Interview with poet of faith Marjorie Maddox on her spiritual life and her relationship with Christ and poetry by Peter Menkin

Interview with Pennsylvania poet, as she talks on ‘both … my poetry and … my spiritual life’…

by Peter Menkin

   
Marjorie Maddox, the pen name for Marjorie Maddox Hafer, a poet from Pennsylvania, is a woman of faith. In this lengthy introduction she spends time in corresponding by email with this Religion Writer. The first subject is Eucharist, that tender subject that sets the relationship with Christ in motion through worship. But let her speak to it through her email and some short quotes from her poems.
The following is what she wrote in her email in September, 2013 to this Religion Writer in Mill Valley, California:

THE FIRST OF MARJORIE MADDOX’S EMAIL’S TO PETER MENKIN.
Driving to work today, I was thinking some about the article you sent and also your comments about the “moral” poetic voice. Certainly the voice of the poet or short story writer—like a good painting or piece of music—has the potential to become that voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord.” It needs to be experienced, though, that voice; the painting, the music, the poem can’t really be paraphrased or condensed and must avoid the didactic. (And sometimes the didactic is misinterpreted as the moral.) But there is that potential for the work to point toward God and there is, indeed, something spiritual or akin to the spiritual in the process of creation.  (We are, after all, made in the likeness of the Creator. The work gains its life from the spirit/breath of the artist.)

But, finally, words are not The Word. Period. I think it would be arrogant to think otherwise.

Off to classes. I’m teaching all day.  These are getting long, so use what suits you. I hope they are
helpful. I will have less time during the school week, but wanted to get you something today.

Comments on poems
 
“Eucharist” (Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, 83-84)

Many of my faith poems center on and around what I see as one of
life’s most intimate experiences, the Eucharist. In part, this speaks
to a shifting of focus—both in my poetry and in my spiritual life.

The actual poem titled “Eucharist” appeared in an early issue of
Image: A Journal of the Arts & Religion and also in the chapbook
Ecclesia, which is my poetic examination of the Anglican Theological
Exam. For a time, my husband considered ordination and so, while he
dutifully answered questions in prose, I explored the theological
concepts of Penance, Consubstantiation, Substantiation, Concomitance,
Reservation, and the like through metaphor and image.  Some of this
series later found itself in the book Transplant, Transport,
 Transubstantiation, which focuses on my father’s unsuccessful heart
transplant.  (For a radio interview on this book, click on WPSU Take
Note Interview Show: For Father’s Day, Poets Todd Davis and Marjorie
Maddox Write About Their
Fathers <http://wpsu.org/radio/single_entry/LL-4707/takenoteradio>.)

The rest took up residence in my third full-length book, Weeknights at
 the Cathedral, the collection which most overtly chronicles my spiritual journey.

Surely, on one level or another though, my faith informs all my
poetry. It is, along with writing, most central to who I am. My core
beliefs have not changed that drastically. I grew up in a protestant
denomination and am grateful for the strong fellowship, values, and
Biblical education I received there. However, I knew nothing about
liturgy, the Church Fathers, or the Church calendar. Over the
years—and perhaps first at an Episcopal Church I attended while at
Wheaton College—I found myself increasingly drawn to liturgy and
image. And so, too, the Eucharist. Whereas in my early church
tradition we celebrated Communion four times a year with a meal and foot washing, I now celebrate it in weekly Catholic Mass.

Again, I see this as a shift in focus. Where and how am I able to most
fully worship the Living Christ?

Focus also is my greatest struggle. How to be truly present in
worship? In relationship? In writing? How to best battle all life’s distractions?

Through my first full-length book, Perpendicular As I, does not center
on faith, such images and struggles appear there as well, as in
“Invitational Hymn” (17).


Invitational Hymn

Everywhere white and stained glass.

The poet in earlier years. She currently teaches at Lock Haven University
Lock Haven, PA 17745 MMaddoxh@lhup.edu

Here, on this page,
notes dip like a child learning to swim.
In these sounds, I feel her
drop to her knees, sink till eyes touch water,
till she blows all air from her lungs.

Or, on the next page,
bells humming on a summer night
in circles:  louder, softer, farther.

On this pew alone, a girl

twisting her hair like a chain, a man,
his voice a groan, a woman,
pushing half-notes past the stone walls, out, over the hills.
The boy beside me breathes in, out, loud,
migrates toward the aisle, leaves me

alone with a hymnbook,
words I’ve known too long,
trying hard not to breathe you in,
not to breathe at all.


Always, the choice, it seems to me, is whether or not to breathe God in.

(Interestingly enough, a poet from another state who has now become a
close friend, read this book, recognized the spiritual throughout the
collection, and began our now 10-year friendship. Poetry does
that—brings together seekers across states, countries, and, yes,
centuries.)

I am thinking now of an excerpt from John Donne’s “Satire III,” which
I used as epigraph for Weeknights at the Cathedral.


. . . doubt wisely; in strange way
To stand inquiring right is not to stray;
To sleep or run wrong is. On a huge hill
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must, and about must go..”


I was taking an undergraduate class in the 17th Century Metaphysical
Poets from the great Dr. Beatrice Batson, dutifully reading my
homework, when I ran smack into epiphany. It is OK to question, to
doubt—just keep moving forward. Even the Biblical men and women I grew
up studying knew this, but to my teenage self, this was a huge revelation.

And so thirty + years later, I keep reading and writing, and, in the
process, discovering. I try, as often as I can, to breathe in.  Deeply.

THE SECOND EMAIL. IN A SUBSEQUENT EMAIL THAT MAKES A PART OF THIS INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERVIEW. THE SUBJECT IS THE BUSINESS OF POETRY. MORE NOTES AND THOUGHTS BY MARJORIE MADDOX.


Poetry as a business

I think it has become that, and this is something that I’ve learned rather late.

I’ve always been able to switch between the business-of-submitting-writing-hat and the more important actual-writing-the-writing hat. (More often than I care to admit, the submission process occurs when I am procrastinating and unable to face the harder task of composing.) I am even good at teaching these necessary “business” skills to my students.

But now there’s the added hat of marketing.  I am not a cocktail party conversationalist. I am not good at hobnobbing.  It’s not part of my personality. Walking into a large room where I know absolutely no one still terrifies me. At heart, I am an introvert.

And yet, I am very comfortable (and animated) as a teacher. I love to give readings and interact with others. I am an email (but not Facebook) junkie; I like the one-on-one correspondence. (Some of my closest friends are poets of faith who live more than a few hours away.) It has to do with rapport and connection, I think.

I am delighted to direct three reading series and build relationships with visiting authors. I very much enjoy marketing and promoting these writers.

These days, though, writers also need to market and promote themselves. I prefer to first build the relationships and let the rest follow. That’s not always, though, how the world works. And so, I’m becoming braver. And so, with this new book, I’m learning to put on the marketing hat, too.  I’m even having fun.

P. S. Here’s a poem that’s the epigraph for my circulating short story collection entitled What She Was Saying. The poem speaks, I think, to the same ideas that I mention above:



Articulate,

I’m not; all fine-toed thought
tip-tripping on this gang-plank of tongue,
clumsy and cumbersome in the outside air
of others’ ears and expectations,
all incubation of consonants off-limits,
sounds’ syllables looking silly,
without a line to dry on.
What a mess of metaphors the mouth makes!
It’s the pen that injects
tap dance, the click-clack of keys
that decodes the meaning.
Outside the letters, I’m incognito:
A suburbanite. Two toddlers.
A mouthful of stumbling practicality.
You won’t see me
till I write.

THE THIRD EMAIL AND A LAST REMARK ABOUT PODCASTS AND READINGS AND THE EXPERIENCE OF SPEAKING BEFORE PEOPLE BY MARJORIE MADDOX.

Comment on podcasts, readings, etc.

Because writing is by nature such a solitary act, it can been good—invigorating even—to meet face-to-face, hand-to-hand, or even ear-to-ear with my readers.  Why these phrases? Sometimes I read at libraries or universities where I can physically see the responses of my listeners: the leaning in, the recognition in the eye, the tilt of the head, even (dread upon dread) the yawn. Though it is my voice in the room, I am face-to-face with the reader, often continuing a conversation started with the words on the page. Sometimes the reading itself is prelude for more in-depth conversations to come.  Either way, what was once just me and the computer screen has turned into a more visible relationship with readers.—a rapport, not completely unlike that found in teaching. Channels open up.  Listeners respond with their lives, their stories, their beliefs, their art. In a few weeks, I will be reading again at Franciscan University of Steubenville. I know the students and I will be able to engage in more personal discussions about faith than, say, may occur at a state university. That’s a solace, a gift, an exchange of trust.

One of the most unexpected and wonderful reactions I received after a reading was at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. After I presented several poems, these world-class musicians responded with their cellos. Replying with a song, another poem, a discussion of faith, an invitation for more interaction—all these opportunities help balance the larger solitude of writing.

When I read at elementary schools, I often do so as a way to teach poetry to children, and so I am reading brief pieces as a way to get them to write. The reactions can be immediate and no holes barred.  High fives, squeals, raised hands, intense scribbling (all those hand-to-hand interactions)—or an icy stare. You know right away if you are a success or a flop. I love that immediacy with school visits. It’s very high energy and exhausting, but downright fun. For the most part, the kids still love words. I think most of us start out loving poetry—the songs, the nursery rhymes, the riddles—but some have this love for words stomped out of them. The arts aren’t “practical,” they’re told. I want to help keep the love of words going.

In the last several years, I’ve begun doing more radio book reviews, interviews, and readings.  Although I am connected more ear-to-ear than face-to-face with these listeners, this also can be an intimate experience. The words can be traveling with someone down the road, hovering in the kitchen while spaghetti boils, lingering in the background while someone else touches up a painting.  And I don’t have to see those who walk away or turn to another channel! Sometimes I even get the pleasant surprise of someone who doesn’t typically read or listen to poetry strike up a conversation because of what they heard on the radio. Much of this is due to the good work of folks like Garrison Keillor with The Writer’s Almanac and Ted Kooser with his  “American Life in Poetry” series, which promoted poetry through newspapers. Bringing poetry to the people is alive and well. (This is something I spoke about at the Chautauqua Institution a few summers ago.)

My most recent radio interview centered on my new book, Local News from Someplace Else. The poems focus on living in an unsafe world, and several of the works stem from area headlines, landmarks, or events.  Although I read some humorous poems, I also read some pieces on tragedies that deeply affected the community, for example, a poem about the TWA Flight 800 plane crash that killed 16 high school students and their chaperones from Montoursville, PA (my neighbor lost both his wife and daughter). Poems like these can’t help but be personal. Even though I couldn’t see the listeners, here were poems about my community read to my community.

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wvia/local-wvia-1028614.mp3

And poems on faith and doubt are like that as well. There’s a community. There’s an intimacy. The poems can be risky to write and read, but sometimes if you’re fortunate, there’s a connection of souls.

Marjorie Maddox Reads at River Fest, 2012
Published on Aug 18, 2012, by poet David Bauman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spGNjGmvu8Q
I had the honor of reading with two fantastic poets this weekend at the River Festival in the town of Sunbury, Pennsylvania. This was such a joy for me for many reasons, not only the beautiful day, and the talented writers, but the opportunity to do something concrete and local to bring, as Marjorie Maddox says, “Poetry to the People.”
Marjorie has published several volumes of poetry and is co-editor of the book Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. She was poet in residence last month at the Chautauqua Institute, and is director of creative writing at Lock Haven University, where she just so happened to teach composition to my oldest son. Yes, central Pennsylvania is a vast woodland, but a small world after all.
Here is a good article in the Chautauqua blog about her work in July:
http://chqdaily.com/2012/07/10/poet-i…
You can read more about her in her bio on the Poetry Foundation website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/m…
And if you are interested in Common Wealth, you can find more info here: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/…

A LIST OF MARJORIE MADDOX’S BOOKS AND PUBLISHED BOOKS.
Here we find some of Marjorie Maddox’s books and published books from her biography as they are listed on her website: Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published  Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013); Weeknights At The Cathedral  (an Editions Selection, WordTech 2006); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (2004 Yellowglen Prize, WordTech Editions); Perpendicular As I (1994 Sandstone Book Award); Perpendicular As I (forthcoming as an ebook 2013); When The Wood Clacks Out Your Name: Baseball Poems (2001 Redgreene Press Chapbook Winner); Body Parts  (Anamnesis Press 1999); Ecclesia (Franciscan University Press 1997); How to Fit God into a Poem (1993 Painted Bride Chapbook Winner); and Nightrider to Edinburgh (1986 Amelia Chapbook Winner), as well as 400 poems, stories, and essays in such journals and anthologies as Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, and Image: A Journal of the Arts & Religion.
One reader of her new book says this, from her book jacket and the publisher’s page on her book: “Marjorie Maddox’s newest book offers visions of disaster, tempered by a mother’s hope. In taut language, these poems move into the center of familiar tragedies, often lifted from the news—9/11, school shootings, kidnappings, floods, and hurricanes—rendering each one personal. Local News from Someplace Else is a reminder that what separates us from destruction are sheer luck (or grace) and the insistence of life itself.”
—Shara McCallum, author of This Strange Land and The Face of Water:                                                 New and Selected Poems
The work is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, BAM, Wipf and Stock, and elsewhere: https://wipfandstock.com/store/Local_News_from_Someplace_Else

San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Kids-books-that-make-a-pitch-for-baseball-3166855.php#
Though her children’s book Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems by Marjorie Maddox was not favorably reviewed by Kirkus Review, it is an energetic book and fun. Sadly, the reviewer says it wasn’t well designed. It is also said in the review the illustrations by John Sandford are uninspiring. I didn’t think that at all, and they are fun and attractive, if not special. The reader of this review would think not to even look at the book in the bookstore, but I say do look at it on the shelf. It is worth giving it a look and judge for yourself. After all, Marjorie Maddox is a good poet. That is known.
A Podcast on the baseball poems:
WVIA August 23, 2010 ArtScene with Fiona Powell
Here the baseball book is favorably reviewed:
Booklist: RULES OF THE GAME
- Ian Chipman


School Library Journal
“[Maddox’s] carefully constructed word pictures offer dramatic snapshots of infield flies and collisions between fielders, sacrifice bunts, balks and pitch-outs, stolen bases, and grand slams. … Compact yet full of meaning, these selections offer glimpses of the game’s pleasures and poignant moments. Sandford’s black-and-white pencil drawings add to the drama, focusing viewers’ attention on the gangly pitcher’s calculating gaze or the single-minded pursuit of the pony-tailed infielder. Maddox’s whimsical wordplay will be savored by casual sports fans and hardcore baseball addicts alike.”

http://wpsu.org/radio/single_entry/LL-2278/bookmark
 
Once again I am going to quote from someone’s review. This time the review is by The Scrapper Poet http://thescrapperpoet.wordpress.com/tag/marjorie-maddox/ where she writes about this most recent book I find disheartening and less than hopeful myself, titled Local News from Someplace Else:
Many of the poems in this collection explore tragic news events that have marked the later years of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st century.  Indeed, if I wanted to use the cliché, “Ripped from the Headlines” to describe many of the poems, I could, but many of Maddox’s works do more than simple retell the event. For instance, in “Seven-Year-Old Girl Escapes From Kidnappers” she invites the reader to be with a young determined victim: “And we climb with her/out of that abandoned basement” so that we can understand both the place where the victim is escaping and the place where she is escaping to: “a city not brotherly/a ghost-world of gray.” In another poem, “Woman, 91, Frozen to Floor” we learn about a victim who kneels on her kitchen floor, hoping for warmth but finding herself surrounded by broken pipes and water that turns to ice, her “muscles about the room/bullies her, pins her knees/to the slick floor.”  Other poems explore the different eyewitnesses of the United Airlines Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania on September 9, 2001 or meditate on a daughter’s years in school years after the Columbine shootings.
Always, Maddox seems to be asking, what should our proper responses be to these grim events.  Perhaps the answer is found in the poem “Backwards Barn Raising” where a narrator addresses the 2006 Amish school shooting in Nickel Mines, asking “And what can we do but wail with you/grief burning back to ashes//those splintered schoolroom boards/that heard the bullets?” but also responding with admiration, “Even out of this/you build forgiveness.”
Still, what dominates this book is not poetic headlines of the sad and violent news of our world.  Instead, Maddox spends many poems celebrating the news on the homefront – defining home in her poem “Settled” by explaining “Burrs in their Pennsylvania wind/we’d drift, stick at most a year/in these hill four hours from everywhere.”  In her collection, we see a young daughter pretending to travel in a make-believe time machine, a woman swimming at the YMCA while she is pregnant, and a couple learning to ride bicycles again.  Some of her poems depict everyday landscapes such as diners, doctor offices and backyards.  There is a quiet spirituality about this life that Maddox is examining, one of contentment in spite of the everyday fears that threaten to engulf us.  My favorite poem, “Anniversary Coffee” depicts a couple quietly celebrating an important even in their lives in a place they know well: “Those behind the counter/know us and know//when to save what we want.”  The narrator concludes the scene saying, “You are/not what I ordered but what I order now//across the café table, across the morning/spread with such delectable savor.”
Let us face it, Marjorie Maddox is a woman, and a married woman with children, let us say that important fact, who likes to write. She wanted to write her answers to the interview questions. When faced with some short emails asking about matters of opinion like what she felt about Eucharist, and poetry as business, and even the more difficult question of the moral voice of the poet, she really got into the swing of things and so to speak put pen to paper and took some time writing this Religion Writer a thoughtful email. Thanks for your answers, Marjorie. You’ll find much of what you wrote here. It is good to hear from a contemporary poet of Pennsylvania. I think we can file you under Believer. Readers can write Marjorie Maddox here: Maddox Hafer, Marjorie MMaddoxh@lhup.edu


INTERVIEW WITH POET MARJORIE MADDOX WITH PETER MENKIN, RELIGION WRITER, AS SENT BY EMAIL BY THE POET TO MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA IN SEPTEMBER, 2013

1. 1.     The act of directing creative writing, as you do at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, must have its moments. What are some of those moments when the student writer comes to fruition, especially the student poet? Can you remember a seminal transition or even an opening up of the writing juices in a young person’s life in the classroom in this area. This moment needn’t be momentous, just telling.

Although there are many aspects to directing my university’s creative-writing track, when interacting with the students themselves, I interpret the role of “director” as “one who gives direction” or “guidance.”  In this way I’ve been privileged, yes, to witness and take part in many “epiphanies” in the student, many instances where the brain and heart and spirit click into action, and what were once the raw materials of ideas and words transform into crafted poetry.
This is not to say that such transformation is immediate or easy. It is often debated in the creative writing world whether or not such writing can, indeed, be taught. Can a student enter the class having never written a line of verse and exit as a “poet”? Yes and no.
Certainly, not all students will or can embrace the art, just as not all those enrolled in a music class will or can become inspiring pianists. Yes, they can memorize the notes and tap on the keys, but does the music soar? Have they captured in their playing some part of this world or the next? Have they connected the day-to-day of practicing scales with the beyond-this-world passion of the spirit?
The strong writer (and this is true also in Composition classes) moves past a formulaic structure of words on the page into the realm of mystery. Can I guarantee that a student will “become a poet”? No. But can I teach and model the necessary skills? Can I challenge and inspire? Can I instill an effective process of revision? Will my students leave stronger writers? Absolutely. For those who commit themselves to write (for a writer is one who writes, after all), it’s true every time.
Getting to that point takes time and groundwork. In my classes, week five seems to be the magical number. Why, I can’t say, except that by this point we have spent a lot of time reading and discussing literature. (I am a firm believer that one of the best teachers of strong writing is good and diverse literature. Too many would-be authors want to take on the “persona” of a writer, without actually reading or writing. There’s much to learn from masters of the craft.) We’ve also, by week 5, spent a lot of time writing; giving and receiving feedback; and revising, revising, revising. We’ve talked much about precision—exactly the right word in the right place—and perspective—coming to a subject or idea from a fresh point-of-view. We’ve practiced writing both with our eyes (image, detail, metaphor, etc.) and our ears (alliteration, assonance, consonance, etc.), so that words resonate with music and meaning. And we’ve become a community.
That gift of a trusted writing community is especially important for my students, a time and place where they can experiment with a wide variety of styles and subject matter and receive careful feedback from both myself and peer authors. We look at the poem as art, not diary, and discuss where and how to best shape it. We marvel at what works well; we push the author to polish what does not.
I also take my students into a community of writers beyond the classroom. After having turned in a final portfolio (a type of revised “book” complete with an Introduction), students give an end-of-the-semester reading at a local coffee house. It is a celebration, really, of all that they’ve accomplished—and some of them have accomplished much. The difference between those early attempts (also included and written about in their books) and the more polished versions are obvious, and, often, students are giddy with excitement. They can see the transformation both in their poems and in themselves. They can hear it in the pieces their fellow writers read, and they are now more confident and proud to share their own work with a wider community. They are glad I am there, but, at this point, they are most connected to their poems and to each other. Their applause is loud and genuine—as is mine.
By the end of the semester, I’ve also asked that authors submit work to our literary and arts journal, a magazine that is written, edited, and designed by students. In addition, each spring, Theatre or Speech students select and “perform” from the magazine poems, stories, and essays through dramatic readings. There in that audience, I hear a phrase a particular student rewrote and revised until it was just so. Or I watch as a young woman listens intently to someone else bring to the stage what she has written. Or I overhear a young man burst into laughter or gasp in amazement at the precise way a student author has expressed ideas. I see students passing out copies of the magazine to friends. I hear them quoting each other’s lines. To cite the American Express ad: “priceless.”
Much of this enthusiasm for the magazine and the subsequent performance stems from students’ earlier engagement with our visiting authors. At LHU, we host The Pennsylvania Authors reading series, The UpWrite series (which emphasizes diversity from a number of different angles), and WriteNow: Community Conversations with Contemporary Authors. These events, which I co-direct, often profoundly change the way apathetic students see literature and further inspire students already “in love” with reading and writing.  Students need to read, meet, and interact with “real live” writers; they need to hear authors talk not only about the writing process, but about the various ways they integrate into their art through words the unique, yet often universal, challenges of their lives. I can’t tell you how many times a student has said to me, “I thought this reading would be boring, but this really changed everything for me” or “Wow, he came from my hometown. If he can write like that, maybe I can, too.” The impact of visiting authors is both immediate and long-lasting. Semesters later, students continue to bring up an image or idea from an earlier reading. They experiment with new approaches. They start seeing as themselves “writers.” And they are.
This past week, amidst some of my more tedious duties of scoring quizzes, battling my on-line gradebook, and filling out paperwork, I received in the mail an inscribed novella from a former student, gone from the university now a good decade. She thanked me for all that she had learned and was continuing to use in her writing.
The same day, a student came up to me after my Composition class and stated, quite forcefully, “Thank you for these types of exercises, for connecting us not just to the literary, but to the human.” Of course, they (the human and the literary) are intricately intertwined—as is my life as a writer and my life as a “director of/guide to” other writers.
It was good to be reminded. Though it was the end of the day and I was tired, I returned to my paperwork with a bit more stamina.

1. 2.     I have often wondered about the campus life for the poet, for it must be a rich life. But mostly I want to know how do the rhythms of your days enrich your life of being a poet. For example, someone told me that a poem can have a life in its conception and in its revision living many years. A life of revision, even. Does the life of writing poetry meld with the life of living the life of a teacher and the campus life and the life of living the poet’s journey?

In addition to being a “director of/guide to” my student writers, I also am a collaborator. What I mean by this is that in the role of reader and editor, I work together with the student to make the poem, story, essay, or drama its best possible self. How can this line more fully capture the moment? How can this phrase better echo the poem’s earlier rhythms? I don’t revise for the students, but I push them to see where and how the work can be strengthened, where and how it can move from one level to the next. Often, as editor, I also am gardener, weeding out the weak images, clichéd passages, or flat language to allow the rest of the poem to flourish. It is a very creative process—serving as this type of editor—in the same way that teaching is a creative process. There is engagement, rapport, trust, innovation, experimentation, discipline. These are, of course, also techniques and strategies useful to me in my own writing, so there is crossover, you see. In all three—editing, teaching, writing—there is the intimate interaction of words and audience.
I worked for several years after college as an editor and proofreader of computer books—for me, not the same as teaching at all. By the end of the day, I was completely depleted with no creative energy. This is not to say that I don’t often arrive home these days drained and exhausted. I do. However, I’ve still been connected throughout the day to words and ideas (by “words” I mean literature, not computer texts). I’ve seen students come alive to writing and reading. I, too, have been inspired by our discussions and interactions. This, in turn, motivates me to write (even when I am not able time-wise to do so immediately).
For instance, a few years ago, I began teaching Dante’s Inferno in a freshman Honors class. I had not previously taught the work, didn’t even remember if I’d ever read it closely, so I was learning along with the students, engaging with the text as reader, as teacher, and eventually as poet. One of the poems that came from this experience was the following piece, later published in Anglican Theological Journal.

Winter: Teaching Dante’s Inferno

March:  icy apparitions, frigid prayer,
all good intentions damned to frozen lakes—
or were they good?—the wordcraft of warfare

revises motives, thaws our worst mistakes
to lukewarm doubt, to culture-clutching spin.
And yet the sleet rains down, the once-soft flake

pounds snowy fists, bites suntanned, frost-bound skin.
Hellfire or glacial pit—Christ, sin is sin.

What I was struck by in these class discussions and later in the poem was our (and maybe by this I mean “my”) tendency to euphemize my own sin, to pretty it up, not call it what it is. It is easy to do. I have never been a rebel or searched out confrontation. I have not been enmeshed in great scandal. By the world’s standards, I have lived a pretty straight-laced life, but in reading Dante, I could not escape coming face to face with the cowardly, those not brave enough to take a stand. The sin of omission: how great and wide a sin this can be and how often I fall into its abyss.
And so, the reading, the teaching, and the writing were a way for me to struggle with this, a way to examine my own soul. It is a long ongoing process.
Although such moments intersect with my teaching days, often the actual physical process of writing is put on hold. I teach four classes every semester at a state university; many of these are writing classes, sometimes with 26 students in a class. That is a lot of reading and grading. Add to that committee work and advising, and I clock in fifty to seventy hours a week. It is a heavy, time-intensive profession.
Even more importantly, I have a husband and two children. It is a lot of juggling of roles. During the school year, many of my poems, stories, and essays are there churning in my brain while I am doing dishes or teaching my daughter to drive (well maybe not the latter as I am focused on the road!) but don’t make it to the actual page or computer screen until my winter or summer “breaks.” Surprisingly, to me, I seem to get just as much if not more written this way. It is as if I am, on one level or another, writing away, but the words wait to burst forth during the less cluttered spaces of time.
These spaces also leave me more time to think and rethink, to go back and revise previous work, and to more fully connect with my writer self. In turn, I am able to more fully connect with my teacher self at the beginning of a new semester. The one feeds the other. Although I would prefer to do much less teaching and much more writing, the two do complement each other. For that, I am grateful.

1. 3.     Let’s talk some more of the work of writing, but something also about the mystery of what is religion. You have written a poem titled, “The Sacrament of Penance,” in your book Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation. Is the heart of religion the nature of mercy in your sense of what religion is about?  And if not, what is religion’s heart? For I do get that in your poem when you write, “Wherefore, I pray God to have mercy upon me…” Or is that just in this poem? I know, tough question and maybe an unfair one. Maybe even too personal rather than personable. Staying more with the poem itself is okay.

Yes, I think at the heart of Christianity, to be specific, is mercy. We are offered this great gift of forgiveness, a gift which, in our human stubbornness and arrogance, we reject far too often—or maybe “accept” intellectually but still keep at a distance. And yet it’s always there, as the poem’s epigraph by Edward Pusey describes absolution: “a second plank given to us by the mercy of God after shipwreck.”
The poem you reference, “The Sacrament of Penance,” is part of that same series in which I wrote “poetic” answers to the Anglican Theological Exam. On one level, the poem explores the various theological components of this sacrament: absolution and repentance (contrition, confession, amendment). On another level, I try to envision what these mean at their deepest, most personal levels. What is true contrition? How, if we are truly sorry for our sin, do we go out and commit it again and again? Are we, just like Young Goodman Brown in Hawthorne’s story, promising that we will cling to Faith “tomorrow”—while at the same time we continue toward life’s dark woods?
On an even more personal level, how can I pray to focus more fully on the Body and Blood of Christ in my everyday life and, even before my prayer is finished, be thinking of some school duty I have not yet completed?  Some days I feel very much like the apostles sleeping while Jesus prayed in the garden. “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” He asks. Sometimes, it seems, I sleep for days.
I do not like confession. I do not like admitting my sins in front of others, even when that other is a priest, a representative of Christ. But is it necessary? I think so. That doesn’t make it any easier.
All of this has been a part of my spiritual journey toward a more liturgical form of worship, toward the merciful arms of God, as explored in the following:

The Sacred           Heart of Jesus

O holy auricles,      venerable ventricles,

cathedral of cavernous sanctification, the nave we need,

 windowed with the unstained wine of crucified corpuscles,

we echo in your vaults, our sin-cleansed cells rising high

  into arias, into the buttressing arch of your aorta.

 Here is the architecture of mercy,

shafts bright with agape shine,

our mortal veins split wide

on your unveiled

altar of

heart.

(previously published in Christianity and Literature and Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation)
I also see this concept of “mercy” in our relationship to others. Forgive us, we plead in The Lord’s Prayer, “…as we forgive those who trespass against us.” What a hard but important condition. How powerfully it connects our relationship with God and our relationships with others. To me, one of the most almost unbelievable acts of forgiveness/mercy came from the families who lost children in the 2006 Amish schoolhouse shooting.

Backwards Barn Raising
Nickel Mines, October 2006

And what can we do but wail with you,
grief burning back to ashes

those splintered schoolroom boards
that heard the bullets?

Flames hot enough to melt the nails—
now and then—

rise up in our eyes; we hear
that ancient hammer thud

echo, “Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?”

Can what is lost be leveled?
You hold each other’s hands,

huddle in an unending circle,
“. . . . as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Even out of this,
you build forgiveness.

The book in which the poem appears, my latest, Local News from Someplace Else  (Wipf & Stock 2013), focuses on living in an unsafe world. But the world (and the poems) are not without mercy, not without hope. Many are joyful celebrations of life even in the midst of this country’s tragedies. This is mercy, too.

1. 4.     Why do you go so contemporary in your new book, even to the gynecologist? The title of the new book is Local News: from Someplace Else, by Marjorie Maddox, and takes us into the misery and angst of our newspaper headlines and television presence as it defines us. There is even a television with snow-filled screen on the cover. What turned you to visions of disaster for your themes? Did angst overtake you right to the genitals? Tell me I am wrong and how, where. Briefly, show me how God is present, whether we know it or not. If you say so.

The headline poems are in the book because they are in my life, in all of our lives.  How do we live in this world of school shootings, hurricanes, and bombings? How do we raise a family? My children were toddlers on 9/11. Now they are teens. Their growing-up years are very different than mine. As a society, we keep adjusting to new definitions of “safety” and “home.” We have to.
This doesn’t mean that ours is a life without delight. In fact, the poem that you mention, “At the Gynecologist’s,” is much more about hope than horror. Although the speaker fears bad news, the poem ends with “and, yes, it’s a baby.”


Perhaps this is where our hope most lies—in our children, in our bond with family and friends, in the parent/child relationship of God and mankind—and so the book includes many joyful moments as well. It gives us that choice, as articulated at the end of “Twice”; “will we continue, with hope/or fear, to look up straight/into whatever warms us?” Yes, tragedy hits us hard in the heart (even in the genitals as you ask in your question), but so does joy; so does mercy.
There is a time to grieve. There is a time, as Ecclesiastics tells us and my poem “After” echoes, “to get living again.” In Local News from Someplace Else, moments of mourning occur alongside moments of rejoicing.
And isn’t this the reality of life?

1. 5.     I am sure I have missed much, and wonder, tell me again, do you believe God is present in the television snow-filled screen and anxiety of the news writer’s reality he presents of the world? What has this Religion Writer missed in these questions of you. Please add here. And thank you for your time.                                                                

Against a dark backdrop, the stark older TV with its static-filled screen captures well several of the book’s central concerns:
•our paradoxical horror of and fascination with local and national events and how, too often, we disconnect from our own lives
•the sometimes static and confusion of our days
•our nostalgia for the past and hope for an unclear future (and thus our attempt to “tune in” to our everyday lives while trying to make sense of the chaos).
Ultimately, though, I think the cover and the book emphasize our universal joys and sorrows—what we share even with those whom we’ve never met.
Do I see God as present in these universal joys and sorrow? Yes. In the former, as grace. In the latter, as comfort.

Peter, thank you for the opportunity to think through these questions.

 
 
ADDENDUM
 
Weeknights at the Cathedral

Weekday evenings, I watch you
stuff soprano into boy into choir robe
like ricotta into a shell,
faces bursting on the high A.
A priest wraps the rotten notes about his collar,
fingers them like a rosary
till they rise, whole, smooth,
beyond the organ pipes.
Sometimes you hide in those pipes,
pop out on middle C.
Sometimes you filter through the stained glass,
jiggling the tinted cross
until your thorns slip.
Today, hunchbacked on the fourth pew,
canvassed in grays,
you kneel, a beggar woman.
I think you are praying for me

(from Weeknights at the Cathedral)

Ash Wednesday

Fingernails scrubbed clean as latrines
in the army, this symbol
of a man dirties his thumb
with our sin, the powdery ash riding high
on his pores, not sinking in
before he sketches the gray
of our dirt-birth across a brow
we were born to furrow.

Listen to the sound of forgiveness:
the crossing of skin, the cult-
like queuing up to explode
in ripped whispers, “Lord,
have mercy, Christ, have
mercy, Lord, have mercy.”

And we want it.  And we take it
home with us to stare back
from a lover’s forehead,
to come off in a smear on the sheets
as we roll onto each other’s skin,
or to wear like a bindhi this medal of our not winning
each day we wake to the worlds
we are and are not.

And when we wake too early
before the light of just-becoming-day
sneaks in on us, and we stand, toes cold,
in the tiled bathroom, still lonely, deceived
into piety, scrubbing away the grime of our humanness
like fierce fierce toothbrushes on latrines
in the army, there it is still,
raw with our washings:
the human beneath.

(from Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation)


Backwards Barn Raising
Nickel Mines, October 2006

And what can we do but wail with you,
grief burning back to ashes

those splintered schoolroom boards
that heard the bullets?

Flames hot enough to melt the nails—
now and then—

rise up in our eyes; we hear
that ancient hammer thud

echo, “Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?”

Can what is lost be leveled?
You hold each other’s hands,

huddle in an unending circle,
“. . . . as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Even out of this,
you build forgiveness.

(from Local News from Someplace Else)

 
Comma          
….of all that is, seen and unseen

what we see and don’t
split by the simple curve
of cursive, a pencil slip
or determined nitch
on paper. God
Almighty,
we miss epiphany
when we step
our voice too quickly
over the light lines
punctuating the Light
of all that is,
visible and invisible,
our hurried eyes
forgetting to read
what so powerfully pauses
our lives between
the meanings.

(from Weeknights at the Cathedral)

Invitational Hymn

Everywhere white and stained glass.

Here, on this page,
notes dip like a child learning to swim.
In these sounds, I feel her
drop to her knees, sink till eyes touch water,
till she blows all air from her lungs.

Or, on the next page,
bells humming on a summer night
in circles:  louder, softer, farther.

On this pew alone, a girl

twisting her hair like a chain, a man,
his voice a groan, a woman,
pushing half-notes past the stone walls, out, over the hills.
The boy beside me breathes in, out, loud,
migrates toward the aisle, leaves me

alone with a hymnbook,
words I’ve known too long,
trying hard not to breathe you in,
not to breathe at all.

(from Weeknights at the Cathedral)

Eucharist

Host

the small circle of face
we see by
in light of wine

the sliver of why
that bends the bones
begs “Come!”

the orbed cross
bright in the palm
of the poor

the crucified moon
nailed high
on the night of tongue


Chalice

To sip is to sing the Amen
into veins, sweeten
the soured tongue.
But first:  lips
pursed with it,
hollowed mouth brimming
with want.

This is the swallowing
of what spewed out:  spears
stuck long in the side,
thorns thick in the skin.
No trickle.
A Hallelujah
torrent down the throat.

(from Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation)

 
Easter Eve Vigil

Awaiting baptism,
our first-born son sleeps
the sleep of the dead.

Our insomnious daughter,
all two-year-old insight and innocence,
proclaims, “It’s dark, dark, dark!”

and “cross of Jesus”
in the sanctuary silence.
Nothing can calm her pre-resurrection joy.

Finally, in the depth of blackness,
the boulder of Lent rolls away
to Easter.

“This little light of mine”
drips the bright blood of light
across pew and aisle, and I see

my daughter enraptured
by her brother breathing
bubbles, his calm face

starting to surface
into this world of renewal:
two small ones

wrenched so recently
from my dark night of the soul
into these still waters

of family where Christ struts
triumphantly and loudly
on waves as smooth as wafers.

(from Weeknights at the Cathedral)

Interview: Reverend Doctor talks about Mental Illness and pastoral counseling; his name is Lawrence Michael Cameron

In a conversation spanning half hour segments numbering seven on the same number of separate days this Religion Writer talked with the Reverend Doctor Lawrence Michael Cameron, OAC. That is a total interview of 3 and a half hours. The subject: Mental Illness. That is the Reverend Doctor’s business and has been for 25 years as a pastoral counselor. We talked by phone to his home in Indiana from mine in Mill Valley, California.

An advocate for the mentally ill, Doctor C, as he is affectionately known, bent his comments to let the reader know of his favorable sense of hope for mentally ill people and their treatment.
He bent the direction of success for living in the world for the mentally ill in a way that says those with mental illness can have success and happiness. There is an important and positive truth in his remarks, based on psychiatric and psychological truths. Though those with mental illness may not be cured, they do and can manage their lives in a way that provides fulfillment and  more normal lifestyles to live in the mainstream in a significant number of instances. He is an advocate and practitioner of this truism, as are his peers. This writer calls this a form of Christian hope and practice in the area of mental health as expressed by the Reverend Doctor.

A Congregational minister with thirteen years of education, most of his work is secular. What does a man of God see in this kind of effort in the Christian sense, so this writer wondered. Where is the Call? Obviously there is great satisfaction for him in the compassion and saving work of granting relief and health to those he helps. Are not hospitals named after the Evangelist Luke?

Also, let me say that churches have an institutional life, and the Congregational Church life is no different. This opportunity for them to have a presence in the world of helping the mentally ill in the profession of mental health is another place Christian service can help and have influence. No minor act in our day of retreat from secularism, humanism, and atheism in America. It is important to remember that Christianity has a statement to make in the world of giving people of all kinds health care in all kinds of places in the United States. Michigan is where Dr. C works, and it is one place we learn about a Reverend Doctor at work and learn what he has to say on the subject of mental illness.

INTERVIEW WITH THE REVEREND DOCTOR LAWRENCE MICHAEL CAMERON, OAC WITH PETER MENKIN

1. 1.    
   

   You said in our conversation in August, 2013, “Mindfulness means to embrace reality in the moment. Most people suffer from cognitive distortions (stinking thinking) and worry about yesterday or are anxious about tomorrow.” A goal of your work is to help the mentally ill through spiritual and religious methods to have more peace, even tranquility. Speak a little about how mindfulness helps to reach this goal. For those of us who do not know what mindfulness may be, talk to us about what it is in this context for the mentally ill.

The mental health professional, whether wearing the hat of a spiritual director or counselor, mindfulness has been identified as … one component of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and it comes out of cognitive therapy… In the realm of spiritual work, mindfulness is the largest component.

Mindfulness is taught in every world religion in some form or fashion and we see it in Zen Buddhism, contemplative Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, all of the mystical sides of faith traditions and mindfulness is learning to be in the present moment. [These are spiritual disciplines that help the mentally ill.]

Anxiety. which is a crippling disease is about living someplace elsewhere than present. Someplace other than the present moment. Worry, racing thoughts, shame, grief, and guilt about things in the past, all of these things take us out of the here and now, and we live in yesterday and tomorrow. Mindfulness is teaching people to just be and doing what you’re doing letting everything other than the “right now” wait. It’s about being fully present to hear the other person’s question, not thinking what’s going to be done five minutes from now.

In pastoral care and counseling, in working with the person who is suffering, teaching mindfulness is central. But in the religious world it is taught to everybody. It is not particular to everybody who is mentally ill. The difficulty is that it is a lot like prayer, but people don’t use prayer until they need something or want something or find themselves distressed. Everyone should be learning mindfulness. Jesus tells people on the Sermon on the Mount, Don’t worry about tomorrow, and don’t worry about what you eat or wear. What he’s talking about is this aspect of mindfulness.

1. 2.     In your more than 25 years of ministering to those in need who are this special population, you told me regarding your approach and whether the mentally ill are a homogenous group that ask:  “Why has God allowed this terrible disease.” Please explain this statement. In a way you are ministering to an individual who is disturbed, even asking the question, “Why me, God.” What is it that you start out with when meeting a new patient you plan to help? And how do you know they need you and you can help them with the God question they pose?

The population of the mentally ill is not homogenous. You cannot look at it as if it effects a certain population. Mental illness knows no class, no race, and no educational level. Mental illness like any other illness can occur to any human being. No one is immune to sickness whether it is physical or mental.

John Jones was born into what seemed like a typical family and one of his parents suffered from an organic disorder called Schizophrenia. Research has indicated that there is a possible hereditary link to some mental illnesses. Just like there is to some physical illnesses. If there are cardiac issues in your family of origin than it may affect you, too.  Schizophrenia is one of them; Bipolar Disorder is one of them. Both may be inherited. So the particular illnesses can be linked to the family you are born into. Someone in your family has it. John Jones at age 22 has a psychotic break and leaves college in Ohio and ends up in California.  In this episode he is discovered to suffer from Schizophrenia when he is placed in a hospital after being found just wandering on the street.
Client B, Sally Smith’s, normal regular life is interrupted by an experience of a trauma and she experiences the loss of income. His normal life seemingly is turned upside down by the trauma and she goes into a deep clinical depression. There is also research that shows the majority of incarcerated people, the longer they are incarcerated, the more likely mental illness will set in. We in no way have a system that rehabilitates prisoners. They are at risk of decompensating, including risk of mental health.

Not everybody asks the question, “Why me God?” That is a concern for some, but not for everyone. There are some who do ask that question. They wonder, “Why me?” When a person asks, “Why would God make this happen?” it indicates that the person has some faith resources. They came up with the question. They have come to believe there is a God. They believe God is involved with our immediate lives. We know they believe in a God who has something to do with them, intervenes, participates, and changes human lives. That helps us diagnose that they have some faith resources.  That opens the door to explore what resources they have and mobilize those faith resources. It’s not my job, my calling, to try to get them to believe like I believe. What we want to do is see where their at and the only effective treatment for them is to mobilize what they have and make it work for them.
We explore what else have they’ve seen in their lives, where else have they noticed God in their lives. The question is a great question because it opens the door to help them seek out, for we find out what the person’s real questions are. Are the underlining questions, does God not like me, does he not want me. In the Judaic-Christian tradition, Job searches all these questions that are put forth by his so-called friends and they ask him “where did you sin in you life?” Rabbi Harold Kushner, when he lost his son to a terrible disease, wrote the book, “Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People,” to explore the question. Every world religion has explored this question. Some say, “You deserve it.” “It must be God’s will.” One school of thought teaches that in human moral development, the most mature learn to embrace the issue of ambiguity.

I teach that it takes both hands. That it takes both hands to approach this question of living with ambiguity: to handle it, to deal with it. God is involved with our lives. God does love us. Terrible things happen, but we don’t know why. Together they aren’t logical. On one hand, God is all powerful and all loving, on the other hand bad things do happen. That is ambiguity that take two hands to hold onto two truths that seemingly contradict each other, but yet they exist together and we experience them together in our living.

If a person is coming to me in the County Mental Health System we have a process. We do a mental health assessment and than a treatment plan which is person centered. What does the person want? Quite often people say, clients say, I want to stop hurting, feeling bad. I want to have the voices in my head go away. I want to stop cutting.

Some use cutting as a way of coping with internal pain. Quite often they will gash or make superficial cuts on their arms, legs or stomachs. They find some psychological relief by afflicting controlled pain on themselves above this uncontrolled pain they have. It is maladaptive, it doesn’t last. It hurts them.
Again my meeting them depends on their needs. Some people don’t want to be depressed any more. Or they want better relationships. The treatment plan may include psychiatric medication. We may refer them to a psychiatrist. It has been proven that talk therapy and medication have the same efficacy, but when used together you have even greater results.

1. 3.     The stigma of mental illness follows those who have been or are mentally ill. That is a given. Talk about the stigma of mental illness in the Church, among parishioners, and even explain by example the result of stigma in someone’s life that fits the profile of being or having been mentally ill.

Stigma in mental health is recognized, and in Michigan there are mandated anti-stigma programs. The more we educate the public the more we do away with the stigma. Tipper Gore who suffers from depression did a lot to destigmatized mental illness. Since it does carry a stigma, people who need help wait for years and have torment and discomfort because they didn’t seek the help …. Some wait for years … due to the stigma involved. That’s one of the areas where stigma affects people.  People need and/or want to get help but don’t because of the stigma. No one wants to be labeled crazy. We live in a society of self-reliance, where nobody wants to seek out help.

It’s counterproductive, for instead of seeing themselves as someone with an illness, they see themselves as an illness. This makes treatment even more difficult. People live with mental illness…and they have been managed, not cured. People have been able to live successful and productive lives. It means being part of a community, and contributing to that community in a meaningful way, and having a certain sense of self satisfaction, and a certain degree of happiness.

 

In the movie “Beautiful Mind,” what I remember, I thought it ended well; the teacher was able to be able to be diagnosed and be able to continue to teach. Whether he had other breakthroughs in physics and mathematics…who is to say how many we have in a lifetime… Mental illness is also culturally biased, in some locations, schizophrenia, dissociative, or people who hear voices and see things, are considered gifted or holy. Sometimes they are Shamans, or spirit guides … they were not ostracized they had a particular function in that culture. People who are bipolar and in a manic state, seemingly become almost superhuman and creative and have special, even superhuman insights. There are painters and poets, people who become even more creative in these manic states. But when depression comes they can become suicidal. The meds make them stable, keep them level. They sometimes begin to miss those manic episodes and stop taking their meds. They want that feeling of super humanness and creativity again. The problem is that the disease swings both ways, and they can do some bizarre stuff and some very creative stuff. So it is a very dangerous thing to go off their meds.

Stigma comes from fear, and when people in the general population don’t know about the mentally ill they may think they will be hurt by them. So they deal with them differently. When people don’t know and are afraid they react in all sorts of ways.

The same with people in the Church.  Churches attract all sorts of people. Churches tend to be homogenous. If people seem different from us, if they are in any way, shape or form out of the ordinary, they are ostracized. And so a place where primarily one would think they would find reception and acceptance, it can be a place which is harmful and hurtful. When people don’t fit a certain mold come to a Church, they aren’t going to fit a certain community that systemically demands a certain amount of conformity. And there is ignorance in some faith communities where they tend to view people with mental illness possessed or of the devil.

Exorcism is something that is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. In Diagnostic Statistical Manual Number 5, they list one of the causes of certain dissociative diseases as possession. There is scientific recognition of a particular phenomenon that is supernatural in character.
That isn’t saying everyone with mentally illness is possessed. It is that certain people with mental illness can have disassociative episodes because of possession. Exorcisms is something found performed worldwide: Typically in the Roman Catholic tradition a psychiatrist will go in to discover if with the subject they are talking about a psychiatric condition or not. If it is a psychiatric condition regarding the subject, they will deal with it. If not, an Exorcist will come in. An Exorcist will not come in until they rule out psychiatric causes of the illness.

Mental illness is a medical condition that has certain pathology; it can be both acute and chronic. It is something that is treatable and it has to do with brain functioning. It is better called a brain illness, and people would better understand it as behavioral health…rather than mental health.
Mental illness has to do with brain activity, moods, everything generated with the organ of the brain. This is not to be confused with other conditions, like conditions where people are just plain bad. There are people who are just bad people. They may suffer from a character disorder: narcissistic personality disorder, borderline disorder and the likes. These are what we call Axis II people. Mentally Ill people are Axis I. Characteralogical disorders are Axis II. They can behave very poorly. People who are axis II, to use the jargon of the street, aren’t crazy. Axis I people can be insane if untreated. Axis II people are more difficult to treat because it is not an illness but rather a character issue.

On top of that, they are people who are just evil. M. Scott Peck, author of, “The Road Less Traveled,” and, “The People of the Lie,” looks at evil as a mental category. He subtitled his book, “The Hopes of Healing Evil.” In his last chapter he tells about witnessing demon possessed people while in Africa and of exorcisms. He concludes that some of the phenomena of evil manifested in the world go beyond our present scientific understandings.

To explain more of the difference between evil people and those who are mentally ill I say: The mentally ill who are not being treated can’t make it through the day. They can’t figure out how to make it from point A to point B. They can’t figure out what to do to live. People who can make a plan to strategically assault a movie theatre, or set bombs off, or arrange for mass murders to occur are just plain evil. The untreated mentally ill can’t figure that out and make it happen. Only a person who is evil and has their full mental capacities can do such things.

What of your career in working with people with these maladies of disturbed personality and maybe even soul. How did you get started, and why do you stay at this work? What of your background and training, and if someone wants to explore this area of ministry for their own work, what do you suggest they take a look at early in the game of making a decision in favor of the work? How do they know they have a Call to this ministry?

In seminary most ministers who are from a mainline denomination take one course in pastoral care. They do not receive anything other than an introductory course so they can make referrals as they recognize that someone who has come to their office needs help beyond their expertise. If clergy desire more than just an introductory training, there are ways to pursue that. There is chaplaincy, hospice, military chaplaincy, police chaplaincy and the other side is pastoral counseling. There is a set of criteria, including classroom training and hands on clinical work.

I helped pay for graduate school with a Federal work study position and was sent down to the regional alcoholism clinic in Columbus, Ohio.  I  thought I would work there pushing a broom or doing office clerical stuff, and instead, was given an office and was told I was going to be an Outpatient Alcoholism Counselor. I was 22 years old and only had a Bachelors degree majoring in religious studies from Albion College.  I knew nothing about addictions. I threw myself into learning and studying and took a great interest and spent a lot of time going to AA meetings and listening and asking questions.  After receiving a Masters of Divinity degree at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, I enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years and when I received my Honorable Discharge I took some counseling and guidance courses at Eastern Michigan University, then a Doctoral at Ashland University in Pastoral Care and Counseling.

I continued to take clinical pastoral education for chaplains and then went on for another doctorate at Trinity Seminary in Spiritual Anthropology. In the field one continually needs to keep trained and renewed as the field changes rapidly.

I went the long extended route. There are seminaries that offer masters in counseling and social work. Seminaries now offer masters in pastoral care and counseling; also joint counseling and social work degrees and addiction studies. A person doesn’t have to go the route I went with thirteen years of higher education beyond high school.  If people are interested, or think they have a calling to this kind of ministry there are more efficient ways to go.

If a person wants to look more into this ministry before committing to the time and expense there are many lay programs they can look into to get a sense of this type of ministry. Stephen Ministries is an international program for churches that train people to help people by coming alongside other lay people who are experiencing some kind of difficulty. They receive training in grief counseling, in active listening, in crisis counseling and a host of other areas so they can be present with someone and offer support to them in a critical time of need like the loss of a spouse, child, home or job.
They are like a “professional friend.” If you are going through a difficult time, a Stephen Minister can walk beside you and you can get a taste of what it is like to be a helping professional in this area. There are also several lay counseling programs, where lay people are trained in being present for other people in a non-judgmental way. They are taught how to be more human, and listen more deeply. A lot of times people who have troubles need someone to listen to them. It’s rare these days to get someone to listen to us. It is beyond a good friend, it is someone who has some specialized training.

We’re talking about working with the mentally ill; it is a specialized ministry that is going to take some specialized training and education. It isn’t just for someone who thinks they are a good listener. There are many hurdles to jump and roads to travel. The first thing one does is become very self-aware; know their issues so they don’t get in the way. So they know what their buttons are and know their own inner dynamics. If you feel called, if you feel called you will end up in it. If you feel called you will end up in the ministry because of and by God’s will. You are going to be helping people who can be in dire straits. Successes you won’t see, for they go off and live their lives. What you will see are people who are going to need your help until well. It is a job that doesn’t offer a lot of completion. You don’t come out with a finished product. I am convinced that if it is not of God you certainly won’t last long in the work.

1. 4.     Let me ask a nuts and bolts question. How do you work with individuals needing your ministry? For example, where do you meet with them? Give us an example? Do you also work in groups of people, and is this on the ward? I assume you are walking a ward sometimes. Explain how so?

There are a couple of answers. Right now I’m working for the County Authority that oversees all individuals who have Medicaid or are indigent. [Example: When speaking yesterday with Dr. C in interview, we were interrupted by a call from the County Jail. What happened was, in his words as an example of who he works with…] …the policeman brought someone to the jail and the individual talked about hurting themselves and wanting to die. The protocol is to take everything away from them and put that person in a padded body suit. Then they are put in a tank (large windowed room to be observed). This in Van Buren County, Michigan—in PawPaw—that’s near Kalamazoo… Then they call the mental health authority that is on duty that night, which was me who at this moment as we speak and I am notified someone has been placed on self-harm watch.

This protocol happens when someone indicates they will harm themselves. When they utter a suicide threat they are put in a padded vestment and placed in the tank. While in the tank there is a camera on them so they are in real time being observed. There is nothing in the tank but a stainless steel toilet and a cement pad to sit or sleep upon.

They call (the police) and report to us that someone is on self-harm watch and we evaluate the prisoner who must stay in that room and suit until we release them. There the prisoner is considered safe from self-harm, and we cannot have them in better care. If they are on medication that is given them at designated time, but the jail does not give medication that can calm them down.
To do so is a civil rights violation. They can’t chemically restrain a prisoner, and can only keep restraints on a prisoner for two hours. Unless a nurse gives the okay to restrain longer due to extraordinary circumstances. That’s the law in Michigan. I believe that is a State law.

I went to the jail and there is a log sheet where there is an annotation I look at and then I observe the person and have them brought out and handcuffed to a bench. There I spoke to them and did a mental health assessment.

The person I went to see was a white female, mid-thirties, who had swallowed some items attempting to kill herself. It was her first time in jail and she was really stressed out. She was oriented times four. She knew the circumstances, but still had racing thoughts of killing herself. Therefore she was kept on suicide watch, remained in the gown in the tank, and was there until her regular hearing.
She was charged with receiving stolen property. She had no history of mental illness, and was not in our system. Her condition and situation was reactionary to a very stressful situation. She could think of nothing that was worse than that, being in jail…

While I was there in the jail, I received a second call which was regarding an African American male prisoner…and he said he just wanted to die. He had no history of mental illness. He had no plan. He said he would never kill himself and he said was that he “felt like” he just wanted to die. So I cleared him to join the regular population. He was given his jail uniform and was taken to his cell with other people.

Suicide is something we take very seriously. If someone says they are going to hurt themselves or take their lives, it is taken serious–nothing is taken lightly in that regard. We check out all of those things.

The man we interview in this piece, Reverend Doctor Cameron with Bishop Riah, his friend. Tipper Gore who suffers from depression did a lot to destigmatized mental illness. Since it does carry a stigma, people who need help wait for years and have torment and discomfort because they didn’t seek the help …. Some wait for years … due to the stigma involved. That’s one of the areas where stigma affects people. People need and/or want to get help but don’t because of the stigma. No one wants to be labeled crazy.

If someone says they want to die, we can’t take that as just an idle threat or manipulation. It needs to be looked at by a professional to be ruled out that it is something they won’t do. [Later in the interview we will discuss suicide as a separate and special topic of the matter of both religious and spiritual concern in the area of mental illness and as a health issue.]

In the clinic setting in a private office they may have individual therapy. In that modality they would come every other week to receive that therapy. Typically once a week is ideal. Since we work with limited resources and they have limited insurance or Medicaid once a week is ideal but we can only see them every other week. That’s because of budget restraints. In the County system we have several clinics. I am at the main clinic and carry a case load of 90 people. I am seeing patients one on one and in groups. There are seven slots available Monday through Friday for an individual or a group, that’s seven a day.  The group’s range from four to 8 people in a session and I run three groups. A group is in a group room. We’re not in a hospital setting. I do go on the ward to the hospital when I am working the “on-call.” Most of the time I am in the emergency room evaluating a client.

Being distant isn’t how you want to be in a counseling or crisis situation. That isn’t good clinical practice. A police officer who must distance themselves from persons because their service is entirely different. Our profession is to fully enter into–to be with them. That’s what therapy is about. It isn’t about being a detached presence; it is about being incarnational, and it’s about being there with them. You help by listening deeply and sometimes you can give them the advantage of having an extra set of ears and eyes that might be able to see many different options and possibilities that they can not see at that time. People become stuck, myopic, when in crisis. Those in crisis do have choices and personal power. There are things that can be done, but because of the crisis they are in they may be unable to ascertain what those things are.

We do a treatment plan with the person and ascertain what they really want, and learn what they want to accomplish. They say, I want to manage my moods better, or stop having hallucinations. We help them explore those things. If they say, They want to be happy, we explore what that means.
In this particular position of working for the County the people who are patients are any person within the boundaries of the County, any people living within the County, citizens, or visiting: or if they are arrested and put in the jail. This is the client population we work for and with.

The county is comprised of several ethnicities: a large Hispanic, a smaller African American population, the majority Euro American. We have clients who range educationally with masters degrees, high school educations, some that haven’t completed high school. We are in an agricultural seasonal community and the agricultural industry is a huge part of the community.

We have towns, like Lawrence where the high schools are largely Hispanic. So we have some areas that are heavily ethnic to one degree and a great influx of immigrant workers as well. The mix of mentally ill is the same as the population mix.

1. 5.    
   

   Who is your supervisor in this specialized and unusual work?

There is a plethora of organizations, depending on where one gets their credentials from, determining who their supervisor will be. For me, specifically, I have the director of Outpatient Services as my immediate supervisor. His credentials are 30 years as a social worker, and psychologist. He is licensed by the State and is hired by the agency to work in that capacity.

In the setting where I am, there are other clergy with a secular license like myself who are not working as a minister but as a clinician, who just so happens to be a minister.

I work with psychiatrists on the medical staff and we work as a team. We have several disciplines: psychiatric nurses, social workers, substance abuse counselors. They are people I work with, but the MDs also provide supervision with us, and do case management and do consultation with us, and prescribe medications. We work in tandem as we use a team approach to wellness.

The lines are blurred between pastoral and secular when it comes to spiritual and mental health practices. A lot of people in the substance abuse area work with the 12 Steps, which is a spiritually based program. Dialectical behavior therapy strongly promotes mindfulness in its program which comes from Zen Buddhism and Christian contemplation. The American Psychiatric Association categorizes spiritual problems and people can come for help with those issues. Spiritual reality has been recognized since the beginning of cognition.  Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is a new kid on the block and has only been around for less than 200 years.

There is a mental health code that we follow in the State of Michigan and the agency supervisor … takes a look at all we do. It is quality control and he makes sure all therapists meet standards and accountability.

In private practice…I supervise and have several graduate students who serve under me. I mentor and supervise their work. In every discipline there are standards and rules concerning who can practice without a supervisor and who needs someone to supervise their work. Psychologists with a Masters degree have to work under a fully licensed PhD, psychologist. Counselors with a limited license need to work under the direction of a fully licensed counselor.

Not only is supervision given by immediate bosses, there are associations with standards, and each County and State have their own laws and people who monitor those working in the field. The work is looked at by the State and by the associations to be sure standards are met. Your work is critiqued by different levels of the government managing mental health.

1. 6.     Perhaps you’ve heard it said that in order to be a parishioner, in some Churches more than others, one must have the ability to understand basic ideas: Be able to read the Bible and grasp some of it; sit to hear a sermon; or go through worship; understand what it means to worship. If not able to do so, I’ve heard it said lack of this competence means the individual may not participate in a life of faith. What say you to this?

I have always taught; “Bad history always equals bad theology.” If you look at history the majority of the people in the Christian faith during many centuries of its existence, could not read or write. Only the clergy could, and not always all of them. For people in the Middle Ages education was reserved for only a few. People would come to faith without the ability to read or write. The reason St. Francis put together a Crèche (Nativity Scene) was because people could not read or write and the Crèche was a visual Gospel for them. And that was a reason for a lot of stained glass in churches also. Stained glass told the Bible Story in pictures.

So reading and writing was not indicative for people of the faith for a vast majority of its history. If today, they can’t read or write, they still can participate in the faith. One’s level or ability to understand things of faith is not determined by one’s ability to read or write or by one’s health status. Mentally ill people are like everyone else.  Some can read and write and some have difficulties.  Some can understand things in ways others can not. The mentally ill can participate in University teaching, or even the Presidency. There is evidence Abraham Lincoln suffered from melancholy. We call it depression today. Mental illness does not make you unable nor exclude you from having a deep, great faith. If a person with diabetes doesn’t control their diabetes they can’t come to Church because they are to sick. If you manage your condition, you can live normally.  So it goes with mental illness.

So many incidences reported in the press paint the mentally ill as evil, so there is the “good vs. evil” aspect of those who are mentally ill. You wrote in an email: “…look at the subject of ‘mental illness vs. evil’ in light of the press of late and the shootings that have occurred in the movie theatre, at the schools, etc.” Is this a matter of good vs. evil?

Anytime we are shocked with a story when someone does something as horrendous as taking the lives of people in a movie theater people say that “they must be mentally ill.”

Someone who is mentally ill and not being treated typically can’t function at a high level. They can’t make appointments; they can’t keep two thoughts straight in their head. They decompensate. They can’t plan and execute a savage incident. They are not mentally ill people who do these things. They are evil. There is a distinction.

People are afraid of the wrong thing. People should be afraid of the evil. People sometimes equate those suffering from mental illness with acts of violence because they don’t act normally, they don’t seem in control and people think they are a threat. Mentally ill people are feared because people fear they will harm them…

The media always seems to equate insanity with murders. That is just not the case. There is a line of demarcation between mental illness and evil.

There are competency laws that ask, Were you in full control of your actions? Did you know what you were doing and were you aware of the possible consequences of your behavior? If they are not well, they do not know the consequences. They jump thinking they will fly.

Somebody who is evil makes a plan, carries that plan out with intent and knows the consequences. The man who goes in the theatre and he carries out methodically his very detailed plan is not mentally ill. Somebody who is mentally ill and is not being cared for can’t even figure how to put toothpaste on a toothbrush.

The issue we have is we don’t want to believe there is evil. We want to attribute bad things happening because of someone or something. If we are losing jobs, we blame it to illegal immigrants.  When Germany’s economy was bad, that blamed it on the Jews. If we can demonize something we know and understand we feel in control. We don’t understand or can’t readily point out evil so we feel out-of-control.

 Suicide you say is a large part of your work. You write by email, “…we should look at the subject of ‘suicide’ as this is a huge part of our work…” Please let us leave this an open ended question, so please comment on suicide.

Suicide is a prevalent phenomenon that affects persons suffering from mental illness, including teenagers who are not mentally ill. Teenagers are suffering from being bullied, not having the life skills or coping mechanisms. In the arena of mental health, suicide is something we pay close attention to because when a person is stressed or is having complications with their medications or not following the doctors’ orders or a life event occurs that would push them into a dark place, not having the necessary skills or the ability to cognitively process the larger picture–then suicide becomes a real issue. For they are not viewing suicide as a means to death, they are seeing it as a means to relief—stopping the pain.

Teenage suicide is prevalent throughout our country. We have a three pound brain. The last pound develops when we are teenagers. With that comes the ability to think abstractly. Teenagers argue for they have this new toy so they can think abstractly and argue. It is the third pound of their brain. So because it is something that is new to them, they like to try it out and they argue with adults. This is, after all, a good way to grow into their newly found abilities… However, when they experience stressors they don’t default to their newly grown and discovered rational abilities so there reasoning can be very unsound.

We know in the Gay and Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community in the United States, the suicide rate among teenagers is even higher because they are experiencing the feelings that are confusing to them. Sexuality is confusing period. When you are attracted to persons of the same sex and everything in the culture is counter to that those sexual feelings and ideas become very stressful in nature and confusing.

When society has norms that are contrary to what a person is experiencing as normal for them, this can become really confusing for them. When they cannot come to terms with these things it is confusing to them. Their teenage angst already present is complicated and magnified because of their orientation and what use to seem like a world they once knew is now a harmful, hurtful and frightening place for them.

They may come to the place where they see the only way to stop the hurt is to kill themselves. That’s how they really look at it: They look at it as stopping the pain. They say things like I just want the pain to stop. I want to stop hurting. Rarely does a person say, I am thinking about suicide. That, thinking about suicide, is a very rational thought process. Stopping pain by killing ones self is not rational.

I think suicide, whether it is in the geriatric population (which indications show it is on the rise) the teenage population or with the mentally ill, it is all about stopping the pain; it is about stopping the hurt.

We should become aware of the signs of suicide. We should understand that sometimes there will be tell-tale signs, and those signs can include depression and sadness, when a person begins to isolate and withdraw…when they have periods where it is noticed they are crying and they can’t identify why they are crying, they just say they are sad. These are warning signs.
When people are talking about being tired of living, tired of dealing with things, when they say that they can’t take it anymore. All of those expressions are red flags.

One needs to take the statement seriously, and seek help. If they aren’t taking care of themselves or there are changes in their routines, like not eating or sleeping… Get them to their physician or to an emergency room. People do take their elderly parent to an emergency room for an evaluation. And not just elderly, but anybody.

This is another alternative. When a person is living by themselves and family is not around the police can be called for a health and welfare check.  It’s important to do these things, for we are talking about saving human lives.

Sometimes we are also talking about taking their rights away. We are talking serious stuff. We need trained professionals to look at them to determine if they need to be in a hospital. A suicidal person needs to be in a hospital where they can receive treatment. They may not want the help but that is why an evaluation is needed, and their rights suspended in order to save them from themselves.
There is a very specific criterion that must be in place in order to take someone’s right’s away and hospitalize them against their will. Not only do they need to have suicidal ideation, but they need to  have a plan, and the means, and when those three components are thought out and they utter those and say they are going to lay on the railroad tracks and the train comes by every half hour… That’s serious.

If they just have thoughts, and think of it, but don’t have a plan or means…Then crisis intervention takes place, and they don’t have to be hospitalized. And treatment can begin in the community for them.

Clergy, generally, aren’t trained in counseling. Most clergy have one or less formal classes in pastoral counseling. Ministers are able to petition for someone to be hospitalized, or to talk to the family members who can petition for the person to be involuntarily placed. I think it is extremely important to know that there are clergyperson who are licensed but the majority are not. A lot of people will go to their parish priest, minister or pastor for counseling. Going for spiritual matters, that is one thing. Going for mental illness or suicide, the clergy need to refer. That is beyond the clergy’s expertise and training. All clergy deal with numbers and budgets, but you don’t go to your clergy to do your taxes.

Because suicide effects more than just the person, sometimes the family, sometimes the whole community, there are mental health issues that are related to that. The God question comes in there, as it did with one family when their son killed himself.  Sometimes a wider family becomes involved, even a community or a neighborhood. A parent deals with questions such as, where is my child. Where are they? Are they suffering? So do the friends and neighbors.

There is the religious stigma in some expressions of Christianity concerning suicide. Some believe and teach that suicide is a mortal sin that excludes you from heaven. We in our society recognize if a person is insane they don’t have a certain level of responsibility. They have a certain level of innocence. How do we hold them responsible for something they don’t know that they are doing? It is different from a willful act. It is then an action they want to take, as in physician assisted suicide. They have rationale minds and they make a willful choice to end their lives. Mentally ill persons don’t make willful choices. They can’t when decompensating, when they are sick. Their will is not theirs rather it is affected by the illness.

An addiction in our culture is seen as a disease, and one of the symptoms of the disease is the fact that without proper intervention the addict will eventually die from consuming too much of what they take: drugs, drink…the whole nine yards. Their addiction is an illness that encompasses their mental health so we treat them as well.

I personally have not had a client who has committed suicide. It can be very devastating. It is like a physician treating a patient and the patient dies. They go through a grieving process as well. Typically a review is held, a peer review to help you process it. We are in the business to save lives and restore lives. It is very devastating. [The Reverend Dr. Cameron has been in mental health for 25 years, and no patient of his has committed suicide on his watch, yet.]

1. 7.    
   

   As we come to the end of this interview I wonder if there is something I’ve missed or you want to add. I do hope so, and you’ll say it here. Thank you for the opportunity to learn of your work and get to know you a little bit.

Thank you for this opportunity to give voice to part of our community that often times is misunderstood and feared and doesn’t have to be.  Many, many, many persons have lived lives that prove you can live a happy life, and manage you mental illness… Just because you experience a certain mental illness, that illness does not have to define you.