar. Love, love, love, the idea of worshiping the “god of doing it.”
Yes, that’s what needs to be done. And right away. Doubts and fears are SO debilitating, which is why, perhaps, it’s hard to gather the strength to push them away.
Guts. Yes. Gathering them.
Sugar. Sugar. What you did with this letter. I don’t have the proper words. But there are occasions when you have moved me to tears and this is one of them. The tenderness here, the openness…the way you embrace people as they are. The world needs more of you.
Thanks for the kick in the butt, Sugar. I’m another Christian who was hesitant to write like a motherfucker, and today is the day to change that.
Paradoxed needs to ditch his/her seminary plans and apply for an MFA in Creative writing.
Crushed it again. Thanks Sugar. This is why I write. And sometimes the only way I can keep on doing it.
Longtime listener, first time caller. “It’s turtles–turtles all the way down.” Just feeling love for you today, lady Shug.
Sugar, I am so glad that you feel okay to be you, and inspire others to be so. You help to create a world of brave individuals. At this moment I cannot think of anything better.
Sugar,
I’ve only started reading you about three weeks ago, and I love you. This letter broke my heart- it could have come from me, this longing to know if I can fit it (and write, oddly enough. I haven’t written in years and miss it) and if the world can ever accept me for who I am.
Thank you. Eternally.
Sugar, you are as always, awesome.
I just sat down to read today’s column, and before I even start with Sugar’s response, I want to preemptively say: Have you read Flannery O’Connor? Her faith is pretty legendary and well-noted as part of her construction as a writer, and as far as I know, runs as a thick vein through her work. I’m looking forward to reading Sugar’s response and actually having something to say which isn’t possibly off-the-mark and irrelevant (I mean w/r/t to my comment, not as a knock to Sugar). And I’m willing to more-than-bet Sugar hits on quite famous writers with a strong system of beliefs, especially ones of a Judeo-Christian God.
Nothin but net, Sugar, nothin but net.
Swishhhhhhhhh
To Sugar: what a beautiful column, truly one of your best. Thank you!
To the letter writer: to add one more example to Sugar’s Christian artists, I don’t think it’d be a stretch to call Jeff Mangum one of the most respected ‘indie’ people in the last 20 years, and he’s totally obsessed with Jesus. People respond much better, both socially and spiritually, to seeing someone else’s religious example than they do to being harangued about living a certain way. You sound more in the 1st camp.
I think Matthew 6 in the King James is not only one of the most beautiful things in English, but an amazing inspiration for artists.
Nicely put, Sugar. Very inspiring, too. Also, to add to the list, another notable person “at the Christian writer table” is David Foster Wallace, who certainly wrote some inspiring stuff “writing like a motherfucker.”
Eighty-someodd percent of Americans identify as Christian. While it might SEEM like most artists are godless heathens, I’ve found more often than not that even the religion-less folks believe in some force beyond themselves. We can relate to your need to connect to some greater aspect of the universe, Paradoxed. You are not alone.
Best of luck to you. Write like the Jesus-loving motherfucker you are.
And check out Dorothy L. Sayers – now there was a Christian woman who wrote like a mother-fucking mother fucker!
Sugar, Yes!
Paradoxed, please, please, please write like a motherfucker, especially as a Jesus-loving one. There are plenty of us, yes, US.
Sugar mentioned a few authors (Anne Lamott, CS Lewis yes!) and you as you go down that list you will find many, many more, like Barbara Brown Taylor, Rob Bell, oh my, I know SO many poets, writers…. You will find your voice and you will find others that will listen. I implore you to do so! You will challenge artists beliefs as to what it truly means to be Christian – Jesus was a social activist! And Christians to embrace art, that we need it.
You are not alone in the Rumpus orbit!
Some other resources worth checking out:
http://www.thechristianleft.org/
http://www.ucc.org – check out pilgrim press, still speaking writer’s group.
Marilynne Robinson’s books blaze with Christian purpose and had this gay non-believing Jew hanging on every word. Just sayin.
Finished the column – Sugar does it again. I agree with all her points, as per usual.
I’m always upset by people who are asking these kinds of questions. Not ones about beliefs, or God. Not about Jesus Christ. I’m upset by people asking for validation. There are so many of us who go on trying to believe in ourselves, maddeningly, hopelessly. And it seems we all have the end goal of finding the strength to pick up whatever torch we find on the ground of the things that inspire us. I’m still struggling with this notion now, the idea that not only can I try, but that I have a responsibility to do whatever it is that reinforces my sense of self and love and hope and searingly bright shining everything. Why is it that it takes us so long to find these things in ourselves? Where were the people in the beginning, telling us that we could? Where have they been all along?
I’m glad Sugar is one of those voices, and that she’s not merely talking, she’s screaming through the door that some people try so desperately to open, but can’t seem to find the knob for.
Paradox, it’s your responsibility to act. Listen to Sugar and most importantly listen to yourself: if you have something to say, then open your mouth and say it. There is no reason not to. I believe the man you love so dearly for his beliefs was nailed to a cross for them. He is your example, if that’s what it takes. Don’t ask anymore: tell. Give us everything and speak so loudly and clearly and with such care that we can’t help but hear it. The people we respect and admire are always the ones who give a shit. It sounds like you do, too. Introduce yourself to the world.
this makes me so incredibly inspired that I might have to frame it, or cross-stitch it on a pillow, or paint it on the wall or something. You rock, Sugar.
Sugar, I love when you write about your mother <3
Paradox- may I suggest Andre Dubus’ A Father’s Story? Most poignant/rip-through-you short story I’ve ever read and it’s deeply Christian.
Oooh, yes yes. I am brought to near tears every time I read your column because your words resonate so deeply. Thank you, Sugar, for being so brave and honest. What a gift you are to the world!
As for dearheart Paradoxed, she should mosdef check out The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. It’s not all Christian (and most is not modern), but it’s all soaked in an ecstatic love of God and is so beautiful.
Sugar, you are one of the reasons I’m happy to be alive right now. Wonderful column, as always.
so Sugar – you’re amazing. you gave me chills. especially when you said, “But the whole deal with making art is you have to be brave. Which is different from not being afraid.”
i need to be reminded of this more often than i like. i haven’t worked on my manuscript in a week. it’s about my dead mother and it’s intended to be funny. it’s about my grief and my mom’s bawdy voice usurping that grief. it petrifies me what people will think. today your column gave me the bravery to write the thing that is most me, which in turn is also the most difficult to write.
i recently heard a quote that feels applicable here. it happens to be from Curt Cobain: “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you areâ€.
thanks Sugar! and thank you Paradoxed for asking the question. now let’s all go write like Motherfuckers!
This. Just this. Going to remember the turtles next time I’m scared, and try to make a little more room for bravery.
Paradoxed – Graham Greene has made me weep more tears than any other novelist living or dead. One hard-writing motherfucker right there. I’m not a Catholic. Not even close. I’m not sure I even believe in God. But he managed to show me the pain and the hope of salvation that could come from such a faith, and for that I will be eternally thankful. Add ‘The Power and the Glory’ and ‘The Heart of the Matter’ to your reading list, if you haven’t read them already. Maybe you can show some little agnostic girl the workings of faith someday too. I hope so.
Sojourners magazine is good for the liberal Christian set too. Some of those folks write like motherfuckers and more importantly, they need more writers to shake up what they already do well. Go forth and find your people, girl. They (we) are out t/here.
“Oh for the fucking love of God, would you please shut up about this! We know you loved her. We know she died too young. How many times can you hash this over? Enough!” This was wonderful!! It made me laugh out loud. I lost my mother 9 yrs ago and my father 2yrs ago and you couldn’t have described me better. That’s what make it so good, we are really all the same and you connect on that level. You have no idea how much I look forward to Thursdays and your column. Love what you do!!
I swear, Sugar, I always feel like reading your column is my own personal therapy session for the week. You consistently say something I can take to heart, even if my experiences are nothing like those of the letter writer. You are absolutely right in telling Paradoxed that “we all start without an audience and with a handicap.” Life is about making your mark as only you can – not everyone is going to like how you do it. But, if your brave and determined, you’ll find your audience along with yourself.
We all need to know we can be accepted for who we are and I think, Sugar, you provide us with that validation whether we write to you or not. Thank you for that. It gives me hope and it gives me peace.
Do it Paradoxed. Give us all one more good reason to remain vulnerable. We all need that, and we’re looking just as forward to returning the favor.
I love you, this column in general, and this one is going on my wall. Thanks.
Also: What “D” said. 80% of Americans identify as “Christians”. I’d say a huge minority of those are as orthodox as you fear. You’ve got a clear majority of an empathetic audience – it’s like asking if you have a compelling story to tell if you’re a man.. or white. Sure, if you imbue your stories with a heavy dose of your love of Jesus, you’re going to have a more limited (but dedicated) audience of people who like to read about that kind of thing, and you might not get “cred” in the indie book world the way folks do who clearly approach more risky or controversial subject matter, but don’t be AFRAID, for God’s sake.
That said, I do take issue with the framework of “having to strip [your] beliefs from [your] writing”, you should ask yourself why they’re in there to begin with. Are they there to service the story, or is the story there to support your beliefs? An author’s first job is to tell a good story. If you want to tell a (potentially semi-autobiographical) story about a Christian and their beliefs, that’s clearly going to come up in a hopefully compelling, authentic way.
But if ALL your stories end up with Christianity shoehorned into them, you will absolutely get pigeonholed – and for better or for worse, your books/stories will have their own special bookstore (with its own built-in audience).
A quote from the Mishna: He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task. Yet, you are not free to desist from it.
Thank you, Sugar. Profusely, deeply, fondly, gratefully, outrageously, thank you.
Another author to add to the list of authors who adore JC: Shusako Endo, a Christian Japanese novelist, writes thoughtful, erudite, and beautiful books, often about characters that struggle with faith in a secular world. _Scandal_ in particular is about the difficulties of writing and loving stories that dig deep into the darkness when your heart belongs to God.
Another Christian writer that helps me to be always more than I am: Soren Kierkegaard. You might find, as I do, his discussion on the difference between a Genius and an Apostle an insightful guide to understanding the desire to create meaningful art.
I like that you mention turtles so many times! (All the other things you mention I generally like too, don’t worry.)
I love that you mentioned your terror in writing this column, and I thank you for it. I feel my own terror right before I sit down before a blank canvas or the piano. But knowing that you too – you too! – have the same horrible words running through your head gives me strength. Because everything you produce is beautiful and hopeful and it’s given me strength. NOT to pressure you, but rather to thank you and encourage you to keep on.
Ps. I am not sick of reading about your mother. I encourage it. You have a lot to say about her, and I look forward to reading it.
Much love.
Thank you Paradox, for writing in, and thank you Sugar for choosing this letter to answer. I needed to read these words. Do it, Paradox. We’re right there beside you.
Sugar, you continue to amaze me. Paradoxed might also be interested in the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. 🙂
Sugar, this was such a wonderful and vital answer.
Paradox, I think one of the best books you could read is Flannery O’Connor’s nonfiction book on writing as a Christian. It’s called “Mystery and Manners,” and it makes two critical points. One is that she could not possibly write any other way but as a Catholic; she is compelled to write about redemption, grace, and Jesus Christ. (Do I sound passionate? I’m a secular Jew, but I get all fired up by Flannery when I write fiction.)
That’s the “Mystery” in the title: the action of grace in the concrete world. Her other point is “Manners” — the way the world really is, in barns and on buses; the way humans act. Which is to say: not often pretty.
And you must write truthfully and concretely about the manners. Even if a bible salesman steals a girl’s wooden leg. Even if a man connives to marry a retarded girl and abandon her, far from home, in order to steal her mother’s car. Or a mass murderer wipes out an entire family, including the grandmother–just after she says, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children.” That is, just after she has the extraordinary spiritual revelation that all human beings are one. (One in Christ, Flannery would say.)
What Flannery talks about in M&M is how grace — which you, Paradox, will see as religious, and I see as simply Mystery, and both are fine — is typically extended to a character at moments of violence. The character may or may not recognize it, may or may not accept his moment of grace. But that moment mysteriously appears nonetheless. You, the writer, just have to get down in the dirty truth of the way people behave, and write like a motherfucker are in order to let the thin ray of grace appear.
The way Jesus did, I suppose. He hung around with sinners and sick people.
The other thing to watch in Flannery, when you read her fiction, is that her stories don’t tie up with neat Christian ribbons. After the grandmother has her revelation (which is not spelled out as such) in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”), the Misfit kills her. And he remains a killer. He does not see or accept his moment of grace’ he’s just shot two children, their parents and their grandmother, and he feels no guilt.
Is that a Christian story? Absolutely it is. In M&M, Flannery says that many years after the story ends, it is conceivable that the Misfit, touched by the grandmother’s comment in ways he does not yet understand, could become one of the great preachers around.
You can write toward that. Focus on the manners. Let the mystery take care of itself, later, in the endless revision that all art requires.
“Trusting the heat”
Not quite as catchy as WLAMF but way way way way way way way more instructive. Up it goes on my wall, right below “Keep your ass in the chair”.
hopefully christians embracing art in today’s america is different from the way they’ve embraced politics.
Wow! I’m framing this one. Beautiful and wise and compassionate. Thank you, Sug. As for you, Paradoxed, you are in excellent company with the International Tribe of Jesus-Loving Foul-Mouthed Liberals Who Love Their Gay Friends and Write Like Motherfuckers. Jesus was one of the greatest liberal troublemakers of all time, in my opinion. And a kickass feminist. Have you read Anne Lamott? Brenda Ueland? Sometimes the hard part is finding each other. Other members of the tribe, I mean. But we’re here. And we’re struggling with the same stuff. You’re not alone. Go forth and write your truth. We need it.
@ Betsy: “If Jesus ever came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.” – Woody Allen
I read the question and thought, “Well, it’s obvious to ME that God is a delusion, so Sugar’s column probably won’t speak to me today.” Boy, was I wrong! Your insisting that people be themselves — fully, bravely, and without apology — is inspiring and true regardless of the details of what it is that the letter writer is afraid to be.
Thanks, Sugar.
Oh man, Sugar. This one hit me. I’ve just signed up for my first writer’s group and it’s all your fault.
And Paradoxed, some of the biggest-minded, warmest, most fascinating people I know are people of strong faith. You’ve got a leg up on a lot of aspiring writers because you already have something intangible that you care about deeply. Pull from that sense of meaning and show it to us and I’m sure you will really shine.
Hey Sugar,
I’m just writing again to express my appreciation.
This column of yours is one of the most meaningful things that have appeared to me recently. You just may have saved my (writing) life!
I know what it is to be a liberal Christian and believe that because of religion, I must let the art within me fade and die like an unwanted plant. I have lived under that notion for far too long. And I am learning the importance of letting it go.
Indeed, I know that I am at my best when I aim to be my truest self.
Take care, Sugar.
And above all else–thank you.
Thanks for this question, Paradoxed, and your response, Sugar. This column is making me think about my excuses alongside my fears, alongside my hangups.
This site soothes and terrifies me. Reading the responses to Sugar’s columns always scares me, too. I stay at it as an artist in part because I have found some safe people and safe spaces, because the heat and fire are hot and sometimes I need salve and rest. Other folks may be able to live on the bleeding edge all the time, but I’m a wimp from Connecticut.
Is there room for any of us in the art world? It’s not about the art world, really, is it? It’s about being willing to be small and not well-known as long as you can do your stuff — write, paint, poet, video, act, whatever. To make beautiful or crazy or whatever-adjective-you-pick stuff and put it out there, over and over, even if no one picks it up. Or only a couple people — isn’t that enough? At least to keep going?
To put it in Jesus language, something a friend said to me that has stayed with me for twenty years — losing your life really feels like it. Both as an artist and as a Christian, that’s something that I’ve felt over and over, and fought as well — losing your life to save it actually involves losing your life, burning away chaff, letting go of things or having them pried from your fingers — it hurts. Not that all things that hurt are good, nor that all good things hurt, but Becoming (depending on your worldview) fully yourself, or becoming holy, is not easy. But it is Good.
Everyone is in it up to their neck, right? No matter how cool they seem, how hip, well-liked, yadda, yadda? Sometimes I remember that I am already accepted, and so I can be kind, instead anxious, fearful, and crabby, waiting for other people to accept me.
I digress. Thanks for the question, Paradoxer, Sugar. More sustenance on a long journey.
If the seminar in question is The Graduate Theological Union, have no fear. Those fine folks will blow your mind. If it’s not, then reconsider. The GTU will help you LIVE THE PARADOX with sublime beauty. You will meet people like yourself who feel the edgy duality between faith and motherfuckerness.
I just had to come back and thank each and every one of you for all that you’ve written here. For the past three weeks I’ve been on the brink of deleting my blog and hanging up my pen, (again). After reading this column, I decided to dig out the outline, notes, and work I’d started years ago for a book having to do with my relationship with God. Like Paradox and many of you, I felt alone in my “unorganized” view, and couldn’t find the courage to go there. You all have sparked new life in me, and I believe now I can do this thing, must do this thing. This column is now bookmarked, and will be my sustenance, I’m sure, for those times I feel doubt creeping in again. Thank you so much Sugar!
AMEN! Thanks. I needed that. 🙂
i have the heart and soul and dreams intentions needs desires of a writer. writing makes me a better person. i have the fear of a writer too. i am obsessed with turtles and have been since i was young. i have wanted to be a writer from this same young age. this column spoke to me.
Sugar touches the fire where God lives. I love Jesus, too, and I have disqualified myself, failing to make or imagine a place for someone like me. Sugar has helped to make a truer believer out of me, though: there is room for each one of us if we are courageous enough to be true to our truest selves, without apologies. My Christianity doesn’t fit into neat categories, but God loves us not because we are uniform, but because we are each His unique, irreplaceable work of art. We honor His creativity when we honor our own.
Just because someone doesn’t agree with your belief system/spirituality doesn’t mean that they won’t enjoy your work. And if the fact of your religion is going to turn them off to your work, then who cares about them anyway? Many of my favorite authors belong to religions that I find questionable but their work transcends the borders of religion and manages to speak to more universal human truths. (C.S. Lewis, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, etc.)
I think the important thing is to speak from your heart, from your truth, but try to make yourself understood by those of all belief systems. Writing is all about connection and communication springing from the well of your personal experiences and thoughts.
I was really surprised by Paradox’s feeling that there aren’t many Christian writers. I know a good many, and wanted to suggest a couple of incredible modern Christian poets: Mark Jarman, especially his Unholy Sonnets, and Jill Alexander Essbaum, whose books Heaven and Necropolis are completely challenging and gorgeous. And of course the already mentioned Mary Karr.
I love these concerns about “room in the art world.” HELLO! We ARE the art world. It’s a big table and always room for another chair. The decision to join the table has always been yours and your alone.
I don’t want to undercut Sugar’s point, which is the most important thing, by talking about little details and anecdotes, but it gets back to the same place anyway. I am an atheist, but some of the most deeply fascinating and moving works I’ve ever read have been Christian through and through. I’m thinking especially of Jane Eyre and G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who was Thursday for some reason (both available free online – http://www.gutenberg.org/) – both authors cut to the core of what it is to be a human being in the world, and it was intricately, beautifully, extensively intertwined with their Christianity. I can’t imagine the sad, mangled kinds of half-assery they’d produce if they were less impassioned by their belief, if they trumpeted it with any less abandon. Dear letter writer, please don’t be shy about the truth as you see it.
Sugar – Yes! You are, as ever, amazing in your perception and ability to articulate deep truths.
Paradox – Yes to what Carrots said about the GTU. And I have another suggestion – since you’re so close to San Fran, go visit St. Gregory Nyssa Episcopal Church (whether or not your Espiscopal specifically) sooner rather than later. Filled with like-minded and incredibly creative folk. AND if you’re in the area and free Labor Day Weekend, they have a writers’ retreat that is profound. Seriously. Inspiring. And. Profound.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation…of whom should I be afraid?” Psalm 27
Do not be afraid. You are/will be a writer and your faith, surely, will inspire you, sustain you, and challenge you. Do not be sunk by the challenge and the loneliness of it. You will find your “tribe” of artists; you will find your audience; and always, always, He is with you.
Paradox, please write about the paradox. There are so many of us who are so deep in it. So free-thinking, so in love with the world, and people, so very Christian…and tormented. This is not the same as a focus on turtles or grief. You know this. Stay true. I cannot wait to read your work.
Thanks Sugar! Your words inspire me (as always)
Paradox, I used to wonder if there was a place for me. I’m a semi-fanatical, bleeding heart, crazy-ass hippie. I’m also a baptized, Jesus-loving, arms raised Christian. I never felt fully whole in either world. Then, I went to seminary. It was awesome, I learned a ton, but much more importantly, I found my people. I found crazy ass, bleeding heart Baptists. I found Jesus loving fanatical liberals. I found MY people, and in finding my people, I found my truth. And now, I’m able to speak it. Listen for your call, and trust that it is genuine. Blessings!
Dear Paradoxed – welcome! Welcome to the community of crazy, Jesus-loving, Bible reading (and Bonhoefer and cummings) Christian artists who are trying to live incarnationally and create great art out of that. I’m a fiction writer. My BF is a concert pianist. We bleed into our art. We bleed for our art. We both weep tears of contrition and joy nearly every Sunday worship. And we write and play music like Motherfuckers because there ain’t no other way to do it. Yes, there is room for us in the world AND in the church! I know how scared and alone you feel because I’ve felt it too. Tell the truth in your art. Tell the whole truth – the raw, the ugly, the frighteningly beautiful. Tell it as whole as you know it and God will be in it.
And my heartfelt love to all the rest of you who wrote comments (and you too, Sugar – always!) whether you are Christians or not. Thank God for the internet bringing communities like ours together across distance and thank you for all the reading suggestions of names I love and names I’ve never heard before. (Dorothy Sayers for the win – I’ve loved her ever since I read “Are Women Human?”)
Dear Paradox,
Go forth and become a jesus-writing-mother fucker. If only so that there are more awesome works in the world inspired by faith, and also to replace the one christian writer I knew in college whose works were ill disguised parables built on faulty information and the flaming sword. You can do it. I believe in you.
-a recovering Mormon
Sugar: Great column as always (as everyone said).
Paradoxed> I totally get going to SF–it’s one place I think I’d like to live someday if I had the chance. (Right now I’m in a military town in the south, a very different place). I just wanted to say, if you brush up against those “artists” who DON’T accept you, who tell you that you can’t, say, write like a motherfucker because you’re a Christian, ignore them. They’re small people and you’ll find better. They do exist (like the scads of Christians who make Christians like us shudder), and they can be hurtful, especially if they are in any kind of position of power. Just remember what was said here and believe it: it’s okay to be you. Whoever that you is. Love Christ. Be faithful. And write like a motherfucker (or whatever you verb of choice is: praise, semonize, draw, paint, sing, review, whatever…).
An inspiring read for all Artists! I’m printing this one out.
Amen! Christianity wouldn’t exist if a whole lot of people, over the past 2500-3000 years, hadn’t been writing like motherfuckers.
I have found, again and again, that places I expected would have an anti-religious bias are a lot more accepting than they’re supposed to be. (At my MFA school, there were a couple loud atheists whose arguments were very predictable and easily managed by anyone who’s read any philosophy at all–but those people were my friends, too. It helps that I didn’t start my relationship with these people by telling them they’re going to Hell. (Because I don’t believe they are.) If people see that you’re working at your craft and that you’re not a jerk, you’ll be OK.
Frankly, I think atheists and agnostics have more to fear from prejudice in this society than Christians do. And liberal Christians, who are far more numerous than they seem to realize, have a role to play as well in changing that.
Which is yet another reason to write like a motherfucker. QED.
Check out the poetry of Jill Alexander Essbaum. Very published EROTIC CHRISTIAN POET. she has been to seminary and loves Jesus AND Sex… her faith is strong, her writing beautiful. Let nothing stop you from having a voice.
Dear Sugar,
I just started reading your columns a couple days ago, and have been going through your archives. I just came to #82, from August 18th, 2011.
I am a writer, and a Christian, and someone who struggled to find my tribe for the same reasons as Paradox.
Paradox is one of my people. I would like to connect with him (her?) if possible, maybe introduce him to my network of artists and writers, and see what kind of work he’s doing now. Is there any way you could see if he’d be willing to email me or that I could email him?
On a different note, while I haven’t been familiar with your work as Sugar, I have known you as the author of Wild. I wanted to congratulate you on your beautiful memoir. You really are a craftsman when it comes to narrative non-fiction. Beyond your wonderful prose and storytelling, your cover is among the best I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the books that I site when I’m trying to teach someone about what a book cover should look like if you actually want people to pick up your book in a store or click on it on Amazon.
Thanks,
Erica
I met a woman through community theater who is both a lesbian and a Presbyterian minister. I still have her in my feed on Facebook, and to this day I consider her one of the wisest, most beautifully interesting people I’ve ever known. This is despite the fact that I myself can no longer bear the thought of ever being a member of a Christian church again, for various reasons both personal and political. There is a place for you, Paradoxed, and moreover, there are kindred spirits waiting there. 🙂
I don’t know how I stumbled upon this article, but it saved my relationship. Beautifully written. Thank you.
^ Totally commented on the wrong article, but this one is lovely as well.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.