Peter Menkin blog

Written January, 2012: Poem about Waiting on the Lord....'Hours Before Dawn'

2012-01-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

Hours Before Dawn
Peter Menkin
January, 2012

This morning in hours
before dawn at 3 a.m.
I wait like watchman
for first light
to know you, Lord, whom
I wish to see this day.

May my creation, its preservation,
and its work be for you, Lord,
an act of gratitude and thanks
for this life.

Photograph by Henry Worthy, Obl Cam OSB who lives in London, England.

Interview: Maine Poet Robert Seigel speaks of his work, including recent poems

2012-01-02T03:53:00.000-08:00

American poet from Maine, Robert Seigel, talks with writer Peter Menkin about his faith poetry and other matters, including those contemplative

by Peter Menkin

Robert and Ann
on 45th Anniversary Trip to Italy

This writer says as note, I have been thinking about how to make the Eucharist a Christmas 2011 statement, and also to introduce the article-interview with Maine poet Robert H. Siegel about his work which is a gift. [Certainly, Christ's birth is a gift to mankind—as is the Eucharist. In a manner, so is the gift of poetry a kind of birth in the poet’s life, as the poem does take on a life of its own after its “birth.” A poem requires nurture.]
The interview with Robert Siegel was conducted by email, and questions were answered in writing by the poet.
The following quote displays his poem about finches, and was one inspiration for the title of his book, “A Pentecost of Finches: New & Selected Poems…” It is from the Houghton College interview conducted by John Leax and noted as partial reprint later in this article.

Matins
By Robert Siegel
It is morning. A finch startles
the maple leaves. Everything’s clear
in this first light before all thins
to a locust harping on the heat.

While day clutches at my pulse
to inject the usual anesthetic,
now, Christ, stimulate my heart,
transfuse your blood to fortify my own.

Let no light upon these sheets
diminish, Lord, before I feel you
burst inward like a finch
to nest and sing within this tree of bones.

INTRODUCTION

For my way of thinking, the work of a poet is the result of a gift. This is especially true of Robert Siegel of Maine, USA ; he is a man with a gift. He is also a man who writes poetry that reflects his faith while writing about animals and God’s other creatures in a way that a naturalist can love.
This article-interview on Robert Siegel is another in the ongoing series of interviews with Anglican and Christian poets. The poet wrote in an email:

You asked about a person, or persons, who know my work. On my website (robert-siegel.com ) I’ve included six complete reviews of my last two books of poetry. You might want to look at Paul Willis’ review in Christianity and Literature, as he touches on the relationship of poetry to faith and the spiritual. So does Thomas Bontly in The Sewanee Review. Robert French in The North Dakota Quarterly comments on my animal poems, which I consider my most characteristic, and (it seems to me) gets at
what I’m trying to do in these and others.

I was raised Presbyterian but I have been an Anglican for 49 years this November, having been inspired to change by C.S. Lewis (and by my lovely wife, who preceded me into the fold).
Robert

POET PAUL WILLIS’ REVIEW, IN PART
Here is part of one review of Robert Siegel’s book, “A Pentecost of Finches: New & Selected poems,” Paraclete Press (Brewster, Massachusetts) from his website.
Professor of English and poet at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, Paul Willis wrote:
Sometimes Siegel ventures into the realm of specifically biblical creatures, to fine effect.
In “A Colt, the Foal of an Ass” from the selected portion, the beast of burden reflects on “this moment of bearing the man, / a weight that is light and easy” (118). “The Serpent Speaks” which concludes the first part of the new poems, is perhaps the greatest achievement of the collection. This long, sinuous monologue tempts us all over again—”I am another vine”—even as it rehearses the infection of all of history and

Professor Paul Willis

the inevitable diminishment of the diabolical speaker (28). And yet the serpent is always a serpent, slithering side by side with the other natural snakes in this volume, all exquisitely observed.
To continue with a long quotation from the review written 2009, and appearing on the poet’s web page here, the review goes on in detail:
… I want to hasten to point out other glories of this collection. Prominent among them are the portraits of New Testament characters that comprise the second part of the new poems. These rough sonnets crystallize the inner lives of a whole array of individuals. Take, for example, “Perfection,” on Mary Magdalene, whose flask of perfume has been brought from Egypt by a Roman general and given to her with the command, ‘”Never age…. / Stay perfect. This will help”‘ (37). Or “Judas” who confides to us, “All along I was the only one who seemed to know / what the Man could do if he put his mind to it” (41). Or “The Epicure” who enjoys

… a pleasant life: at night the temple girls,
occasionally, after lunch, the flute-playing boy.
A moderate life: poetry for the heart and prose
to temper the mind, though I found less and less joy
in it….

Then, one day, happening to hear in the agora “one speak of a strange god,” suddenly he “heard Pythagoras’ // golden spheres turn for a second” (46).
It is the turning of these golden spheres that points to Siegel’s abilities and aspirations as a poet. His way of seeing is not merely sacramental but ultimately mystical. In “Annunciation,” he marks the coming of Gabriel in the most homely and heavenly of ways:

Things grew brighter, more distinct, themselves,
in a way beyond explaining. This was her home,
yet somehow things grew more homelike. Jars on the shelves
gleamed sharply: tomatoes, peaches, even the crumbs
on the table grew heavy with meaning and a sure repose
as if they were forever. (34)

Likewise, in “Patmos,” Siegel records the vision of John, “now in the blaze of noon and when the stars sang to his eyes” (47).
This anagogic impulse is sustained in poems throughout the volume. Part three of the new poems begins with the shaped stanzas of “Peonies”: “we see in them absolute / fire at the center, stasis / of star’s core…” (51). They are as “Dante saw the stars in a glass, / a corolla of souls, / each reflecting / the other’s light / and charity…” (51-52). Not surprisingly, another poem in this section is titled “Traherne,” a tribute to and imitation of that supremely mystical seventeenth-century English poet. Siegel glosses him when he writes, “The smallest grain of wheat would light the ground…” (60). The very last poem in the volume, “Voice of Many Waters,” with an epigraph from Revelation and a dedication to Clyde Kilby, is reminiscent of Traherne as well. First to last, in poems that span perhaps forty years, Siegel has stayed wondrously true to this vision.

INTERVIEW BY EMAIL WITH JOHN LEAX RE ROBERT SIEGEL

John Leax: I was a student of Clyde Kilby at Wheaton in the early sixties. I believe he first told me about Robert Siegel, holding him up as something of a model for me, one of the times we talked about my ambition to be a poet. Bob, with his degree from the Hopkins Writing Seminars and PhD from Harvard, I agreed was worth emulating, but I couldn’t imagine myself following that path. I was too much an indifferent student to achieve on that level.

Poet and Professor John Leax

About ten years later, after I’d gone to the Hopkins Writing Seminars (but not Harvard or any other PhD) and had begun teaching I finally met Bob at a conference on teaching creative writing sponsored by the Library of Congress. I believe Mel Lorentzen, a former teacher of both of us from Wheaton, introduced us. Bob, who was sitting with Richard Eberhart, was very polite. I was a bit in awe, somewhat tongue-tied, and awkward. What contact we had following that conference I can’t remember.
In 1980 or early 1981 I invited Bob to visit Houghton where I was teaching. I think our friendship really began then. I was editing a small magazine then and interviewed Bob for it. (I’ll arrange to have it scanned and emailed to you tomorrow.) A couple years later when the group of writers that would become the Chrysostom society met at New Harmony, I was included at Bob’s invitation. (He had written an introduction to my first book of prose that had just appeared.) Our friendship, encouraged by yearly visits and the shared concerns of thesociety, grew from that time. I may have been on the board at the same time as Bob, I can’t remember.
For the last ten years, we have been working together with Jeane

Chrysostom Society

Murray Walker on a collaborative poem on the seven deadly sins. The idea for this came from Bob and was worked on while hiking along the gorge in Letchworth State Park. This work has overflowed the boundary of the literary project and infiltrated my life. If I was in awe when I first met Bob, I am now deeply humbled by his craft, learning, wisdom, and generosity. In a strange way, largely because of my personality, our friendship while warm remains a bit formal. I still regard Bob with a bit of awe and can’t imagine imposing myself on him. (I know his character is such that he would find that sentence impossible.)
One thing that should be added: If one walks into a room filled with laughter at the Chrysostom Society, most likely Bob Siegel and Richard Foster are at the center of it. Somewhere in the archives is a collection of “roasting” limericks exchanged between them and others (often Luci Shaw) over dinner.
Jack

Robert and two of four grandchildlren, photo by Ann Siegel

INTERVIEW WITH MAINE POET ROBERT SIEGEL

Peter Menkin: Take us down the road a little on the journey of the poet. By this I mean, what is it that the ear is tuned to, and the eye wanting to see, and the heart moved by when it comes to the life of a poet and the work of poetry in one’s life.

Robert Siegel: Even before I could read I enjoyed the sound, rhythm, and texture of words in nursery rhymes like the following:

Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.

Later I played with words on signs and billboards while riding in a car. Gulf Gas spelled backwards created the abysmal monster Flug Sag, and Standard Oil became Dradnats Lio a mythical half dragon and half lion. I wrote occasional rhymes As a sophomore in high school Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar inspired a somber sixteen-line poem called “Anthony’s Revenge” that began ,“My grief it knows no fathom, my wrath it knows no end,” It impressed my teacher, but chiefly I wrote poems as an adolescent to impress and woo the girl who is now my wife of 50 years.

In my college freshman comp. course I wrote a love lyric that came out of nowhere one lunch hour. The professor liked it well enough to read to the class and suggested I enter it in a contest. After that I was hooked. I took a couple of creative writing courses and every literature course I could find, and in my junior year started gathering weekly to workshop poems with other students, some of us bringing in three or four poems every week. We called it the Poets’ Corner, after that corner of Westminster Abbey.

During that time there was a definite moment when I felt called to a life as a poet. It happened in the fall of my senior year. I was in the Morton Arboretum looking at a spectacular array of fall foliage, when I rounded a corner and stopped in awe of a brilliant red tree—a crabapple, perhaps, or a Japanese maple. As I looked at its intensely red leaves they mesmerized me, as if they were on fire. And yet they were still, as if I ‘d stepped out of time. In that moment the thought came to me: “So this is Beauty and I am called to reveal it to the world.” It was very distinct, and after that I knew clearly what my poetry was for. It had the force of a religious vocation.

After that it was inevitable I’d apply to the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. After taking the master’s degree, and a year’s teaching in Chicago, I enrolled in Harvard’s graduate school—partly because the poet Robert Lowell was there. I had read his early poetry, such as his elegy, The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket. Lowell was a great inspiration and I worked with him my four years there, His approval confirmed my vocation. Early in my first term there I went to his office hours with nine poems I had written that fall. I found him alone, and had an hour and a half with him before another student showed up. I handed him one poem after another. After reading a few he said to me. “Other people have played this trick of handing me one poem to read and then another and another, but this is the first time I’ve looked forward to the next.” Obviously these words burned themselves into my brain, along with other very encouraging comments. Each fall from 1963 to 67 I attended his morning office hours, which by the second year had turned into an informal seminar. He urged me to send out poems and liked particularly my poem “Hanscom Air Field” so well he carried it to Robert Manning, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, where it appeared in June of ‘67. Later he recommended to the publisher my first book, The Beasts & the Elders..

Peter Menkin: You have also been a teacher for many years. Some schools where you taught are these: Siegel has taught at Dartmouth, Princeton, and Goethe University in Frankfurt, and for twenty-three years at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he directed the graduate creative writing program and is currently professor emeritus of English. He has degrees from Wheaton, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard. He is married to Ann Hill Siegel, a photographer, and lives on the coast of Maine. So your website tells its readers. Is there a similarity to the work of teacher to that of poet? Or more, does being a teacher feed your poetry, and sense of the poetic?
Robert Siegel: I feel very privileged to have taught. Not only did teaching provide the time for writing, but it meant that I was always working with literature and with students

The nearby Nubble-Light House, photo by Ann Siegel

who were learning to write poetry or fiction.. It was wonderful to have the chance to teach Paradise Lost, King Lear, and Heart of Darkness to Dartmouth freshmen, Coleridge to seniors, and, later, Yeats to graduate students.
We were particularly fortunate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to have a large graduate program in creative writing with students in their twenties to mid-seventies. Not only did this mean we had mature students, but also ones with some life experience to write about. I had one lady in her seventies who had survived Hitler’s camps—though much of her family didn’t—and ultimately published two books of poetry about it.
I think writing and teaching draw upon the same energy, for I did not write as much during term time. But teaching a subject helps you to continue learning it, and you learn in various ways from students. For instance, I think the critiquing of student poetry in seminars no doubt sharpened my ability to revise my own work.
One thing I learned while teaching in our graduate program in an urban university is how much talent there is out there, and how many people with talent fail to fully develop it—often for understandable reasons. This has always seemed to me to hint at the reality of an afterlife—there is so much more to people than can be fully discovered and developed in one lifetime.

Peter Menkin: I think people believe the poet is like the philosopher, like the teacher, like the musician—also the painter. In essence, the poet is a writer. Will you tell us if you agree with these statements and talk a little about your own work, especially that of the religious and faith kind. Does it either increase for you and even others food for thought about the Almighty and his Son Jesus Christ? Do you think that there is a sense of the grandeur of life and that of the Almighty? If so, how and even why? I know these are pointed questions, especially regarding religion and God, but my work as a Religion Writer sometimes asks I talk about such things with people. I am hoping you will take some time and talk to us about such things.
Robert Siegel: Yes, there is a connection between the poet, the musician, and the philosopher. Also the painter. I particularly identify with the painter in the use of imagery. We have several artists in the family, including my wife, a truly gifted photographer. Walter Pater said poetry aspires to the condition of music, and music is certainly of the essence too. Pound said that in addition to visual imagery and music, poetry had to have substantive meaning (I think the exotic term he used for this was logopoeia) which certainly connects it to philosophy.
For me that meaning is ultimately spiritual. Charles Williams said somewhere there are four sources of natural revelation: Love, Art, Nature, and the City. I’ve never related well to cities but the other three have been the source of poetry for me and means of apprehending and expressing my spiritual convictions, however indirectly.
In college I was fortunate in my English major to take courses in the major poets, Chaucer , Spenser, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, Coleridge, and Shelley and Hopkins, and Eliot. to mention some of my favorites. They presented love, poetry and nature to me as sources of the divine. I will talk more about romantic love later. But I’ll quote here two lines from Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” that struck me my freshman year in college:

What is this world, what asketh man to have,
Now in his love’s armes, now in his colde grave.

As for nature, they –even T.S. Eliot—found “splendor in the grass and glory in the flower,” as Wordsworth put it, and shared in various ways a neo-platonic view of the world where everything is capable of revealing the divine , no matter how lowly it is on the great chain of being. Hopkinscalled this inscape, and he found it in everything from an eyelash to a wave of the sea. Poetry then became for me a possible sacramental, a way of final participation in Owen Barfield’s sense, of “finding the presence of God in everything,”or in Browning’s “God is seen God, / In the star in the stone in the flesh in the soul and the clod.”
The experience of a calling I referred to earlier helped me to understand this. And before that, a conversion experience I had in college where God revealed His reality to me . Immediately afterwards I transferred toWheatonCollege a strong, non-denominational Christian institution , where I knew my faith could be nurtured and I might grow in Christ. There I encountered C.S. Lewis’s works and was confirmed in the Anglican Church. In the last decade I have started regular centering prayer, according to the method taught by Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk, and find this contemplative method has certain qualities suggestive of the act of writing.

Monk and hermit, Father Bruno Barnhart, Camaldolese Benedictine

In turn the act of writing poetry becomes for me a kind of sacramental experience. Bruno Barnhart, a Camaldolese hermit, says that the “unitive” aesthetic experience offered by literature and art—when we feel one with what we are reading, looking at, or hearing– is a step toward experiencing union with God and I would agree. Our best experiences with literature and the arts are contemplative, a union of ourselves with the beauty before us. Literature and the arts can help us to forget ourselves and experience a completeness, a wholeness, for a moment or an hour. We forget our incomplete, divided selves and for a time are made one with what we are contemplating. This unitive experience can lead us to see beyond the work of art itself to what may shine through it, the world of the spirit.
This unitive experience may often lead me to write a poem. As I’ve described it elsewhere: “Most of us [writers] share a desire to call up things into words. This is the alchemy that fascinates me. A sensation, impression, or image will step out from its surroundings and demand my total attention. the thing itself will appear to rise up as words and send me fumbling for my notebook or keyboard.. Here is the wonder of what Keats called ‘natural magic’ as the image reaches up toward the words, the words become the image, the thing itself. For one happy moment they are fused. Thing becomes word and word becomes thing. . . substance and meaning are fused. The terrible gap between experience and the articulation of experience is closed. The mind is one with what it perceives.”
In my animal poems, especially, I attempt to become one with the animal while remaining my human self, and thus, I hope to create a third thing or voice, which is something like a totemic presence. The act of becoming one with something as you contemplate it or write is what Keats named “negative capability.” Much of his poetry comes from this experience. He once commented that if “a sparrow comes before my window I take part in its existence and peck about the gravel.”
Here are several examples of what I do in the animal poems. In each case I’m quoting a short part of the poem (all from A Pentecost of Finches: New & Selected Poems. Copyright 2006, Robert Siegel. All rights reserved.):

from Deer Tick:

No larger than a period I scramble
among the sequoia of your armhairs
unable to decide in this vast wilderness
where to drill for the life-giving well,
the water of life, the warm blood.
For I am sick unto death: in my abdomen

the spirochete turns its deadly corkscrew
which I must shortly confess to the stream
pulsing from your dark red heart,
setting at liberty this ghostly germ
large in the deer’s glazed eye
and the mouse’s tremble. . . .

from Inchworm:

I am of two minds moving out of sync—
when one’s in action, the other’s resting,
and so I never come to a conclusion
though we move in the same direction
by separate steps, by little omegas,
yet neither end comes ever to an end. . . .

from Mussel:

I am
tasting the ocean
one mouthful at a time.

It is a slow rumination,
a reading of incunabula
in my cloister,

in this cell where light
fills me totally like an eye
then washes away. . . .

Slug

White, moist, orange,
I crawl up the cabbage leaf exposed,
too much like your most intimate parts
to be lovely, to be loved. I weep to the world,
my trail a long tear, defenseless
from its beaks and claws
except for my bitter aftertaste.
He who touches me shares my sorrow
and shudders to the innermost–my pale horns
reaching helpless into the future.
In plastic cups filled with beer
ringed like fortresses around your garden,
your lie of plenty,
we drown by the hundreds,
curled rigid in those amber depths,
so many parentheses surrounding nothing.
You do not understand nothing:
the nakedness to the sky,
the lack of one protective shelter,
the constant journey.
Millions of us wither in the margins
while food rots close by.
Nothing is a light that surrounds us
like the breath of God.

Peter Menkin: All of us who are fortunate enough have been exposed and even edified by the words of our teachings, what they teach, and even their presence in our lives. This writer is curious to know what you found in your own education that was special, and who among the teachers are remembered by you well. Tell us something of one or two of them, where they taught, and what as presence they meant to you.
Robert Siegel: I’ve been fortunate in the number of good teachers I‘ve had. I even exchanged Christmas cards with my kindergarten teacher for a number of years, and, as I recall, had a crush on my second grade teacher. Three who were indeed special include Eloise Bradley Fink, a poet in her own right, who was my language arts teacher in eighth grade. She encouraged my writing. One day she sent the class out into the field next to our school to “hunt metaphor.” Recently I came across a copy of what members came up with and was surpised how good they were. My own creation was quite forgettable. But over the years Eloise and her husband John supported my writing and we stayed in touch each year until a month before her death last spring.
A second was Professor Merle Brown at Denison, where I began as a freshman. I had him for lit classes for three semesters and he exemplified and taught us intellectual passion. I can still see him coming to class from the library, lost in thought, his brief case dangling from one arm, while he ambled along staring at the ground, deep in thought. He would give us a poem or section of prose, and mention three or four critical theories about it, then invite our own theories—often pausing and silently thinking while leading the discussion, his face marvelously expressive. I remember one afternoon when discussing Spenser I felt I had been translated into another world, what I can only describe as filled with something like platonic Ideas. They were almost physical—radiant and tactile, and we were all participating in a great dance of thought.
A third teacher I must mention is Professor Clyde Kilby at Wheaton, the man who founded the Wade Collection of the Inklings: C.S.Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, Owen Barfield and others. Besides his enthusiasm for literature—especially the Romantic poets and the Inklings—he conveyed a greatness of soul. Literature was very much involved with life and his living faith and his love for students. You could drop into his office any afternoon—or his home on campus—and he would make you feel as if to him you were the most important person in the world at that moment . His wife Martha did the same; they entertained students in their home all the time. I can still hear his infectious laugh, as he told us how his grandmother used to sneak out of her bedroom onto the porch roof to read Byron, as her father had refused to have Byron’s poems under his roof. He was a lovely man, a man radiant with love.
And I’d like to mention Beatrice Batson, who taught Milton, Donne, Herbert, and Shakespeare with great love for them, and Helen Siml Devette, who inspired and taught poetry and fiction writing and brought cookies to the Poets’ Corner.
In graduate school, the great influence was Robert Lowell.

Peter Menkin: Okay. Let us broaden this issue of questions a little outside the boundaries of you as poet, to that of your wife. People are fascinated, frequently, by the life of the poet. It is considered special, gifted, and even a little odd. Talk to us about marriage, and tell us about your wife and how she lives with, helps, and maybe inspires you as poet. Do you think that this kind of married life has helped you with your work, enriched your life, found another way to love and responsibility and meaning that is reflected in either your life or work outside the time together in the home? Tough question, but certainly a question that says we do not live alone, and that one’s spouse is a great influence and part of each member of the married couple’s life.

Robert Siegel : Dante, when he at long last sees Beatrice again in the Paradiso, comments (to paraphrase) that from the first day he saw her face in this life, up to this present sight, he never failed to follow her step by step in his poetry. For Charles Williams, Dante’s quest for Beatrice was the prime example of how romantic love may lead to divine love. And as Beatrice led Dante to Paradise and beyond in the Divine Comedy, so did love for the lady who became my wife help move me, I believe, toward a higher, spiritual love. I try to express this in a poem “After Viewing the Bust of Nefertiti,” addressed to Ann:

Whether stooping among your flowers
or in more meditative hours.
the cup moving toward you at the rail,
a likeness of you will only fail
to reveal the je ne sais quoi that
grows where flesh leaves off—a light
Raphael released from paper, yet
beyond words startled into flight
by this poor pen—the shadow of one
who thought of you before the sun
was kindled, yet precisely here
and for this moment made you the dear
image of that beauty and grace
who loves us with a human face.

Ann

I told a classmate when engaged to Ann that I thought she was an angel sent to keep me on the right path. After 50 years of marriage I would still agree with that. (Interestingly, Wordsworth’s poem about his wife describes her as he first saw her, “a phantom of delight”, but later as “a woman too” though one with “something of angelic light.”) Our common faith, our belief that our marriage includes God and has been blessed by Him, has helped all the way along. Marriage to Ann has provided love, companionship, and stability. Our temperaments complement each other well; and our metabolisms match (for instance, we both like to sleep about the same number of hours). We share a number of interests, from hiking and camping and reading to a love of nature in photography and poetry. Ann has been able to pursue her photography more ardently since we retired and is hanging it in juried shows.
We have three beautiful daughters, Lenaye, Lucy, and Christine, all now in their forties. They’ve given us four grandchildren, ages 9 to 12. Two of our three daughters live inMaineand they and the four grandchildren visit frequently. They help keep us alert and involved with all stages of life.
Besides all this, I must say that Ann has a sweet and happy disposition, and is thoughtful and warm with people, putting them at their ease. People are drawn to her.( We have been active in various church groups over the years where this is especially evident.) We rarely argue very long about anything , though we may have differing views. We’re glad that we virtually grew up in the same town and knew each other as early as sixteen, which means we’ve developed interests and attitudes together. Our home life is tranquil, and for this I credit Ann’s abundant good nature.

Peter Menkin: Before getting to the sixth and final question, I’ve asked this kind of question of the different poets I’ve talked to about their work. Please give us some advice for the young poet, the young person on their own development and work as poet. What does the high school age, or the college age man or woman begin to consider when starting out as poet? But mostly, feel free to tell us what you would or do tell them of poetry and being a poet.

Robert Siegel: What would I tell young poets just starting out? Well, a number of things, as I did, and still do, in seminars or workshops.
Perhaps the most important thing I have to say is that the best reward for writing poetry is the act of writing itself. You should love it, including the revising, which can be frustrating at times. I love to tinker with] poems I may have been working with over years. Remember, you’ll probably spend nine hours revising for every hour spent in original composition.
The second greatest reward is to receive a response from a reader who understands what you are trying to do—in a review or a letter usually.
Everything else—prizes, positions, fellowships, the modest fame that poetry affords—are secondary to those first two things. When thing are going well with my writing, I feel I’m doing what I was made to do and that I’m right where I should be—in the center of the universe.
Other advice:
Read, read, read! –all the great poets of the past as well as your contemporaries. Don’t read just the current work. But do find a few contemporaries whose work you really like. You’ll probably find yourself imitating them unconsciously. When that occurs, trying writing a few deliberate imitations. That way you’ll be conscious of their stylistic features and can stop yourself from sounding too much like them. Gradually your own voice (or voices) will emerge.+
Write every day! even if it’s just for a short time. And carry a small notebook around to write things in when away from a desk. ( Theodore Roethke collected words and phrases in a notebook and then sometimes built poems out of them as if he were making a mosaic.)

Don’t worry about a message. If you write the best sonnet or story you can, your deepest convictions will come out unconsciously in your work.
Be concrete in your writing, prose or poetry. Appeal to the five senses. This is something we can continue to learn all our lives. As Pound said, “Go in fear of abstractions.” Good writing relies on strong verbs and nouns. Don’t over-adjective and be especially cautious with adverbs.
Don’t give up your day job. The famous William Carlos Williams delivered several thousand babies in his career as a doctor, writing a number of his poems on a prescription pad while waiting for his patient in labor. Wallace Stevens wrote poems in his head while walking to his job in an insurance company
.Don’t expect to make money from selling poetry. If you want to make money writing, focus on non-fiction and fiction. Most poetry books sell from 500 to 3000 copies and don’t make significant returns for the publisher or the author. Poets usually make their livings teaching, editing or at any number of other occupations They may also make something giving readings and lectures, or from grants and prizes. Robert Frost claimed he made significant royalties from only one book, published in his eighties, and that was because he’d read from it at Kennedy’s inauguration.

Peter Menkin: Here we come to the end of our conversation, which I’ve enjoyed much. I am glad to make your acquaintance this way, and hope readers have found this dialogue in questions to their liking. Is there

Robert with grandchildren, again (more of them), photo by Ann Siegel

anything you want to add, anything I have missed, anything you would like to say on whatever comes to mind at this time that’s not been touched on, yet.
Robert Siegel: As I wrote in my introduction to A Syllable of Water, “Writing that appeals to the senses is more than vivid and memorable. For those of us who are Christians, it is incarnational. As in Christ the Word became flesh, so we hope our own best words become flesh. We trust they will incarnate the beauty, terror, and glory of this world even while they lift the reader’s gaze in hope beyond it. For we believe the incarnate Word, or Logos, of God is the transcendent element in every word.
The imagination can be a powerful key to the spiritual. Words, images, and music can catapult us beyond words, images, and music. The unitive experience of esthetic contemplation can be a stepping stone to contemplative prayer—but a stepping stone, not a stopping place. There is a real, spiritual world out there, more real than this we love so dearly, and poetry, art, and music can help us discover it.

Annunciation
She didn’t notice at first the air had changed.
She didn’t, because she had no expectation
Except the moment and what she was doing, absorbed
In it without the slightest reservation.

Things grew brighter, more distinct, themselves,
In a way beyond explaining. This was her home,
Yet somehow things grew more homelike. Jars on the shelves
Gleamed sharply: tomatoes, peaches, even the crumbs

On the table grew heavy with meaning and a sure repose
As if they were forever. When at last she saw
From the corner of her eye the gold fringe of his robe
She felt no fear, only a glad awe,

The Word already deep inside her as she replied,
Yes to that she’d chosen all her life.

Going On

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

I step inside. . . –Philip Larkin, “Church Going”

Once I am sure that something’s going on
I enter, tired of mere ritual,
of liturgy where no work is done,
of punctual repetitions. One can tell
by the face and gestures of the celebrant–
or, better, by the others celebrating
this continually renewed act
of grace (invisible except where a look can’t
hide the intimate and present fact).

I go forward, even though mostly summer
is sitting, damp and musty, in the pews,
to where a few in the mid-week evening glimmer
raise hands standing, while others move
to kneel where the priest lays hands on them,
often saying words better than he knows
to say. There I stay until the end
of the service–once more hear the strong love
commending me to eat that I might live.

And so I do. This church’s architecture
is nothing special. There are few monuments
or memorials present here.
Only the window in the sanctuary has yet
embraced stained glass. The walls are bare.
What happens here is rarely to be discovered
in anything but the people–well- or ill-favored,
oppressed by poverty, by wealth, by having spent
themselves to no purpose. None is good,

in our first understanding of that word. All come
with a sense, dim or clear, that what they amount to fails,
the intelligence that tirelessly adds up the sum
of things in a clear system, sparks, falters,
shorts out–leaving us to press the mystery
against the roof of the mouth, to hug the ghost
once fused with flesh and still enfleshed in us,
until our spirit answers Abba and we know
by living contact what we can’t deduce.

It is in the faces, and these come and go
like the spirit, which wanders where it will.
Even Canterbury’s merely a heap of stones
until the spirit enters there and wells
in living voices, and thirty bishops dance
gravely to a voice beyond the chancel’s.
Let no elegy hang here like the ghost of incense.
Rather, let walls tumble, altars grow wild–new
ones will be raised up in three days (or less)
of the sort the living spirit passes through.

(Note: The dance of bishops occurred spontaneously

in Canterbury Cathedral a few years ago.)

Peonies

In June these

globes of white flame

swell, explosions so very

slow, we see in them absolute

fire at the center, stasis

of star’s core,

or a fragile

moonglow distilled

ghostly in each alembic.

From their green ambush these

unearthly aliens assault

us with color

for a week

then gradually fade

into another dimension. As

Dante saw the stars in a glass,

a corolla of souls,

each reflecting

the other’s light

and charity, so in these

low white spheres we contemplate

mirroring heavens: petals, tongues

stammering silent music from

one root of fire.

Available through Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts
These above three poems and the following nine, together with those quoted earlier, are from Robert Siegel’s book, “A Pentecost of Finches: New & Selected Poems,” Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts., 2006. Copyright Robert Siegel, 2006. None may be reproduced by any means, print or electronic, without the written permission of the author.
For permission contact robert-siegel.com.

ADDENDUM I

Lazarus

Nothing tasted like a wafer on his tongue
It wasn’t new, he’d tasted it once before—
In the myriad of years before he was,
and that took no time at all, the nothing before
everything else. As a boy he’d thought about it:
Why was there anything at all? The feeling
it led to was pleasant and dark, detached as if
he’d suddenly expanded to fill the ceiling.
And then, of course, the debts, the illness, the quarrels
between his sisters that drove him up the wall—
he’d left all these, thank God! Relief had swirled
through him with the fever until nothing was all.

But now this traveling magician with his meddling work
was drawing him back to his body—cold, stiff, and dark.

The Hunt

(Welsh form: Cwyvdd Llosgyrnog)

A locust leaf quivers, is still.
He’s gone. I plunge through a well
of light, fall on a root,

leave beetles circling the broken
punk of a dead log. Twigs reckon
my eyes unwakened. Sly, mute

spiders apply theories, webs
that shrivel as I pass. Small dreads
hive in the woods, sting, smart.

A stream—bubbles bead his trail—
wading, images break—to fail
seems a good. Hell swarms with gnats.

Footfalls through long shafts of sun, moon,
Breathing loud, hands my only weapon,
I lunge at last. Self-cheated—

a reek of pelt, a glittering eye,
a chiding of birds. Undone I
turn.
Mouth wide, he leaps.

Evening Wolves

…fiercer than evening wolves. Habakkuh 1:8

Round and round they go on about nothing,
on the platinum compact disk of the moon,
the wolves. Their howls revolve about
the nothing that’s eaten your life to its skin
even as it eats the moon to a thin rind.
Each revolution of the sound has a silvery
quaver, a light dip and resolution,
a tremolo, like recordings from the Twenties
of voices sheer and faded as old silk.

Listen, the siren starts up again and circles
in its long ascent and decline about the rim,
its aria of desire and desolation,
a litany of memory and loss
and regret settled into like this broken chair
on a winter evening while the last light falls
unravelled by two flies at the window.
Cooling, they creep and stumble on the sill.

The wolves leave despair like a silver needle singing
in the blood, a fear of the blankness of snow,
of the hot slaver of hunger at your throat,
and the red eyes weaving a knot around you
while the fire gutters and you hear no answer
but a murderous vibration among the trees.

Worse still would be the absence of this fear,
locked in this cabin with yourself and the moon,
worse for the head lifted in ululation
to make no sound at all but a dry static,
the O of the empty mouth yawning, the vacant
syllable of the moon fading to a white silence—
no dark accusatory, no gathering of angels,
no judgment of teeth like a necklace of knives,
no unyielding jaws locked to your throat.
The last pain is the absence of all pain.

Just two winter flies, a jot and a tittle,
as the muffled clock beats against the silence
in the empty room, a jot and a tittle
against the solid glass
through which you might make a run for the river,
risking the swift analysis of the teeth
cleaving sinew from joint.

Better to be driven by the pack
through the trees toward the overwhelming sound of water
and, desperate, pitch yourself beyond yourself,
over the cliff into the cataract,
into the thrash and tunder of Niagara—
risk drowning and a quick oblivion that at last
you might rise again, broken and absolved.

Sows Ear

Here comes a lusty Wooer,

My a Dildin my a Daldin,

Here comes a lusty Wooer,

Lilly bright and Shine. A.

Fifty sows dozing in the hard packed yeard,
fifty sows, all sizes, from purple majesty
to pink ninny,
fifty, sluttish, given to untidy houses,
the open robe of morning, flea in the air,
snorting, swilling the bay-strewn water,
some indifferent as the Sierra Madre
steaming over deserts, features lost
in foothills and ridges of fait,
others petulant, bristling
practicing the small clean bite.

The lean young boar, thick-necked
walks a plank from the truckbed,
razor-backed, tufted, tusks rounded to ball-bearings,
lord of the mountains, the hills of flesh,
the little valleys spread before him.

He is small, but the muscles of his neck
can break a hound, or a man’s leg.
First one, sullen, whitish-purple in the heat,
stands off, pegs the dirt—mean hussy—
grunts. Come show me. Bastard!
Grunts, and grunts again.
Though he doesn’t turn toward her, he sees her.
Still, he waits for her waddling run,
her little yellow teeth
bared for the swipe at his haunch,
swivels and knocks her off balance—
blood pudding, sack of fat!
Terror curdling from her throat, she
telegraphs herself to a far corner,
peg peg peg peg peg

The second, caught off-guard,
lies where she falls, croaking.
But the third,
mother of clouds and mountains,
400 pounds of mauve-and-pink repose,
feels their cries stoke and fire in her bowels,
a vein of lava creep from marble hams,
through vesuvial lungs,
to the flexing crab of her brain.
Uncertainly, on one leg, then two,
she jacks herself from the primal pool
where gnats nidder and dance.
Mud swings crusted on her teats,
falls in patches from her belly:

What are these that tickled the brain?
Love’s tiny cries? The yammering mouths?
Squeals that hang like sausages?
No, not those tender attentions.

Dimly, she remembers something
unlocked from her, a tremor, a quake
an eruption,
when once she opened and
free of her hulk
the delicate she of dream
danced like rain on a corrugated roof,
pooled in cool wallows,
sprouted under tender thistle,
rolled in goldenrod and clover,
frisked with cat and suckling.

Turning toward hm like a locomotive
on its turntable, the steam
of her memories creasing all her jowls
to one truculent smile, she charges:

Oh to be the blue fly, the bee, golden,
jigging above the ticklish purple!

BANG

Aye, this is the rub,
the tickle of love! she snorts, enamored
BANG

Oh honey bee! Sweetling,
hungry for my attentions!

Again she turns where the boar, dizzy
and sore in the neck, stands baffled.
Having assaulted with his head the Himalayas,
having not gotten over the foothills,
he staggers in disbelief
as Everest trundles toward him.

This is the one! Husband! she croons
full and resonant as a bullfrog.
Sweet chop, me porker, my honey cob!

O what a squall of pipers,
what a regiment of bloodcurdling love,
dooms over the highlands of her corpus
resounding from glen and hillside
as she advances on him to a corner,
stale and snuffed as Macbeth,
head slung low, as all the world marches on him,
to meet the fate, perilous, magnificent,
of fathering five hundred friskers.

Reading commissioned poem at Wheaton College for eighth President Philip Ryken

These last five poems are from Robert Siegel’s book, “A Pentecost of Finches: New & Selected Poems,” 2006 first printing, Paraclete Press, Brewster, Massachusetts.

ADDENDUM II

Silverfish
It lives in the damps of rejection,
in the dark drain, feeding upon the effluvia
of what we are, of what we’ve already been.

Everything comes down to this: we are its living–
the fallen hair, the fingernail, the grease from a pore,
used toothpaste, a detritus of whiskers and dead skin.

All this comes down and worries it into life,
its body soft as lymph, a living expectoration,
a glorified rheum. In the silent morning

when we least expect it, it is there
on the gleaming white porcelain: the silver scales,
the many feelers busy busy, so fast, it is

unnerving, causing a certain panic in us,
a galvanic revulsion (Will it reach us
before we reach it?), its body

translucent, indefinable, an electric jelly
moving with beautiful sweeps of the feet
like a sinuous trireme, delicate and indecent,

sexual and cleopatric. It moves for a moment
in the light, while its silver flashes and slides,
and part of us notices an elusive beauty,

an ingenious grace, in what has been cast off.
As if tears and the invisibly falling dandruff,
skin cells and eyelashes

returned with an alien and silken intelligence,
as if chaos were always disintegrating into order,
elastic and surprising,

as if every cell had a second chance
to link and glitter and climb toward the light,
feeling everything as if for the first time–

pausing stunned, stupefied with light.
before we, frightened by such possibilities,
with a large wad of tissue come down on it,

and crush it until it is nothing
but dampness and legs, an oily smear
writing a broken Sanskrit on the paper,

a message we choose not to read
before committing it to the water
swirling blankly at our touch,

hoping that will take care of it,
trying not to think of it–the dark
from which it will rise again.

Half a Second

A movement like a shutter’s
and I am outside the dark box–
the ship suddenly outside the bottle.

Instead of empty, everything is full.
There is no absence:
every sail luffs out, every rope sings.

There is no more to be said.
There never was,
but one goes on saying. It is

the hopeless addiction of the tongue
to an ecstasy of particulars:
the snap of young peas, the onion’s bite,

the tomato’s pulsing alarm
the lupine’s lavendar finial,
the white cat by the feeder

in a raptus of hummingbirds.
Not only this place, this time,
but all places, all time:

everywhere—nowhere.
It is freedom, it is laughter.
Closing the eyelids and raising them.
That white cloud hanging there forever.

The Serpent Speaks

Soul: Look on that fire, salvation walks within.

Heart: What theme had Homer but original sin?

–Yeats
And three begot the ten thousand things.

–Lao Tzu

I am another vine
in the great democracy of vines
part of the complexity that defies explanation
part of the tree you put your back to
alert, but never suspecting.
I am the cold coil around the warm trunk,
I expand
as your lungs, poor rabbits, twitch and swell.
I am a long story with lovely yellows
and dapples and shades
a beginning, middle, and end that you can get lost in
a sunny patch followed by a shadow
a green dapple and twist, the turn, the unexpected
reversal.
When you come to the denouement
and my tail narrows to nothing
you wish to go back to the beginning and start over
where the red lie flickers in the leaves
beneath eyes like mica moons.

It is the old story, the beginning of everything
but really a long divagation and excursus
in which the woman naked and trembling
complains to the man, weeping over and over
and his voice rises in sharp jabs
while all their unborn children listen.
It is something that interrupts the afternoon, the first day,
and history begins and wanders off for millenia
missing the whole point.

It is these subtle shades on my scales
this maze of intricate lines
that lead back upon themselves in endless recursions
that fascinate you, that lead you endlessly
from my tail into my mouth.
In the moving light of the jungle I am a simple
body-stocking of shadows and weave
under a fritillary of bird cries to a sensuous music
a harmony to all your doings
promising you the ultimate knowledge in my belly
down the dark tube of years:
Light and shadow, light and shadow, the days and nights pass
with increasing speed like stations and their intervals
and you sway holding the strap
the car-lights flickering
wondering whatever was your original destination.

When fiction held out its red lie among the roses
you followed it down my dark throat.
It seemed utterly reasonable. Then you were Methuselah
carrying each of his 900 years like a brick on his back
Abraham’s wild surmise with a knife
Joseph starving in a hole
and Moses singeing his feet in the wilderness.
Next they hung you from two sticks and slowly
everything grew more dramatic:
Augustine heard the children in the garden
Aquinas fled from the naked peasant
and Columbus woke in a sweat, the voices still singing
of a lost world
of amber waves and alabaster
until Lord Amherst gave his blankets to the Indians
Franklinsaw the flashing key
andWashingtonsold his horse for pasturage
until the utterly reasonable Robespierre offered up his head
Lenin popped from a boxcar
and Einstein gave you the terrible secret
which I had promised,
a man of violins and God.

Now the story has gotten out of hand
as you swarm upon yourselves like maggots
on a diminishing dung-pile
and frenzied, move toward the catastrophe
history a string of boxcars
each a century stuffed to overflowing
until the last leaps the track.

Meanwhile I who am the truth move
scintillatingly, with grace in my own shadow
telling the story: There was a man, and a woman. . .
and the sun rose
and they went on a long journey
and night fell and they did not know where they were.

Such is knowledge, such is the fruit I offered
without the encumbrances of love, without listening
without the tree of fire that burns
below all movement, all shining, the tree below the bones
whose flames reach through the skeleton and hover
just over the fingers
and burn away the forest where the ego
goes crying, alone–one eye balancing the other
bilaterally symmetrical–
of what it has and what it hasn’t
until all shapes are shining and
fear falls away shriveling like a black net
and the wisdom of God dances freely before you
and the glowing fruit blushes for the mouth.

I see all clear and can tell you
the end of things, knowing you will not listen,
for my knowledge is cold here in the forest
and you will follow the shifting arabesque
of moonlight on my mica-glint, my scales
moving like the sequins of days, events,
the rise of stocks and the next presidential election
and the price of wheat futures in a drought.

So I go on, flowing into my own shape
into the darkness I have made, subservient
(and this is the bitterness beyond all blankness)
at the last to another purpose
which you cannot guess, which rings in these leaves

like the harps and fiddles of insects too high
for your range of hearing–a music which drives me
into the narrowing circle I have made
tail in mouth, swallowing until
I vanish
and everything in this circle vanishes with me.

Rinsed with Gold, Endless, Walking the Fields

Let this day’s air praise the Lord–
Rinsed with gold, endless, walking the fields,
Blue and bearing the clouds like censers,
Holding the sun like a single note
Running through all things, a basso profundo
Rousing the birds to an endless chorus.

Let the river throw itself down before him,
The rapids laugh and flash with his praise,
Let the lake tremble about its edges
And gather itself in one clear thought
To mirror the heavens and the reckless gulls
That swoop and rise on its glittering shores.

Let the lawn burn continually before him
A green flame, and the tree’s shadow
Sweep over it like the baton of a conductor,
Let winds hug the housecorners and woodsmoke
Sweeten the world with her invisible dress,
Let the cricket wind his heartspring
And draw the night by like a child’s toy.

Let the tree stand and thoughtfully consider
His presence as its leaves dip and row
The long sea of winds, as sun and moon
Unfurl and decline like contending flags.
Let blackbirds quick as knives praise the Lord,
Let the sparrow line the moon for her nest
And pick the early sun for her cherry,
Let her slide on the outgoing breath of evening,
Telling of raven and dove,
The quick flutters, homings to the green houses.

Let the worm climb a winding stair,
Let the mole offer no sad explanation
As he paddles aside the dark from his nose,
Let the dog tug on the leash of his bark,
The startled cat electrically hiss,
And the snake sign her name in the dust

In joy. For it is he who underlies
The rock from its liquid foundation,
The sharp contraries of the giddy atom,
The unimaginable curve of space,
Time pulling like a patient string,
And gravity, fiercest of natural loves.

At his laughter, splendor riddles the night,
Galaxies swarm from a secret hive,
Mountains split and crawl for aeons
To huddle again, and planets melt
In the last tantrum of a dying star.

At his least signal spring shifts
Its green patina over half the earth,
Deserts whisper themselves over cities,
Polar caps widen and wither like flowers.

In his stillness rock shifts, root probes,
The spider tenses her geometrical ego,
The larva dreams in the heart of the peachwood,
The child’s pencil makes a shaky line,
The dog sighs and settles deeper,
And a smile takes hold like the feet of a bird.

Sit straight, let the air ride down your backbone,
Let your lungs unfold like a field of roses,
Your eyes hang the sun and moon between them,
Your hands weigh the sky in even balance,
Your tongue, swiftest of members, release a word
Spoken at conception to the sanctum of genes,
And each breath rise sinuous with praise.

Let your feet move to the rhythm of your pulse
(Your joints like pearls and rubies he has hidden),
And your hands float high on the tide of your feelings.
Now, shout from the stomach, hoarse with music,
Give gladness and joy back to the Lord,
Who, sly as a milkweed, takes root in your heart.

Wheaton College Choir

Advent Carol “The King Shall Come” Wheaton College Illinois Christmas Festival, Mary Hopper Conducting I, Michael Linton, am the composer/arranger of this music and own the copyright. You are free to down load the music and share it with others if you do so for non-commercial purposes. A reference score for the piece can be seen at the site refinersfire.us under the menu heading “scores.”

This article originally appeared in Church of England Newspaper, London and is still a part of its archives.

Poem for my wedding invitation, 2012 in my 65th year: 'Invitation'

2011-12-29T18:56:00.000-08:00

Invitation: a poem for my marriage to Linda
at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Mill Valley, CA

by Peter Menkin

Dear
You have been on my heart
and in my mind; a comfort;
you dear are delight of my
later years--Joy to my
senses: A renewal in youth.

Let gladness and love be
our guide. Let care embrace
our relationship. We man
and woman who will join
in marriage soon, soon,
soon.

--Peter Menkin
for Linda Shirado
San Francisco
December 28, 2011
2:45 a.m. ...

Interview: Robert A. Siegel, Messianic Jew and beginning poet of Redding, CA USA

2011-12-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

Interview: Messianic Jew and faith poet, Robert A. Siegel is just starting out in poetry

by Peter Menkin

In an effort to find out what is on the mind and in the work of a beginning poet, in this case Robert Siegel of Redding, California, this writer interviewed a Messianic Jewish believer who lives in Northern California USA. Redding, California is north of San Francisco by 230 miles. Gateway community Christian Church of the Nazerene is important to Mr. Siegel, and is located near Redding.
Mr. Siegel attends Messianic Jewish services, and is a friend of a local Nazarene Church in the area. An Evangelical Church, Nazarene Church has about 2 million members in the United States and almost 60 seminaries or schools.

Robert Siegel, beginning poet of Redding, California USA

The pastor of the Church Mr. Siegel attends was ordained by the national church, like all their pastors. Pastor Bob Rupert started the Messianic group in Redding. He is with Nazarene Church.
The worship service for Messianic Jewish members is more like a Jewish Temple, Mr. Seigel tells this writer.
It is out of this tradition, this Nazarene Church and its adjunct worship church of Messianic Jews where Mr. Siegel’s poetry springs. He says, “Hosea, then John — as they have similar themes (God’s love)…” are favorite books of the Bible for him. Much of his poetry expresses these feelings of affection.
This interview-article is part of the series of ongoing interviews with Christian and Anglican poets. I came across Mr. Siegel’s work through an error, thinking him the same Robert Siegel who wrote the recent poetry book, “a Pentecost of finches.” There will be an article-interview with the established and well-known Robert A. Siegel. The “real” Robert A. Siegel is an Episcopalian.

The Messianic Mr. Siegel tells me about his poetry, “I have shared them with a close circle of friends around the years.” Some of his work is in the Addendum to the interview in this article. Regarding his education, he graduated with high honors in Pastoral Leadership from a Bible College and was a missionary in Europe. The Bible Colleges Mr. Siegel attended, were, he says in an email, “…after Bible college, I attended the Maryland Bible College & Seminary in Lenox. Actually, Stevens School of the Bible, which I attended was in Lenox, Massachusetts.” He has been writing poetry since 2002.

Preaching

INTERVIEW

1. Many readers have thought about being poets, starting out with the work. This is especially true of those who read poetry. I would think this would be the majority of them, themselves, try their hand at the work. As a poet who is starting out as a writer, where did you get your inspiration to begin? Can you tell us something about trying out your first works of poetry, and what you did after reading it later? Have you an example of a couple of lines of that very beginning work you can share.

I am not sure where (or when) my inspiration began to write poetry. The process paralleled the start of a novel, which I began in March of 2001. It was about a month after signing divorce papers. The purpose of my creative writing journey was to express feelings and experiences from God during the process of recovery, by projecting them into various characters in other times and places.

2. You’ve said how interested you are in the Bible, and as a Messianic Jew who is friend of your Nazarene Church in Redding, California, talk to us a little of what in the Bible you’ve found most poetic. By this I mean, what has stuck in your mind or in your heart. How does it speak to you in its poetic way? Maybe a best way to get to this is to have you quote something from that part here.

Psalm 119 is the best example of Biblical poetry, in my mind. It is an acrostic poem, that is, each section begins with a letter in the Hebrew language. A person who knows basic Hebrew can identify many of the key words in the opening line of each section. There are four other psalms written in this style, as the Book of Lamentations. This use of poetry in the Bible is obscured in English translations, but the Jewish Publication Society version makes it clearer by citing the Hebrew letter which begins specific lines or sections.

Tom Meyer, a scholar of Biblical memory-practices, explains (2010) that the reason why ancient Hebrews wrote acrostic poetry was so it could be an mnemonic device; the poem/psalm would be easier to remember, and therefore, to recite. It also takes planning and forethought to craft a poem alphabetically. And, of course, “men of God wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit,” as the New Testament declares. Some of these men, however, were trained how to craft religious poems.

3. What is it about the Nazarene Church that has caught your ear? Tell us something of their Methodist style worship; that is the sounds and what goes on in a worship service. I assume the worship of the Messianic Jew is more like that of a Jewish Temple, by what you tell me. Will you tell us something of these words that you find poetic and catch your attention. Which of your poems most reflects this worship in the Messianic Jew tradition?

First, let me clarify that I identify myself as a Messianic Jew who has friends at a local Nazarene church who are exploring Messianic-style worship and teaching. I have only attended three of their Sunday services so I cannot comment much about their “sounds.” They are, however, not Pentecostal.

Both the Sunday services and twice-monthly Messianic celebrations on Friday nights feature Messianic style music. A couple of years ago, the latter services featured traditional liturgy from Judaism but we have moved away from that, seeking more heart-felt ways to worship.

A poem of mine that best reflects worship in the Messianic style – and perhaps closer to Temple-era praise – is “The Seer’s Psalm.” It expresses the narrator’s personal relationship with God in Old Testament terms. The poem is written in the style of a psalm, using many of the techniques used by David. The poem alludes to Queen Esther, and the prophets Elijah and Ezekiel.

4. Of the classes in poetry you’ve taken, the two, and especially of the two, the one about the Bible and the Old Testament, tell us something of the teacher and what he emphasized. I notice in the works you sent for use at the Addendum to this interview, that most have Old Testament themes. When you are teaching Bible, which of the stories (Chapters), are the ones you emphasize? Do you read any of your poetry at these Bible teaching sessions, or have you thought of doing so? What brought you to become a Bible teacher in your community. What about your students do you like most?

I took two poetry classes in recent years. The first class was taught by Dr. Jefferson Carter at Pima Community College in Tucson, AZ. It was Introduction to Poetry; we read and wrote many styles of the art. Jefferson particularly liked my astronomy-related poems, stating that they contained unexpected concepts and vocabulary, quite unlike poetry by other writers. He encouraged me to be innovative, take chances, and to read my work to other students in the class. One thing he taught me was “the narrator is not the poet,” that is, the narrator of a poem could be anyone or anything. I regularly remind non-initiates to poetry of this maxim, as they often have stereotypical views of the genre.

Speaking against poetry-stereotypes, Jefferson also taught that poetry is often not romantic, nor is it Romantic in the historical sense. This understanding gave me the freedom to write about unconventional themes. He also taught that poems always have a meaning; there may be several nuances or interpretations to metaphors, but essentially a poem is about something specific. Both sides of this principle encouraged me to write on multiple levels. In my word choice and syntax, I am often aware of multiple shades of meaning which I leave to the Reader/Hearer to discover. Sometimes I find out years later that a symbol may have yet another meaning, wholly unknown to me when I wrote the poem. The additional nuance permits the Reader/Hearer to become a co-creator of a poem’s meaning – something not fostered in clear prose. Jefferson taught me this idea which still intrigues me.

This week, I discovered that Jefferson has recently been nominated for a Pushcart award in poetry.

The second class I took was taught by Dr. Ed Wright at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His course on Biblical Poetry was part of the Judaic studies program, which was my minor. We used J.P. Fokkelman’s book on the same subject (2001). It was technical, translated from the German and difficult to understand at times, but a worthy guide to explore the technical aspects of Scriptural poetry. Ed taught that the psalm-writers did not dream up poems while staring at clouds in fields with their sheep. They wrote according to patterns and models of styles that had been well established in Ancient Israel – and surprisingly, throughout the Near East. In “The Seer’s Psalm,” I incorporate many of these stylistic elements, such as parallelism.

You asked what Bible stories and themes do I often use when teaching. I have taught a lot about the binding of Isaac from Genesis 22, and the love of God as revealed through Hosea’s commitment to Gomer, his unfaithful wife. Neither themes have been employed in my poems, however, they are folded into my unfinished novel.

You asked if I read my poems at Bible teaching sessions, or have thought about doing so. I know from experience that Christians in the Eastern bloc countries regularly read their own poems of praise during services – or used to, in the 1980s, when I visited there. But I have only attempted to read my works, on two different occasions. I used them as illustrations, but they did not seem to be well-received. Perhaps if I wrote a piece that was more specific to a theme, omitting unusual allusions, they would be better received. Upon reflection, I will pursue this further.

What brought me to become a Bible teacher in my community? Within a year of becoming a Believer in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus), I sensed a call to serve Him, and went to Bible college. After graduating with High Honors, I served in various ways. Currently, I teach the Scriptures from a Messianic perspective – based on my knowledge of Jewish culture and history. Having some understanding of Hebrew enhances the teaching very much. This training, knowledge and skill has made me a specialist of sorts. I do not feel, however, that I have fully used this teaching gift as much I desire. But I’m not done yet in serving the Living God!

5. Given the opportunity to talk to poets like yourself who are starting out, what encouragement would you offer? Where do you suggest they look, especially young people in high school or college years. Speak something of your own experience when making this encouragement.

I would encourage students, especially at the college level, to seek encouragement and resources from local poetry centers. Both the University of Arizona and San Francisco State University (I attended both) have Poetry Centers. The latter has a taped collection of well-known speakers who have shared their poetry at the school. SFSU also regularly hosts guest poets. I once heard a speaker talk about Medieval Spanish-Jewish poetry – a fascinating subject!

I would also suggest to aspiring poets to take opportunities to attend writing workshops – on any correlative subject – and to read their works to attendees. One thing that I have not done – but have considered – is reading my poems regularly in open-mic venues. And I am planning to join a local Writer’s Forum.

6. Is there anything you’d like to add that I’ve missed, or that you just plain want to say as we come to the end of this interview?

Thanks for asking me to share my experiences and perspective in writing spiritual poetry. I feel I have a lot to offer but have not fully pursued opportunities to expand my influence for the Lord through writing. Your questions has fostered reflection about why and what to write. May the Lord be glorified as we practice this craft!

ADDENDUM

BITTER TEARS OF AFFLICTION

by Robert A. Siegel

A poem for Passover.

These are the bitter tears of affliction

Reminding us “we were slaves

Once in the Land of Egypt,

But the Lord delivered us with

An outstretched hand, and

A mighty arm.”

We are still slaves in a

Land of Exile. Wanderers

Without a home.

When can I go Home

To Haifa, and Mount Carmel –

And teach there, as I was destined,

With or without my Queen?

These are the bitter years of

Affliction and Exile.

“Yet the Lord delivered us with

An outstretched hand, and

A mighty arm.”

A SEER’S PSALM

by Robert A. Siegel

To You, O God, I lift my voice

To El Who dwells on high,

I plead to you with my whole heart,

I cry to You with tears and sighs.

When will You deliver me from this affliction

That I may come before You with joy?

When will You free me from this confusion

That I may worship with Your People?

O Adonai, the Circle of Time overwhelms me:

The old despised me when I was young

And the young refuse now to break bread.

When can I come to destiny

And teach with my Queen by the sea?

Who is this Queen of Glory

Who leads by wisdom with me?

Guided by Your signs and dreams

I have searched into the Past,

I have peered into the Seven Mirrors

But her image is dim in the brass.

You steer the Wheel within the Wheel

That I might know what I cannot know;

You hold eternity in Your hands

That humanity may serve you.

My Present’s filled with emptiness,

The invisible few clearly see;

Like a ghost from the nether world,

Friends disavow knowing me.

I sought a Deliverer but

Esther chose not; she could not

Save my spirit from the End

Before we could create a Beginning!

Yet You prepare a spring for me

In the Wilderness Your streams are sweet;

You come alongside and strengthen me,

Your presence comforts, God Who Sees!

When strangers laugh and women answer me not,

You hold me in Your surrounding arms;

You send Your creature who purrs to me:

The raven feeds Elijah by night.

My God, compassionate Father,

Deliver me from this Whirlpool of Time!

Then will I teach students Your Ways,

And proclaim Your truths to the Nations!

O love the Lord, you called-out ones!

For He is close to the broken-hearted;

He strengthens those who master the Times,

Enabling them to ride the beast!

Praise, I say, the Master of Time.

12 November 2005;

revised 14 November

A LAND WHERE LIGHT

IS THE LANGUAGE

by Robert A. Siegel

Alluding to Psalm 19. The poem draws on the double meaning of the Hebrew word, kol, first as a noun meaning “voice” and then as a adverb meaning “now.”

Arise, O Muse!
Speak through me, that I may sing your virtues!
Give voice – kol – so the “string” thereof
Resounds throughout the earth!

In the Silence are many words
Flummoxed by my own grey matter –
“The voice thereof” extends into the night
While sleepless dreams leave me stupefied!

I have no dreams, but I have Visions –
Unspeakable, and yet they live
Between us, hanging in the ether
Like telegraphic thoughts. It should not

Be this way; yes, it must, for I
Have written the Signs. But I reach
For wind – breath – pneuma – ruach –
And battle like a Jedi against myself.

Complications set in from old wounds –
But who wants to squawk about that?
I want to talk about E-lectricity
But don’t know where to begin. All –

“Kol” – is written. Would you read it?
Parables at Troy’s shores. Rivers
Of tears at Arundel. Decisions
On Mount Carmel. And dragon-slayers –

All committed to ink in a Land
Where Light is the Language,
As if Affection required Translation.
My thoughts are beyond words. October 25, 2011

Review: Excellent film, 'The Mill & The Cross,' directed by Lech Majewski

2011-12-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

Review: 'The Mill & The Cross' directed by Lech Majewski--film as artistic work

by Peter Menkin

Charlotte Rampling

THE REVIEW OF THE MILL & THE CROSS

How can I laud this film I liked so much, and enjoyed? Let me try a number of ways. For this is a movie that asks for many things of its audience. This film is a work of art.

Called the wisest philosopher among painters, “Pieter Bruegel’s epic masterpiece The Way To Calvary depicts the story of Christ’s Passion set in Flanders under brutal Spanish occupation in the year 1564, the very year Bruegel created his painting. From among the more than five hundred figures that fill Bruegel’s remarkable canvas, THE MILL & THE CROSS focuses on a dozen characters whose life stories unfold and intertwine in a panoramic landscape populated by villagers and red-caped horsemen. Among them are Bruegel himself (played by Rutger Hauer), his friend and art collector Nicholas Jonghelinck (Michael York), and the Virgin Mary (Charlotte Rampling).” So says the distributor about the film they distribute, Kino Loberer of New York City.

Before going further with some remarks on the film as a work itself and its credits, note that the part played by Rutger Hauer is done with dignity and offers a stoic painterly attitude of heroic disengagement with the large scene he paints. A handsome man, the character played by Rutger Hauer, Bruegel himself does as the other actors do: plays the role with a balance of speaking and silence, with emphasis on the silence. Quiet in dialogue, that is silent moments, is a notable feature of the playing style in The Mill & The Cross. Here is a well chosen means of conveying meaning as audience members become attuned to the rhythm of acting style performed by not only this excellent player, but all the competent and experienced main players in their parts. There is a shadow and light to the acting sensibility, not in literal use of cinema and play of film, but a kind of sensibility of both knowing and not knowing. But it is Rutger Hauer’s character who appears as a man who has eyes to see and a distance in objectivity in mind to patiently portray what his eye sees, if one grasps the painting as shown in the style of the cinema itself.

Michael York as nobleman

Of the many positive reviews written about the movie to date, this writer was taken with a review by Kiša Lala –more than with the distributor’s press release description, though it a good one. Kisa Lala said in the Huffington Post on the internet this of the director of the imaginative and courageous work, one so well worth seeing in all its glory, quietude, artistic vision, and even originality. Directed by Lech Majewski, who had the courage to move forward with his digital experiment that shows so well the painter’s work as backdrop to the film. Keep in mind that actors played on an empty set, one filled with equipment, not in front of the vista the audience sees on the screen. Director Majewski took a chance with his digital experiment, for it wasn’t really known if it would work—and if so, how well would it work: “An accomplished artist and composer, Majewski, also wrote and co-produced Basquiat, directed later by his friend Julian Schnabel. His new feature film, The Mill and the Cross …is an elaborately layered, computer-generated tableaux of another classic, Pieter Bruegel’s 1564, The Way to Calvary – a composite of multiple light sources and seven different perspectives that Breugel had used to trick the eye.” (See her whole review here.) Director Majewski, a citizen and resident of Poland, is himself a painter. Please consider, The Mill & The Cross was screened at the Louvre, it as film so painterly and to some digital effect that is transparent, a miraculous work of technical accomplishement. Or so this writer has heard about its visual success of technical means.
Suffice it to say: working in a dramatic and stylized way of silence, quiet, and what turned out to be effective and creative as well as courageous methods, actors, cinematographer, and director brought to life this painterly vision with cinematic success. A film well worth seeing, just to say one has seen it, let alone appreciate it and to enjoy (especially if the art of the painter and the art of the actor, and the art of the director interests or even fascinates a theatre goer), the first thing this writer did when seeing the film and taking notes was write a poetic statement of description:

Beautiful: Fabulous vista of morning./ The unchanging and august scene/ Portrays the Mill as started on awakening, as if / God , and man in the hopes and struggles /Take on the day, knowing or not knowing God/ Is present and aware of dawning, its maker both /Engaged and distant watching, too, as Christ weeps./ / So injustice of man against man in the acts/ Of Christ’s passion and his suffering on the Cross/ Are known in the present time of Flanders 1500,// The ravens set on the man persecuted by man/ In the cinematic cruel and even graphic scene of black/ Ravens eat his eyes./ Painting, cinema, history meet at the Cross.
–Peter Menkin

Take this writer and reviewer’s advice, see this movie on the big screen—if you can. If not, view it at home on the biggest screen you’ve got in rumpus room, living room, or bedroom. Of course there is vulgarity in the film, that commonality of the unwashed and washed, so heightening in its contrast the beauty of the vision–(has not man a vulgar dimension of humanity baldly lived); this is portrayal of the bawdy sense of the way life in this era of Spanish occupation as Catholics persecuted the heretical religious Protestants. (Is not the basic sensibility of man in his passions and failures a beautiful thing, caught with the cinematography and also the director’s eyes so well and well told in this movie of mankind and his life in history? Here is mankind’s beauty without just prettiness, yet prettiness is present, too. That itself is reason to say, Yes, well stated to The Mill & The Cross as entertainment and cinematic art.)

As this review comes towards the end, this writer wants to reiterate: that there is passion and pathos, weakness and sorrow is a chilling fact of history shown in this tableaux so artfully presented and patiently played. Take notice, Christ’s Cross continues then, is given meaning and life and actively a living thing and event both then and now in the world. Christ is alive, if only it is the Cross we see in its various guises. That Christ’s Cross continues is just so much the more terrible in what is a tasteful movie that does not exploit its graphic portrayals that appear from time to time, nor does it understate too much the subtleties of the painter’s world and the events of living in the world of its day—and in doing so casts a meaning to present life as humans live life. For example: I write here of an interesting scene where Michael York, playing nobleman, watches Spanish soldiers ride down the street of his town from his window. There is a mutual understanding of strain, occupation, political injury and just plain tension portrayed in this scene. Let me compliment the film again so to help to bring understanding and enjoyment to a viewer’s visit to the theatre: For me, this scene is another experience of movie in the better sense. Look for the subtlety and the artist’s sensibility. In fact, once noticed, it may strike an audience member so strongly as to resonate for some weeks afterward. How well the silence works in this scene as we see Michael York as Nicholas Jongehelinch watch the soldiers ride in a kind of triumph and comfortable power that terror can offer in its deceptive way.

Just a few notes on acting: This writer says again, the silence and then use of sound and also spoken voice to give lines works so well. Charlotte Rampling in this movie as “Mary” does so well in her part, with a dignity and sorrow that is noteworthy with empathy. After all, it is her son who will be among the crucified, and in a later scene where he is put on the Cross of the soldiers dressed in Red, she comes to the foot of that Cross with others, and the scene is a stunner. At least this writer found it moving and quite a picture in itself. No, it was not a graphic scene of blood, but a scene of waiting and witness, a scene of quiet and sunset, a scene of sorrow and even despair.
For my money, the movie is for adults. Question: Can a mature young boy or girl of high school or college years enjoy and understand the work? Of course, for, they, too, must read books of real literary and artistic merit in school. They, too, must begin to come to grips with their own lives and the spiritual and religious dimensions of history and of our contemporary times. This kind of historic statement of its kind, whether understood in its religious and Christian sense or not, will help with its theme of humanity for mature and even younger, mature viewers. But parental advice is recommended for teenagers in high school. Important criteria for any who view this film: Come to The Mill and the Cross with a mind educated or at least asking for cinematic experience. For those who wish to see history caught in film as wrought in a painting, come to The Mill & The Cross. I viewed the screening at the Embarcadero Theatre in San Francisco and afterward talked with Caria Tomczykowska, President of The Polish Arts and Culture Foundation, located in Oakland, California. She was kind enough to set up an interview with the Director of the film.

Produced and directed by Lech Majewski; written by Michael Francis Gibson and Mr. Majewski, based on the book by Mr. Gibson; directors of photography, Mr. Majewski and Adam Sikora; edited by Eliot Ems and Norbert Rudzik; music by Mr. Majewski and Jozef Skrzek; production design by Katarzyna Sobanska and Marcel Slawinski; costumes by Dorota Roqueplo; released by Kino Lorber. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of the Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. This film is not rated.

The distributor reviews its own film with these words about the ending: “At the film’s end we see the painting, some of its mysteries revealed, hanging next to Bruegel’s equally masterly “Tower of Babel” in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; we are also left to savor an inspiring, alluring meditation about imagery and storytelling, the common coin of history, religion and art.”

The Crucifix/ moment and moments in time/ man’s experience with life’s sorrow/ the multitudes and all the human appetites of living/ goes on.// Shall we dance? And shall we speak? Shall we be silent and shall we wait with God as we may?/ Let history play our songs in this vista of time and memory that is life.
–Peter Menkin

INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR LECH MAJEWSKI

1. In your film The Mill & The Cross the vision is one of a series of levels offered in painterly tableau, given to dramatic form. This writer thought it a stunning and effective use of a painting as inspiration. Will you tell us something of your own sense of the visual levels at work, and what manner of style you call the actors’ interpretation? In what way did you offer a filmic dramatic mode in presenting this movie, so well suited for the big screen because of its beauty? I know I am almost asking you to critique your own work, but really, some insight of your vision will help the audience better appreciate your work.

Director of The Mill & The Cross, Lech Majewski with friend at lunch in San Francisco. Mr. Majewski, a Polish Citizen, is holding the camera

…I spent four years with this painting looking at it very closely, and it’s like a well without a bottom, without an end. You can constantly find the details.

Initially my image was of nobody moving for an hour and a half. Only the camera would travel. Almost like entering the painting itself in the world Bruegal has presented. The viewer would eavesdrop on the painting.

2. Tell us something of the way you decided to handle the violence in the film, for there is some cruelty, even some blood and graphic visual representation? To give some context, movies today are so violent, and sometimes vulgar, even sexually exploitative for the purpose of titillation, it is surprising to find a film where the bawdiness is in context with the message and moves the drama forward.

It has to be like…Breugal presents the picture. People are cruel and they are joyous. It has to do with the joux de vive. Basically, when you look at the people…they don’t pose in front of you. You have the sense you are looking over their shoulder. It is like a Peeping Tom. They are so enrapt in their idiosyncratic actions.

They do their own routines, and you spy on them. They don’t wait for you, so to say. They are sort of presenting themselves. They have an eye contact with you; it is an official kind of a contact. With Breugal’s world you jump in with the characters in the band wagon. When you have a posed portrait of people it is a kind of official contact, or a contact that makes it remote despite the fact that they look into your eyes.

3. Of the three main actors in their character, I am curious about the quiet performance of Charlotte Rampling. Perhaps because she plays a Mary figure, but also because there is a silent sorrow to the movie that she and the others give. Who among the collaborators developed this almost silent statement of ethos in the portrayals? Was it mostly your work; do you think the cinematography enhanced this vision—as I do? For the film work is near exquisite, so painterly.

I’m a painter, so for me that is very important. I was invited to…Bruegal’s world, also to the Beugal’s aesthetic. So I tried to meet him on my own ground. I know I am coming to him with my film equipment. I am coming to learn, not to show off.

The actors had a very difficult task, for it was the most difficult task. For either the actor is to be a guide, or a silent presence. Actors like to act a lot, they like to have a meaty part where they can use their emotional memory and have a kind of showcase of what they can do. Here the restraint was the utmost restraint. They had to restrain their work. I am glad I met Michael York and Charlotte Rampling. The work was [by] them.

Michael York is a great person. Initially, I thought he would be silent, too. He quickly memorized his lines. It occurred to me he should speak his lines. He was going to be silent, and I listen to his silent thoughts. Again, how difficult it is to be an actor—you don’t act, you have to relay certain knowledge and relay some meaning. It is very hard to act.

4. Speak some about the artist, the painting and also of the setting of the movie. By this I mean tell us the historic place in time, and what is going on in this time of Catholic and Protestant strife and occupation by the Spanish. There is so much story in the film, and the viewer has the opportunity to unwrap the story as a viewer would unwrap a painting. Tell us something about this audience participation, if you agree with the statement.

Very important thing I wanted to say about this movie. I don’t like a movie that explains to me too much. I decided to write it with in such a way that Breugal, Howard and Michael York and Charlotte can do it in a basic field. If you want to understand it more, you have to do the homework.

We have Spaniards who are Catholic who are trying to convert the Protestants to repeat the same actions that were used against the Christ. It has a double meaning. Many people treat it as a passion of Christ. It is also a passion of Christ; that is, it is a double edged sword. This is a passion of Chris and a torture in the name of Christ…A thing can turn into its opposite.

The human tends to distort the human [good] into its opposite. [In the film} there are basically two tortures: one is performed on the wheel, the other on the Cross. Geometrically speaking there is the circle and the Cross-- like a point in the earth where you are…like the Cartesian world. It was also a part of the planning of the movie. If the rock is a vertical line and the rock is also a symbol of the petros, and at the same time [also as symbol] a hollow rock like Moses’ on the desert–Petro pneumatica, which is a hollow rock that accompanied Moses and the Jews.

It is a beautiful axiomatic statement. That is what Breugal painted. If you look closely you’ll see there are windows in the rock. On the left side of the axis you have the wheel; on the right side you have the cross.

INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL YORK

1. For some years now this writer has enjoyed your audio recording originally produced by Dove Audio in Los Angeles of the Psalms. Talk to us a little of the Psalms, since many of us say them in Church and on our own. Which of the Psalms have you found read best aloud? Why? Give us some tips on reading aloud, and tell us something of the interpretive method you use in reading the Psalms. Speak even of if you read in the Monastic tradition, as do I, or other.

Michael York with wife Pat, photo by Michael Kirkland

I’ve been with audio books since the early days when it was in somebody’s garage. And I’ve done a lot with the late lamented Dove. When the request came to do the Book of Psalms, [I asked] you sure you don’t want a multi-voice version. They said, No. I thought the original task was to do a fresh voice, so they said we’ll do new sessions; we’ll break it up and do fresh voice each time. I think what attracted me was the language of the King James Version…The glory days of the language of Shakespeare.

I think so much of this literature was designed to be read aloud. It’s the way it’s constructive…appointed to be read in Churches. So this language does come aloud when read in Churches.

Fortunately all the Psalms are different. They deal with the human experience of God: so you have joy, hope, despair, ecstasy: All these human elements. They are not cast in the same mold. Actually, I just recently worked on a new audio version of a Bible. It’s called the Word of Promise. It took two years to record; I spent over 500 hours in the studio. [It] had all these wonderful actors: Richard Dreyfus, Joan Allen, Harry Hamlin. It was a [wonderful] cast: Marsha J. Hardin, Gary Sinise, Stacy Keech. I mean a huge number. I was the one who stitched it all together. I was very pleased to read the entire Bible. It had always been an ambition.

It’s available online. It’s hugely successful. It’s got its own score. It’s got its own sound effects. In a way it’s using technology in the same way Lech Majewski used it in the movie [The Mill & The Cross]. Out of this [Bible] they produced an album of Psalms called The Gift of Psalms. This is the multi-voice version I thought [previously] would work very well. You just go to Amazon.com [to find and buy it]… It’s been flying off the shelves. The price has come down. It’s quite reasonable. I’m just so thrilled the DVD is still available. This was from about 2007 to 2009.

2. This writer’s understanding of your work as a lover of art leads me to want to know what is there special about the cinematic work of director Lech Majewski in his film The Mill & The Cross where you play an art collector named Nicholas Jonghelinck. In that wonderful painting which is depicted in so fine a filmic tableau in the movie Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting “The Way to Calvary,” is there a particular part of the painting you’d like to draw the reader’s attention to when viewing this beautiful and remarkable vision that plays the passion effectively in Flanders of the 1500’s?

I always knew that Lech was a film maker and an artist. You know he had a reputation. He had exhibitions in the [Modern] Museum of Art. He co-wrote the screenplay of the artist Dasquiag. I just thought the screenplay was extraordinary. I knew it would be difficult to do. He was entering into a world where he didn’t know if he would be able to pull it off: The complexity of the digital technology he was using.

[Regarding Michael York as art collector, he says:] Thank goodness I started collecting in the 70s. I don’t know if I could do it now. Things were undervalued then. Old masters. I couldn’t do it now. I am an art lover. My wife and I go once a week to a museum.

[Regarding advice on looking at Bruegal’s work depicted in the film as painting:] Not really. Breugal doesn’t…he has 500 characters in there. They are all doing something individual. You would think that Christ would be the whole centerpiece. Indeed he is; there is a man on a horse wearing a white suit. And this is where the eye goes to.

[Regarding the interpretative method used in explaining religious aspect of the painting, The Prodigal Son:] In museums I tend to avoid the audio guides. I like to see for myself and make up my own mind. If you are reasonably educated, you can make up your mind itself. It shouldn’t be dictated things, but suggested things.

I see [in the Breugal] the paining like a piece of cinema. There’s action going on all the time. There is a time scale. On the left side of the picture it starts in the day; on the right side of the film it becomes dark with Golgotha and Calvary. It’s not one specific time; it’s timeless.

3. One thing that this viewer noticed when attending the screening in San Francisco at the Embarcadero One, which is a large two building complex (where I lost my car in the lot when wanting to go home after the screening), is how wonderfully the movie plays on the big screen. For that reason, do you think the film better to see in big screen at a movie theatre, and why? Also, your presence is quite established in the viewer’s mind as character of a man whose country is occupied. Obviously, the character is a more mature man, and you are not so young yourself anymore. How do you like and how do you play such a role of so distinguished and educated a character, who has to have a certain kind of expression to show his position in life and even in silence communicate his artful sensitivity and loves?

If you can see it on the big screen, that’s preferable. I really think movies playing on airplanes…I know the cameraman has made the best picture and light, and you know the people are not truly getting the kind of experience [the cameraman worked to achieve]. Now people want to watch films on their telephones. God forbid. I’m not sure I approve.

[Regarding Michael York’s scene in the film The Mill & The Cross where his character laments the occupation by the Spanish:] Originally, it was all voice over. I learned the speech. When he [the director] found out I knew it, he completely invented the scene. From a passive voice over, it became a speech. The man didn’t have to turn to his wife, as married couples don’t always turn to see one another when speaking. It made a nice scene. It wasn’t in the movie [as it appeared, not originally]. There is of course the equivalency of the Spanish inquisition and the Redcoats. It’s the equivalent to the Jewish…the Roman Occupation and the cruelty. Any country that’s invaded, the invaded citizens have a point of view. Especially [when] they become wealthy and so independent.

4. How do you like being more mature in years as a man and as an actor? If memory is correct, you are not yet 70, having been born in England in 1942? Certainly, you have a long and distinguished working life in theatre, film, and audio and have as a man of faith played roles that are a part of Western Civilization in many instances. Talk to us some of your own faith, and if in some sense this film The Mill & The Cross as both art and story in history–show us something of religious life and matters of faith during this time?

It’s wonderful. This is a job that has no cutoff. You keep doing it till you can’t: Until doors are closed on certain roles. The younger roles are cut off for me. Then I started playing fathers, and now I play grandfathers.

I was raised in The Church of England, so that glorious language that informs the liturgy of the Church of England. And of course the King James Bible. I’ve explored faith in its many aspects [in roles I’ve played]. I’ve played John the Baptist, and the anti-Christ… Good people like Dietrich Boenhoeefffer. And recently, a couple of years ago doing something. They asked me if I’d like to be the on-camera narrator of John Paul II. The present Pope Benedict wanted this film made, so he put the Vatican at our disposal. I spent a day in the Sistine Chapel with light on [the ceiling]. It was unforgettable.

You can’t hope to do good things all the time. In my job you can’t know how things are going to turn out. That’s why The Mill & The Cross is such a big, big breakthrough. I count myself lucky to do it.

[On being asked if he is an observant Christian:] I wouldn’t say I was a practicing Christian, except internally. In my reading and my …but I don’t often go to Church. But when I do I enjoy.

5. Thank you for taking the time to talk to this writer about your work and the movie The Mill & The Cross. As we come to the end of our conversation in interview, speak about director Lech Majewski’s vision of art, and what it was like to work with him in this unusual, artistic, and interpretive movie that is so stylized? Did you feel that your playing of the character Nicholas Jonghelinck was stylized, too–in any distinct way?

For the most part we were playing against a blue screen. We just had to imagine where we were. We had to invent where we were seeing, because we were in an empty studio. This film had its European premier in the Louvre in France. So I think they recognized its quality. It’s about a specific religious episode. It’s so very dark. I was so surprised when your assistant said it was so violent. You couldn’t have something more violent than the crucifixion. [Left out a reference to the film about the Crucifixion that was famous for being bloody, etc. and graphic. Sorry. Missed this in typing.] This was the inquisition and it was so historically accurate.

We see soft medievalism from Disney. But life was brutal and tough.

6. As mentioned just a moment ago, it is good to make your acquaintance in this way. If there is something this writer has missed that you want to say, or if you have a comment you want to make, please let readers know about it here.

I think we’ve covered so much ground. As an actor, I look forward to what lies ahead. There is no blueprint. You just feel so lucky when there’s some subject…like The Mill & The Cross comes your way.

THE CREDITS FOR THE MILL & THE CROSS

CREDITS
Directed and Produced by
Lech Majewski
Screenplay
Michael Francis Gibson, Lech Majewski

Inspired by the book THE MILL AND THE CROSS by Michael Francis Gibson
Executive producer
Angelus Silesius
Line producers
Małgorzata Domin, Piotr Ledwig
Co-producers
Telewizja Polska
Freddy Olsson
Bokomotiv Filmproduktion
Odeon Studio
Silesia Film
24 Media
Supra Film
Arkana Studio
Piramida Film

Directors of Photography – Lech Majewski, Adam Sikora
Costume Designer – Dorota Roqueplo
Production Designers – Katarzyna Sobańska, Marcel Sławiński
Makeup Designers – Dariusz Krysiak, Monika Mirowska
Music – Lech Majewski, J—zef Skrzek
Editors – Eliot Ems, Norbert Rudzik
First Assistant Directors – Krzysztof Łukaszewicz, Dorota Lis
New Zealand Cloud Formations Photographed by John Crisstoffels
Sound Recordist – Marian Bogacki
Costume Supervisor – Ewa Kochańska
Makeup Artist -Hanna Leśna
Art Director – Stanisław Porczyk
Draftsman/Storyboard Artist – Jerzy Ozga
Visual Effects – Odeon Film Studio
Visual Effects Supervisor – Paweł Tybora
Flame Artist – Łukasz Głowacz
3D Animation – Mariusz Skrzypczyński
Lead Compositors – Dawid Borkiewicz, Waldemar Mordarski
IT Engineer – Kamil Lenard
Additional Visual Effects – Katamaran
Compositing Artist – Norbert Rudzik
2D Matte Paintings – AWR Edytor Katowice
Digital Paint Artist – Barbara Lepacka
Landscape Design – Lech Majewski
Additional Visual Effects – Rosenbot, Wojciech Łebkowski,
Artur Kopp, Piotr Kierzkowski
First Assistant Editor – Maciej Krzan
Sound Designers – Lech Majewski, Zbigniew Malecki
Sound Supervisor – Zbigniew Malecki
ADR Recordist – Aleksander Dowisilas
Foley Artist – L.J. May
Additional Sound FX – Jan Walencik
Sound Mix Engineers – Zbigniew Malecki, Piotr Knop
Music Recorded at Polskie Radio Katowice
Laboratory – WFDiF Warsaw

TECHNICAL SPECS
35mm: 1.85 (24 fps) Dolby Digital SRD
DCP: 1.85 Dolby Digital
HDCAM 1080 / 23.98psf 16 x 9 Full Frame (aka 1.78) Stereo
Length 35mm 24fr/sec 97′, DCP/HDCam 25 fr/sec 91

World premiere:
Sundance Film Festival
Yarrow Hotel Theatre
Egyptian Theatre
Holiday Village Cinema II
European premiere: Rotterdam Film Festival
French premiere: The Louvre, Paris

PETER BREUGEL’S PAINTINGS
KUNSTHISTORICHES MUSEUM MIT MVK & OTM
Kreuztragung Christi, CG 1025 (The Way to Calvary)
Jager Im Schnee (Winter), CG 1858 (The Hunters in the Snow)
Selbstmord Sauls, CG 1011 (The Death of Saul)
Der Dustere Tag, CG 1837 (The Dark Day)
Turmbau Zu Babel, CG 1026 (The Tower of Babel)
Heimkehr Der Herde, CG 1018 (The Return of the Herd)

THE COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART
(Rights & Reproductions Courtauld Images)
The Flight into Egypt

HESSICHES LANDESMUSEUM DARMSTADT

WISSENSCHAFTLICHER VOLONTAR KUNST & KULTUR GESCHICHTE
Elster Auf Dem Galgen, GK 165 (The Magpie on the Gallows)

THE CAST
Peter Breugel
Rutger Hauer
Mary
Charlotte Rampling
Nicholas Jonghelinck
Michael York
Marijken Breugel – Joanna Litwin
Saskja Jonghelinck – Dorota Lis
Crucified – Bartosz Capowicz
Wheelified – Mateusz Machnik
Miller – Marian Makula
Netje – Sylwia Szczerba
Jan – Wojciech Mierkulow
Esther – Ruta Kubas
Simon – Jan Wartak
Peddler – Sebastian Cichonski
Bram – Lucjan Czerny
Mayken – Aneta Kiszczak
Horn Player – Oskar Huliczka
Traitor – Adam Kwiatkowski
Pedro De Erazu – Pawel Kramarz
Rogier De Marke – Tadeusz Kwak
Scharmouille – Andrzej Jastrzab
Thief – Josef Barczyk
Miller’s Wife – Bernadetta Cichon
Millhand – Krzysztof Lelito
Pitje – Jerzy Sucheki
Beta – Emilia Czartoryska
Wero – Agata Kokosinska
Magdah – Tatiana Juszniewska
Josef – Dariusz Lorek
Smith – Miroslaw Fuchs
Waggoner – Stanislaw Futek
Archer – Grzegorz Kazibudzki

This article appeared originally in Church of England Newspaper, London.

Film review: New age movie, 'Finding Joe'...about finding your bliss

2011-11-16T21:21:00.001-08:00

Film review: A documentary look at Joseph Campbell's ideas on Myth, 'Finding Joe'

by Peter Menkin

Golden Buddha

One reviewer wrote:
This is an inspiring documentary. For those who feel they’ve dead-ended in life, it’s worthwhile to see people out there that have found divine joy in their lives. It’s self-help- (almost to a fault) but this film isn’t preachy.

In a documentary that touts the virtues of new age philosophy, Finding Joe speaks of finding one’s bliss in a series of interviews with people you may know as motivational speakers, authors of bestselling books, the Deepak Chopra, a surfer, and a skateboard professional among others. A kind of advertisement in style and cinematic form, the film opens with the story of the Golden Buddha and lets the viewer know that each of us is golden.

What does that mean? First it is said by Alan Cohen in a way that has authority and believability, a real conviction, and a sense of religious enthusiasm. It is really not a nonsense statement, but a way of starting this documentary series of interviews and statements with a myth that offers how key subject of the film is saying: Joseph Campbell, a writer about myths whom many have respected and enjoyed for what he’s offered as insight in living life and the story presents the hero’s journey: a path to bliss.

The Press Notice provided by the producers reads: Rooted in deeply personal accounts and timeless stories, FINDING JOE shows how Campbell’s work is relevant and essential in today’s world and how it provides a narrative for how to live a fully realized life—or as Campbell would simply state, how to “follow your bliss”.
The film features interviews with visionaries from a variety of fields including Deepak Chopra, Mick Fleetwood, Tony Hawk, Rashida Jones, Laird Hamilton, Robert Walter, Robin Sharma, Catherine Hardwicke, Sir Ken Robinson, Akiva Goldsman and many more.

While studying myths, and writing on the human experience, Joseph Campbell was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College for 38 years. His seminal work, “A Hero with a Thousand Faces” was published in 1949 and greatly influenced generations of artists and writers, including Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Jerry Garcia and others.
Director Patrick Takaya Solomon said “Joseph Campbell’s work has influenced every major turning point in my life, including my decision to become a director. I owe my good fortune to the ‘aha moments’ I experienced while reading his books. I was compelled to make this film, and look forward to working with Balcony to share it with audiences across America.”

Probably the most succinct statement about the way the film depicts the journey of life and finding meaning, outside the Christian faith and within the California dreaming popularity of New Age sensibility, is how one woman says she learned about Joseph Campell when studying religion in College. The actress tells us she was, “God smacked” by the transformational power of Joseph Campbell’s teachings, and how she learned, “all religions are the same.”

This universalism may seem trite to a degree of amusement, but because it is so pervasive as a way of life that says, You can do it, and offers that we all have Human Potential, the movement becomes a popular philosophy spoken of in serious tones by so many Californians and western American individuals. The film has been released in the Western United States and hopes to make its way East through distribution channels.

The hero’s journey is simply that one is restored and redeemed through trial. It is that we learn who we are in a coming of age manner and allows everyone without much effort, but for a kind of special exercise in insight, to “arrive.” Some call this Transformation Work.

Hero at Work

A film consisting of happy scenes of excitement, action and success as backdrop to a series of interwoven and cut between interviews with successful people, Finding Joe tells the viewer that through this method of the journey, that you, we, all of us full of potential will get out of everything wrong in life.

This path to pure consciousness is through a way of negative feelings and experiences, experiences overcome by recognizing that this is how one becomes the hero in one’s own life, not the victim. Albeit this is a lot of philosophy, and the center of the message remains Joseph Campbell’s advice to follow ones bliss.

How does one follow one’s bliss? Find out what your passion is and you will find a way to your bliss, so Deepak Chopra offers. The skateboarder Tony Hawk says he found his bliss: skateboarding. He offers, “I just want to fly.”

What is there to say beyond all this?

From the webpage Finding Joe:

Hi, I’m Pat Solomon, producer and director of Finding Joe. For the past 12 years I have been directing commercials; you can check out my reel at newhousefilms.com. I started my career shooting action sports films: snowboarding, motocross and skateboarding, etc. Notable films include Totally Board and Crusty Demons of Dirt. I started Finding Joe in February 2009 and, even though it’s not yet completed, it has been the best experience of my professional life by a mile.
Joseph Campbell’s work has influenced every major turning point in my life, including my decision to become a director. I owe my good fortune to the concepts and ideas that I discovered in his books. The Hero with a Thousand Faces put me on a path years ago that led me here, to my present film Finding Joe. One day in 2009 I saw The Power of Myth again and though I love that program I felt I could better understand the material if there was more visuals to help describe the concepts.

INTERVIEW BY THIS WRITER PETER MENKIN

Informal pose in sketch of the interviewer Peter Menkin at Starbucks, north of San Francisco

1. The press notice describing your documentary, Finding Joe, reads: FINDING JOE is an exploration of what Campbell calls “the hero’s journey” and intends to highlight a path for the audience. The film features such notable guests as Deepak Chopra, Laird Hamilton, Tony Hawk, Gay Hendricks, Rashida Jones, Mick Fleetwood and many more. There is so much to explore in this work you’ve directed. As a start, this statement from an article on Beliefnet about Religion and Spirituality titled, “Spiritual but not Religious,” by Robert C. Fuller: Forsaking formal religious organizations, these people have instead embraced an individualized spirituality that includes picking and choosing from a wide range of alternative religious philosophies. They typically view spirituality as a journey intimately linked with the pursuit of personal growth or development. A woman who joined a meditation center after going through a divorce and experiencing low self-esteem offers an excellent example. All she originally sought was a way to lose weight and get her life back on track. The Eastern religious philosophy that accompanied the meditation exercises was of little or no interest to her. Yet she received so many benefits from this initial exposure to alternative spiritual practice that she began experimenting with other systems including vegetarianism, mandalas, incense, breathing practices, and crystals. When interviewed nine years later by sociologist Marilyn McGuire, this woman reported that she was still “just beginning to grow” and she was continuing to shop around for new spiritual insights. Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2002/07/Spiritual-But-Not-Religious.aspx?p=2#ixzz1Zx8Y3EUU Do you think as director that Joseph Campbell was looking at spirituality in this kind of way described in the Beliefnet article, or does your film really explore religion in the Christian sense as a journey of the hero? Is there something unique about the hero’s journey Campbell offers as interpreted in your documentary that you wanted to say in your new film, Finding Joe?

It was Campbell looking at spirituality – My belief, yes; Campbell was looking at spirituality and all of religion and mythology as a personal experience. The thing that I took away from Campbell’s work is there was a personal aspect in every story. That is, the story is about you. So the answer to the question, I guess, is yes, if you are looking at stories whether they are religious or not, you are looking at them in a personal way. It’s a Campbell thing. All stories become personal. They are stories about people learning and growing.

2. That first question given above was a big question, so encompassing. When working on a documentary about big ideas and big questions of life, how did you find a way to ground the statements to better involve and communicate to the audience what you offered about myth? Was the visual work that in so many instances is very strong, part of that statement— kind of high impact as a television commercial is played? This writer asks the question because you made television commercials. To better refine the question of director’s point of view, did you find certain methods learned in commercial making work transferred to this documentary, and if so, what were they? Will you give us an example of one or two such instances?

My big thing as a commercial director was kind of a blessing in making this film. It was almost like I was in a training ground in making this film. Basically, in a commercial you have a very short time to convey a message. Usually that is a retail message. Usually as a commercial director you learn to make a highly impactful style, or your shot making becomes all about making the biggest impact in a short amount of time. To make it a short sound bite. I had been selling products to the masses for years, and I finally had this product I really resonated with. I already had this great idea to sell, instead of corporate products. I think the general concept of the kids acting out various points of the hero’s journey, so the idea of tying an image or an enactment with what people were saying on screen, was really in itself directly impactful on film. And that comes from commercials. And then when you see the images, they’re quite strong and impactful with an emotional resonance with them. You get an emotional impact, either up or down. That for me came from commercials.

I really consciously made an effort to edit the piece using a lot of editing methods where people ended each other’s statement, and all saying one thing about the same thing. There’s an example from the film where someone’s describing the journey from the Hero’s’ Journey, a mandala … so instead of having one person describe one point along the journey…I’m really cutting between all five of them. So it has more impact for the viewer when it has more points of view. They were describing the Hero’s Journey Circle. They started with separation, and they move into initiation, and then return back to the beginning. That’s a mandala: the vision of how that is presented.

Finding Joe – Trailer V.7 from pat solomon on Vimeo.

3. Among the many interesting and well-known figures you interviewed, including Depak Chopra, who did you find in your own estimation had the strongest sense that was closest to your point of view on myth and the spiritual in people’s lives? Do you think that these views presented are in some way non-religious statements, which is they are parallel but not the same as the Christian message? What in the religious realm, among the many denominations of the Christian faith, meet the ideas presented by myth and spirituality? Is this path, or way, at all something by which we may learn to live better lives, more fully lived lives, because of the myths Joseph Campbell notes in his writings and works?

Really, from a mythological standpoint, the work of Campbell opens up the Christian method…As it does for many religions. As you know, Campbell was a Catholic. His parents were strict Catholics. To him, when he started comparative mythology to his story to other stories, he was able to experience the Christian message in a way that the Church didn’t offer. It kind of opened up his experience of Christianity, rather than a strict dogma—it was more liberating. Once again, the stories took on a personal meaning.

4. Talk to our readers for a short time about the story of the Hero’s Journey created by Joseph Campbell, for many will not be aware of this wonderful tale that talks of human development, challenge, and even psychological awakening to the civilized world in the West?

To start with, the hero’s journey…I think that Campbell when he created it, he discovered it. It is a similar pattern found in every hero’s journey told from the beginning of time until now. That is a hero starts out (or heroine) in his her village and is somehow called to an adventure, and along the way they meet obstacles they must overcome. They gain power; they come to the ultimate battle or crisis where the treasure is owned. And they return to share the treasure. That’s an extremely simplified version. Sometimes you try to live and have a treasure and don’t enjoy it. The symbolism of the dragon in the western culture is the greedy or bad … the dragon hordes the treasure. The dragon hordes the virgin. It’s a treasure he cannot use. In the east the dragon is more vital and life affirming.

Almost all of the stories in the Bible represent a hero’s journey. Jesus went into the desert and had his trials and he came back. The Bible is full of stories like that. Campbell uses the story of Jonah. That’s a staple of Jonah that he gets into the belly of the whale. That one is getting into the deepest, darkest places of yourself…dealing with your own demons, darkness, ogres and dragons.

5. What in your own life do you think merits a comparison with some of what you offer in your film Finding Joe, and where may we see this in the film? Did you take any time away from the camera and the documentary we as audience see that you’d like to tell us about that will help an audience member better appreciate your work and the documentary itself?

Most of the things that I covered in the movie are a personal representation of my journey. For an example, there is this apotheosis that we die and are resurrected in another form. So in your life and mine we are born again and we die. I think in the Christian sense, when you are born again the old part of your way of being is killed, and you are resurrected as a different person. This happens to other people in their lives with tragedies. You get to be a different person and add something new.

6. It’s been a pleasure to get to make your acquaintance in this way. If there is something this writer has not covered that you want to add, please do so at this time.

The movie comes out in San Francisco Bay Area October 14. It’s in Los Angeles and it is doing well. It opens in Santa Barbara today. We are setting with West Coast theatres and moving East. When the movie plays it theatrical release, it will be available in DVD…same title, Finding Joe.

Informal sketch of writer Peter Menkin by Kranes, M.D. of Mill Valley, California

This film review appeared originally in Church of England Newspaper, London.

Play review: Bill Cain's new work, 'How to Write a New Book for the Bible' at Berkeley Repertory Theatre

2011-11-16T05:13:00.001-08:00

At Berkeley Rep, Tyler Pierce (left) and Linda Gehringer star in the world premiere of Bill Cain’s How to Write a New Book for the Bible. Photo: kevinberne.com

INTRODUCTION

This play, How to Write a New Book for the Bible, is good regional theatre USA. This play is well worth the price of the ticket, which for the seats held by this writer and his assistant were each $53. Good seats they were, for we were able to see and hear everything. Terrific, though pretty basic as that kind of arrangement and need in a theatre may be, it is written about here to let the reader know that this size theatre, in this venue, is such a good place for a play like Bill Cain’s new work that is in development. After all, the play is new and the manuscript, let alone the players in their role, still being formed and developed. This adds to the fun, and though some say an Opening Night isn’t the best night to come to a play, there is an excitement about Opening Night and the opportunity to see a kind of birth of work in the theatre. Let this writer add to such excitement, Hallelujah! A birth of a play by Bill Cain in the theatre is presented in Berkeley, California USA on Addison Street in San Francisco’s Bay Area.

(By the way, parking in a nearby garage was a mere $5. This is an added attraction.)

How to Write a New Book for the Bible is an intriguing title that reflects the playwright’s comment that each family creates a Biblical story, a drama, and epic, and myth, and a statement of human lives on earth as created beings of God. That isn’t something that is said so often in the theatre in so clear a manner, or so interesting a form without it being heavy handed. The play has a human touch that is while sorrowful, and amusing, also somewhat ironic and reflective. That’s a lot to pack into an ethos, but since the work is a kind of diary and the character Bill is a kind of narrator and observer (is he not a writer?), we get the journey of a life lived and the end of a woman’s life who is clearly identified as a strong woman and mother.

The theatre Berkeley Repertory is an attractive place for a play, a place to visit, and located in a safe district that has an air of a small city’s sophistication, enough of that in this neighborhood to suggest an excitement and that in this way the handsome front of the modern look of the building is a marker for a living theatre district. Berkeley Repertory Theatre has many kudos from its life of presenting work in the theatre, and this is not the place to say it has a good reputation and that this writer isn’t alone nor the first to notice the quality and even a kind of élan of this place in the University town of Berkeley, so well-known for its more liberal ideas and various political concerns. But the theatre does not follow the party line of the City, per se. One thing I like about this theatre is they are willing to publish a brochure on the play, which was handed out to the Press among others that says, “World Premiere.” In a way, this is true for How to Write a New Book for the Bible.

This is its launching place, a new work that will appear elsewhere in regional theatres in the United States in years to come. Directed by Kent Nicholson, and a co-production with Seattle Repertory Theatre where it will go after the Thrust Stage location within Berkeley Repertory run from October 7 through November 20, 2011, a postcard tells us that all one needs to do to learn more is when visiting the internet, click Berkeleyrep.org. Here is the text from the postcard, a postcard from the theatre:

POSTCARD FROM THE THEATRE

Every family creates a sacred story out of love. In Bill Cain’s poignant new play, a man moves in with his mother when she becomes too frail to care for herself. Their reunion heals old wounds, opening a heartfelt and humorous new chapter in their relationship. From the award-winning author of Equivocation and 9 Circles, this timeless tale celebrates a mother’s love and a son’s devotion. Respected director Kent Nicholson comes back to the Bay Area for the world premiere of How to Write a New Book for the Bible.

LETTER FROM THIS REVIEWER AND WRITER

Bill Cain in his new play, How to Write a New Book for the Bible talks about his mother getting old and dying, about being a son and going through the death of a parent, but mostly the work was noticeably active in a way that brought the audience to laugh out loud at the premiere of the work, performed opening night, October 12, 2011, at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. This is a play about what it means to be a family. For Jesuit Priest Bill Cain, who as theatre person has the name Bill Cain, no Father Bill or The Reverend Bill, but plain Bill, the story is one of Biblical kind. More on this later.

This writer was interested that a Jesuit Priest lived the theatrical life in the regional theatre of America, wrote successful and lauded as award winning works, and also entered the world of television writing. He said in his interview, found below, that the Jesuits go into the World to find God. I assume they also bring God to the world. By this God is meant as the Triune God and Christ in particular.

Before opening night, where this writer was part of the audience and joined in the pleasure of what some said on exiting the theatre after the night of performance that lasted 2 hours 20 minutes for two acts, a “wonderful” work, an interchange of emails with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre press officer told this truth. The Press Officer said that everyone called Bill, Bill. Apparently, this writer was the only one he’d heard refers to the Jesuit Priest as Father Bill. So I stopped doing so, recognizing the theatrical name of a playwright, and the writing name for the author of this really sensitive and beautiful work.

The manuscript sent to this Religion Writer prior to the opening night production is a lovely piece of craftsmanship, and though at the reading I did in one seating I found it more beautiful and touching than funny; the opening night audience of the just about packed theatre saw it as a funny play. Lots of laughter, enjoyment, fun and just plain real attention played to a performance that started out a bit off timing and as the evening progressed gained its feet and went so very well. This writer found the evening’s work of performance engrossing.

One thing noticed by me was that the actor Tyler Pierce playing the lead role of Bill, whose mother was in her last time of life, moving in journey to death and in pain while that transpired, as too young to be believable in the part. Also, the role of Bill wasn’t interpreted in a Priestly manner, not in a character and demeanor of authority and compassion as this writer knows Priests offer in their real presence.

Disturbing to this member of the audience as that was, it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t tracking this imaginative play with its spare and symbolic set of few pieces of set on the stage in the manner it was presented and meant to be enjoyed. The audience needed to have imagination, and they themselves, as I did, had to engage their imagination to see the different speeches, and intertwined statements and little scenes come to credibility, life and understanding in its directorial and theatrical presentation. This even by the written style and structure of the play by the playwright that skillfully intertwined various parts well. This isn’t to say the play is a radical work of structure and writing. It is not. It is to say that at Berkeley Repertory Theatre one must as audience member “get with” the point of view and kind of casting choice made to get the full impact of the style presented in the staging of the work. This member of the audience had to, anyway.

Of course, in time this play may as it is developed see other interpretations, and this creative one was intriguing when thought about in retrospect.

A word on the lighting and sound: No doubt someone gave thought to both, for both contributed well to the kind of structure of small, intermixed scenes in time and character, almost like a series of speeches and eras of memory in the life of the son Bill and his Brother—even his dead father who appears to speak in the play.

Imaginative, Yes. Engrossing, Yes. Does it work, Yes. Thank you for a skilled piece of playwright theatre Bill Cain, or if you prefer, Father Bill Cain, Jesuit Priest who lives in the world of the theatrical community. Excellent work of imagination by director Kent Nicholson, especially his staging.

One thing that bothered this Religion Writer was how irreverent the handling was of the more Holy parts, and hopefully later in a more narrative time of this review there will be more specific reference to what is meant by narrative time and Holy dialogue and invocation. Some will be noted in the Postscript with excerpts from the manuscript.

This is a Berkeley, California audience, an audience consisting of many young people and some old people, who may be less engaged or interested in the life of a Church or even this family with the son Bill who is a Priest who works as a writer and is working on a screenplay. They are not seen as particularly religious or pious, but presented more as human figures in relation to God and the end of life.

Also, the character of Bill is played as a man who is a writer before being a Priest, or as the playwright says in author’s message, as a person before being a Priest. This interesting concept is a subtext of the film, and another part of Bill Cain’s autobiographical play that he says he did not write so much as he took notes on from his own mother’s death and its events which he later transcribed from the diary he took.

Comedy? No. This is not comedy? Pathos and sadness expressed as laughter? Yes. It is a kind of post-modern interpretation and understanding of religion and the holy, especially matters of God as held in attitude and perception by most of the audience and played to with a kind of gusto by the players on the stage. It is even a kind of attempt at getting a laugh with sad, sorrowful situations of dying and coming to end of life and some analogies with the Bible as interpreted and played out in family dialogue and life.

This so much so that to an extent the language of the Bible is borrowed, or better yet, emulated in speech by the characters during part of the first act to show how human life is held in esteem by God. So I interpreted the intent of this kind of language, though Bill as Priest questioned whether God cared for man’s living or dying, or in the case of his family and their lives together–including the mother’s passions while coming towards death in her journey– as something God didn’t noticed. Strange stuff for a Priest to say, so I wondered and even thought in a critical way of the remarks.

The play is given to musing: It is Bill Cain’s play, and he is a real Roman Catholic Jesuit Priest in the real world as well as the world of the theatre, and this is what he said in his work How to Write a New Book for the Bible through his characters who offered their transitions and humanity of concern in relation to the Almighty as known in the Old and New Testaments. God is not paying attention to humans. He answers that remark later by the theme of the work, so this writer says in the Post Script.

The sets designed by Scott Bradley, and costumes by Callie Floor, with light by Alexander V. Nichols, and sound by Matt Starritt is professional. Again, there is creativity in the style and production of the staging of these elements, even to the change of costume by characters which are so necessary to the various presentations of scenes to help clarify the action and place of the scenes.

Aaron Blakely as Paul, the older brother who is a war hero and spent time in Vietnam, plays a strong and clear role in voice and reading of lines to add support and strength to the credibility of the show and its poignant caregiving. It is a juxtaposition that is rooted in a sibling relationship that in the play has as central focus the boys’ mother Linda Gehringer (Mary).

She is flexible, goes through many different moods, feelings and reactions in the telling of her life and in talking of her boys and husband and family that it is a kind of tour de force. Give Linda Gehringer a 42-gun salute. She shows well practiced and developed range as actress in her role: it is a meaty part for her…well done, and apparently enjoyed by this actress who is a central part of the play.

Leo Marks (Pete) is portrayed as a younger man, and one scene this writer found compelling was at the end of the play when Pete, Mary’s husband, greets her in heaven, creating a welcoming and expressive love. There is comfort for Mary in heaven, and even some relief from her trial the pain and cancer was to her as she lived toward death at the end of her life. The play by Bill Cain does not make her look foolish. She is a sound woman, despite her trials.

It is Tyler Pierce (Bill) who must spark the play, and be narrator and the place where the center of the work is found, not the mother. He does not look like a Priest to this member of the audience. He does not have manners or attitude in speech of a Priest, but looks not his age as it would be with an older mother, but appears the younger in year’s son who lives a kind of angst as a writer and does not hold angst of similar kind as caregiver for his mother. It was a good idea to interpret the part and play it in this manner, for after a while the consistence of performance by the actor becomes believable and engaging.

An intention of the theatre Berkeley Rep, as it is called, is to be a center for “the creation and development of new work.” Berkeley Rep has met that goal in this work.

NOTES TO THE LETTER

Berkeley Rep Dramaturge Madeleine Oldham posed some questions for the playwright, Bill Cain and reported on them in print. She asks:

Religion in contemporary America can be a fraught conversation at times. Have you encountered any pushback about drawing on the Bible in your play?

I think we all sense the religious nature of family and this play places that—as does the Bible—at the center of revelation. It’s hard to quarrel with that. One message given by the author so that we feel there is a lesson in coming to death and being companion in aiding the ailing given in the play: The Bible—it’s not a rule book. It’s the story of a family.

What do you hope people will walk away with when they see this play?

I hope they walk away with a great sense of joy, walk away carrying less fear about how life ends. My parents both gave off light as they died, and they found a way to make their deaths a summation of the goodness they had received and given for their whole lives. The play is very funny. And I think the reason for that is my parents understood that death does not negate life, but it’s one of the things in life. I hope the play works as a celebration of all of the darkness and light and not just some of it.

Do you write in other formats? What attracts you to writing for the stage?

I wrote for television for many years and loved doing that. Nothing Sacred for ABC-TV was one of the great experiences of my life. It won the Peabody Award and the Writer’s Guild Award with a bunch of others. We didn’t last long—one season—but, while we lasted, we created a national community and it was an extraordinary experience.
I don’t find much difference between stage and television. I love them both for the same reasons—gathering a community around a story—with any luck, with some laughter—always widening the circle of inclusion. I love theatre for its intimacy and television for its vast reach.

In her review appearing in The San Jose Mercury News, Karen D’Souza writes on October 13, 2011, In its world premiere at Berkeley Rep, “Bible” is a valediction inviting mourning, a tenderly crafted if not fully realized memoir about the holy trinity of Cain’s personal life. While the mother, father and brother characters come into sharper focus than the figure of the writer himself, Cain has still created a profound meditation on the shared narratives that hold a family together through the vagaries of life and death.
The intimacy of his remembrance gives this memory play its shattering resonance. The playwright is giving a blessing to his family in the form of theater, and there’s no denying the beauty of that ritual.

The Marin Theatre Company, another regional theatre in the San Francisco Bay Area, says this about writer Bill Cain. A quote about working with Bill Cain from their artistic director Jasson Minadakis:
“Bill has an amazingly inquisitive view of the world, as one would expect from a Jesuit priest. And we’re lucky that he has focused his questions through theater. His plays are vehicles for artists and audiences to explore the nature of truth, joy, pain, triumph and loss. As a storyteller, he examines big themes and big moments from history (both social and religious) and they are focused in by the priest in him that wants us to find our own truth and connection to the challenges, questions posed and answers found by his characters. When you experience one of his plays, you feel larger when you leave. He has the gift very few writers can claim, his work makes you richer and larger for having experienced it.”
For those readers who find this letter-to-a-reader as-review too long, suffice it to say, I like the play; it is good; go.

POSTSCRIPT THAT QUOTES FROM THE PLAY MANUSCRIPT

The notes that follow indicate that the quote from the manuscript in version August, 2011, reproduced with permission of the author, was noticeably fulfilled opening night. The big crowd—for most seats were taken—were greeted with the empty stage at play’s beginning. This spare set: of lamp (hung from the ceiling on a wire at table height above the stage floor), table with coffee cup (white), simple straight back dark wooden chair, and in the background a large stained glass marked at ceiling height by chandelier’s (3), some black & silver mobiles, created the set. This filled the author’s request, “no realistic set, please.”

At the beginning of the play, the author establishes the character of protagonist Bill in a monologue. It starts off a relationship Bill has with his father, mother and siblings in a manner that tells us something personal and private about this man who has come to live with his mother who is coming to the end of her life. Note he’s also been with his father when he was dying.

It is here that the play enters into a dialogue with the audience, a kind of narrative that in its imaginative structure and presentation engages the audience with its sorrow, humor, and even private look into the lives of this family as seen by the Priest who is a writer. This is a play about a graceful death.

Note this writer of the review has permission to quote from the play, but not to copy it or reprint it here. So that is enough to introduce the work, and give the reader of this review a sense of the working manuscript. The working manuscript, like the play itself that is a work brought to life on the stage, may be changing. That said earlier in this review formed as letter to the reader; suffice it to say in this post script that there are many lines that seem telling of the characters. Bill says at one point, “I had committed much too deeply to my own unhappiness.” Though it is in reading in manuscript form a moving thing, even contemplative and self-revealing to read, the audience on opening night thought it funny enough as a line to laugh.

This writer noted that the character of Bill was portrayed by the actor as Priest who reads lines like comedy.

Having the opportunity to read some of the reviews that were published prior to this article-review, one reviewer said the use of morphine, fed to Bill’s mother for pain, mixed with applesauce, was offered as a sacrament. There is no doubt that the character of Linda suffers from extraordinary pain, and if one believes pain a sacrament or its relief, they are missing a number of moving and more human like sacramental moments like those revealed and played at the moving ending of this work. There humanity is seen in a quest for comfort and rest, for the trial of Linda ends in such. That is a kind of sacrament to this writer. God is comforter as Holy Spirit, and Heaven is a place of joy and rest from labor of living. I think the medical side of the play is palliative rather than sacramental.

But the theme that is important to the play, and noted by its title, “How to Write a New Book for the Bible,” is revealed and made plain in this short speech by Bill who shows us that each of us as a part of humanity are important to God, that our lives as recognized and loved by the almighty are really part of a great Christian dialogue of Christ as part of the Trinity and our own mortal time on earth. To end the post script and this writer’s ode as almost sermon to the writer’s intent as seen by an audience member, this quotation from the play’s manuscript:

ADDENDUM

Playwright Bill Cain

1. It must be exciting to begin a new work as a playwright, developing its script and creating in so collaborative a way as theatre collaborates, especially in the Regional Theater like Berkeley Repertory where many plays have seen similar dramatic action. Will you speak to us a little bit about how and why you came to Berkeley Repertory Theatre for this play of yours, “How to Write a New Book for the Bible,” and why Berkeley?

The people at Berkeley Rep saw a workshop we did of the play at Theatre Works in Palo Alto, [California]. And Berkeley Rep was kind enough to invite us to work here. There have been three places in the Bay Area that have been very kind to me: Marin Theatre Company, Theatre Works, and Berkeley Rep. So I’m very grateful to the Bay Area. I think the community has been very receptive to my work.

2. As a Jesuit Priest in the Roman Catholic Church, your experience in living a life of Religious Order must be in some ways significantly aware of what it is to live in theater community. Speak with us some about the community of the theater, in specific that which you know well, and that is Regional Theater around the United States? Is there something special, even specially and distinctly religious or spiritual about the life and world of the theater person? This whether playwright, actor, or director—especially in light of your own profession of playwright-Priest and its vantage.

I’m a Jesuit priest, and Jesuits were founded not so much to find God in a church or monastery, but to find God in the world – specifically to find God in all things. And it’s at that point where a religious vocation and a theatrical vocation blend perfectly. The regional theatres of this country spend their time and energy trying to discover the soul of modern America. It’s a kind of secular sanctity. And it’s an honor to be invited to work in that setting.

3. The Premiere, let alone the rehearsal period of a new play must be exciting for the playwright to see as their “child” goes free and has a kind of life of its own. When reading about your teaching work on the internet, I see that you have interest in the role of the actor. How does this play excite an actor as a part, and as in the past, do you pull out many dramatic stops in the structure and dramatic form of the play? What parts of this play shall we as playgoers look for when coming to see, “How to Write a New Book for the Bible?”… Especially in the work of the actor or actors.

I think that what we seek when we go to the theatre is the freedom the actor achieves on stage. I think we are freed by seeing an actor courageously reach for the limits of his or her humanity. This inspires us and sets the bar for our lives when we leave the theatre. My new play, How to Write a New Book for the Bible, is about my parents, about their lives and their deaths. They lived passionately, and they died with grace. The actors in our cast are reaching for their limits. They’re confronting their passion for life, the conflicts of family, and the limits of death… reaching for something beyond. It’s an extraordinary cast, doing extraordinary work.

4. May we return to the subject of the theatre world and living the theatrical life? One reason for my strong interest is your profession as Priest and playwright, with emphasis on Priest. Talk to us a little about the sacramental nature of a dramatic work, and how it as art engages a theatre goer, and what you as a writer see as some of the effective dramatic scenes and methods you have found in your own work? This especially in your professional viewpoint in looking over your plays. But almost as importantly, what of this and the artistic form and such has caught the imagination and the involvement of play goers to your own plays? Will you give us one example or more?

I think the theatrical act of stepping on a stage is in and of itself a religious activity. Since How to Write a New Book for the Bible is autobiographical, one of the characters is a priest – and he says that the essence of writing is pointing. Saying, “Look there, look at that thing set apart. That’s holy. God cares about that.” So whether it’s Arthur Miller saying about Willy Loman, “Attention must be paid,” or Tennessee Williams pointing to Blanche Dubois as she discovers “Sometimes – there’s God – so quickly.” The theatrical act is always an act that makes the spiritual visible. The nature of a sacrament, the essence of a sacrament, is to make the invisible visible. In the Christian religion, bread and wine evoke the body of God. In theatre, it is the actors’ bodies that evoke the soul of humanity.

5. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time during this busy period when you are preparing in rehearsal for the Premiere of work (October 12, 2011) and playing from October 7 to November 30, 2011. Are you looking forward to going to Seattle, Washington afterward for another run of performance? Also if I have missed asking you something, tell us about it now.

Theatre is no longer the possession of a single city. When you enter theatre now, you become part of a national community. It’s an extraordinary thing in an age of individualism to be welcomed into this community. At the moment, I am lucky enough to have plays in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and soon in Seattle and Washington, D.C. It’s such an honor to have homes in these cities.

Interview: American northwest poet Luci Shaw

2011-11-15T17:43:00.001-08:00

American poet Luci Shaw talks of living more years
and her poetry
by Peter Menkin

Here is the interview done with American poet Luci Shaw, of Washington State in the Northwest. This is another in a series of interviews with Anglican and American poets. (Luci Shaw is an Anglican—attends Episcopal Church in her Washington State.)

She decided to respond to questions by writing answers, and this interview reflects her request so that she could email her answers. She did so and the answers were received October 1, 2011. At 83 years old, with 30 books to her credit, she’s finished another work that she hopes to see published about what it means to get to be older in years. This writer asked her a little about the subject of her book proposal, and herewith the interview.

1. In your poem, “Mary Considers Her Situation,” there is a simplicity and at the same time reality to your statement about her as Mother of God. One question that so many poets are asked is what is their muse that brings them to write about a certain subject? That is my first question, but more, what is there about Mary as a figure in the story that captures the eye of your imagination? Will you share something of this vision and faith with us?

I find in Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her willing involvement in the drama of Incarnation, an almost infinite world of possibility for reflection and poetry. My collection, Accompanied by Angels, includes many poems about this ordinary, extraordinary young woman. She can be viewed from so many different angles.

I have always seen her as a model, to both women and men, of active participation in the work of God no matter how tricky or risky it appears to be. She said Yes to being pregnant with God by the Holy Ghost, well knowing what that might do to her reputation as an unwed mother. She considered the call of God on her to be paramount.

She is also an example to all of us who wish to know new birth and growth in our own lives. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, particularly in Eugene Peterson’s translation, I read:
“All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us. It’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We are also feeling
the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting.”

So, Mary is our example of fruitfulness. She also shows us what active submission of the finite to the Infinite looks like in an ordinary human being. She herself incarnates that obedience in a way the whole of Christendom remembers, if we reference all the religious art that features her through history.

In my poem, “Mary Considers Her Situation” (which will be featured in The Christian Century during Advent, 2011) I tried to be Mary, to get into her experience first-hand, to feel what this shocking event would evoke for her emotionally. I used the simple language of an untrained teenage girl. And her first thought, “What will I say to my mother?” echoes what an adolescent today would ask herself before the amazement of the moment overwhelms her. And then, the reality. She will be “split” both physically, in birth, and split from the rest of humanity by her unique role.

2. When I get in a conversation about getting older, and I am coming to my 65^th birthday in October 2011, I try to admit to them and myself that this is a new stage in my life. But most people with whom I speak talk about aging and getting older as something to avoid, and their response is always, You are not so old. If I speak of someone in their 80s, this same kind of person says, They are not so old. I wonder what they will say if asked about someone in their 90s. My question for you because your latest book proposal is on getting into the later years of life, and you yourself are 83, what are a few of your thoughts and even poetic imaginings about aging? Is it such a fearful thing that so many of us must deny that getting old is even old at all?

Getting older is so universal, so inevitable, so impossible to avoid unless you die young, that it is surprising to me that so many are in denial about it. The common view of aging is that it is a state of weakness, pain, passivity and immobility in which meaningful life has ceased to exist. The book I have just written is a demonstration that the opposite is possible. That spiritual and emotional growth and insight can happen. That the accumulated wisdom of a life-time becomes available for younger generations as the “senior citizen” continues to engage in the community.
Undoubtedly getting older has its downsides. Energy declines, bodily infirmities appear and multiply, memory may weaken, but the essential spirit of creativity and joy can still survive and flourish. My strategy is to stay aware of the wider world through reading, films, music, and the company of kindred spirits of any age. Most of my closest friends are decades younger than I am, but our age is not the focus of conversation, or our common ground, and even the issues on which we differ make for lively intercourse. Disagreements can be enlightening and widen the view!

3. As someone who has lived in the great Northwest of the United States, Washington State, speak about some of the things that you like about the area where you live? Tell us how long you have lived there, and how you feel about being someone who lives and works in their own home? Do you find where you live a place of nurture and support as a poet?

John and I have lived in the Pacific Northwest, just south of the Canadian Border, for about fifteen years. Bellingham is not a large city, but being a college town with a great independent bookstore and a flourishing Episcopal Church has made it a place of satisfaction and fulfillment for us. We love sailing, tent-camping, gardening. I love the opportunities for photography in this town on the shore of Puget Sound with its islands and pebbled shores. Within an hour’s drive is Mt. Baker, snow-capped year-round, and Washington’s Cascade Range as well as the Coastal Range of British Columbia. In contrast to California where we lived for eight years, the landscape here is green and the soil rich. We have lots of rain (the reason for all the green!) and rain forests, but moderate temperatures both summer and winter.

When we moved here we built a home on the edge of a ravine flanked by tall cedars and ferns, and my study opens on a flowing stream. I like to say that I write best to the sound of running water! I love having my writing space at home, with all my books, my walls ornamented with winged creatures—angels, icons, engraving of birds (by Barry Moser), and one gryphon.

This town teems with artists of every kind. I have lots of poet and writer friends, and a local poetry group which meets sporadically. The bookstore has a Literature Live program that allows me to do public readings. Some of my writer colleagues live elsewhere but we stay in touch on the internet.

4. Sometimes we think that poetry about rhymes, and I notice that your work is not a work of rhyming for the sake of rhythm, but is a work that, nonetheless, sings to the reader. Is there something in the Bible that inspires your work, or brings to mind the poetic sensibilities that you bring out in the way of language in your own writing? What in the New or Old Testament sings for you? If you were to give some advice to young people of what to look for in developing their own work as a poet, even those in high school, what would you say in brief to them?

The poems I write seem to choose their own style, either formal or free. I find the iambic meter the most natural, echoing the human heart beat. Usually a phrase will arrive, from God knows where (literally) and I make a note of it and see where it is leading, or how it might develop. Words and phrases also jump out at me from the printed page of whatever I’m reading and demand to be used.
That is the art—the awareness of a possibility. The craft comes in the shaping of the idea or image, with its own rhymes, and assonances, and rhythms. I read new poems aloud, to test for line breaks and stanza breaks, but also for music and accessibility. My poetry is usually not “difficult,” though it may be dense and take several readings to unpack. (By the way, I haven’t written 30 books of poetry; rather 30 books in different forms, though never fiction.)

I have gifted poet friends with whom I workshop on line and in person, who read and critique my new poetry before I submit it for publication in a literary journal, or publish a new collection. I do the same for them. Several sets of skilled eyes and ears are an amazing help in perfecting a poem.

My advice for young poets? Avoid “poetic language” and dreamy generalizations. Paint a picture with vivid details for your reader. Let verbs and nouns do most of the work, using modifiers sparsely. Work for both inevitability and surprise in your writing. Read the work aloud to test it. Read lots of good poetry by others so that language and angles of insight get into your bones. Buy books of poetry to sustain the industry.

5. Talk to us a little bit about what appears to be an autobiographical work, “Leaf, Fallen?” What do you look for it to evoke in a reader, and what is it about the shortness of life you saw that resonates so that came to your mind in your own later years; and do you sometimes meditate on the many years passed and the years to come—even the end? I know this is a tough question, and to ask a poet to speak in an essay or expository manner seems almost a waste of time. But you are an essayist who has 30 books of poetry to her credit. Will you also tell us about your essay and expository writing, and how a poet comes to her subjects, those you’ve published? I am also fascinated to know more about your book proposal now at your agent’s about being in one’s senior years. This question seems a question of reflection and even a kind of savvy wisdom we expect of our elders—with hope. Yes, I do ask three part questions. So if you like, take each individually if you don’t find them related enough in their theme to make a fourth response.

I wrote the poem “Leaf, Falling,” as a recollection of my mother, who lived to be 99 ¾. As I get older myself, I’ve developed more of a fellow-feeling with her and a greater sympathy than in my youth. My brother and I were born, her only children, in her late forties, and she lived her life through us, a kind of proxy existence. She was a devout Christian, but legalistic to the point that our youthful explorations in faith and relationships and activities shocked and angered her. Her love was demanding enough to be crippling, and she was prone to depression, which colored our relationship negatively. My father was a totally different personality, bold, loving, risk-taking, a lover of art and poetry, and I carry his genes!

The poem uses the imagery of a leaf in Fall, because of its color, fragility and inevitably limited life span. My mother lived in Canada and I would travel from the States to the nursing home where she lived the last 30 years of her life. From age 70 on she would warn me of her imminent decease every visit, though she outlasted all her siblings and in-laws.

A lover of green in any form, I’m also a lover of leaves in any season, as well as the glorious skeletons of bare branches. Most of my books reflect this trend!

From Luci Shaw's webpage
If you were to pick three of your books of poetry, or if you prefer, name three of your own poems you liked a lot—what comes to mind now is okay—tell us something about them. In a more cleverly put way, talk to us about the mystery of the poem that you find of your own making and why this offers a sense of mystery when speaking to you? Hopefully, this will help your reader gain insight into your poetry, and poetry in general.

My most recent book of poems, Harvesting Fog, came about when I read a factoid in The National Geographic—that residents of Lima, Peru, get very little rain but are surrounded by a constant, clammy fog. To get more water, these clever people hang nets outside on which the fog and dew condenses. They can wring out these nets to augment their supplies.

It struck me that this technique is similar to the way a poet develops poetry. An idea or image is waiting in the air to be snagged and collected and aggregated with others, that the poet collects and drinks from in order to send a trickle into a world thirsty for beauty and meaning. This depends, of course, on a connection with the transcendent, an awareness of “things unseen” from the hand of God, who as a Creator created us to create. A friend once remarked to me: “Your gift is your spiritual discipline.” Thus using one’s gift to write or employ one’s craft is a way of saying thank you to God.

The Trend
for MKM

An autumn-colored sky like
the color of my friend Mary’s
hair. Like the just-turning-to-flame

leaves on the vine maple
we planted only last year,
a gift surprising as

a birthday cake even though
it’s expected. The mangoes in
the wooden bowl on the table

matches a color that flashes
from the bird’s brilliant head
at the bird feeder. Even

the bright mesh of the ratty
pot-scrubber in my hand
is glory leaking through.

Luci Shaw
9/30/11

Poet Luci Shaw discusses her book, “The Crime of Living Cautiously”

The Luci Shaw Fellowship

The Luci Shaw Fellowship from Image Journal on Vimeo.
The purpose of the Luci Shaw Fellowship is to expose a promising undergraduate student to the world of literary publishing and the nonprofit arts organization, and to introduce fellows to the contemporary dialogue about art and faith that surrounds Image, its programs, its contributors, and its peer organizations.

ADDENDUM

Christian Century poems

Getting it right

Sep 14, 2011 by Luci Shaw

Jesus might have died
a dozen times before he died.
An incidental death—tetanus
from a nail, a splinter.
A baptismal drowning.
A drink from a tainted well.
Rotten fish.
Desert thirst.
A stoning, a sudden
push over the edge,
or a falling overboard in a storm.
A choking by a demon on the loose,
a bar room brawl
at the local pub.
So when it happened, it seemed
like someone
got it right. Right time,
right reason,
for God to let it
happen.

Poetry

States of being

Mar 23, 2011 by Luci Shaw

Stability is greatly
overrated.
Why would I ever want to sit
still and smug as a rock,
confident, because of my great
weight, that I will not
be moved?
Better to be soft as water,
easily troubled, with
at least three modes
of being, able to shape-
shift, to mirror, to cleanse,
to drift downstream,
To roar when I encounter
the rock.

Poetry

The green shiver

Apr 25, 2011 by Luci Shaw

The forest floor bleak, choked
with old leaves, winter wet. Against
the evidence, buds on the wild dogwoods
glisten, listen for a signal, lining up
for bloom-time—when to burst and who’ll
be first? Every year, it’s all according
to weather, the wait for the heat-throb,
wind fresh through the naked
birch trunks longing to get green.
The pressure’s on, like listening for a
starter pistol, finger on the trigger.
Spring is wound tight enough to let go
any minute. Overarching the ravine,
the cedars start their annual scatter of yellow
sexual dust for the next generation.
The clematis resists her tedium of cold and brown,
cancels her winter sleep with a vertical thrust
up the trellis, like a slow shooting star.
How can we help but hope, sprouts
urged to fulfill a kind of promise—
a covenant with the world that in unfolding,
leaf tips flaring up and out, woody hearts pregnant
with bloom and blessing, we will drink rain, light,
heat for our emerald living. We face the sun
full on—its lavish encouragement for cold to lift,
shift, and move away. Holding on, ready for
that shiver, a sliver of thrill like a jade thread
through a labyrinth, when within us
something fresh and green explodes.

Emmaus road remembered

My camera’s eye waits to catch and hold

small chronicles of glint and shape and shine.

The subtle shadings in its blunt black

box all hold their breath until

a kind of resurrection happens on a screen

as esoteric magic translates them into sharp details

to see again, and show to friends.

Trust needs to know that sounds and sights

and words imprinted later, tell truth

about that couple, part of a holy triad

walking, listening, stopping for evening hunger–

did they get it right when they remembered?

Was he a phantom of their grief?

After the sudden vanishing did they

play with the crumbs, wondering?

How carefully did they gather those husks,

memorials of loaf and life and

resurrected bread? And can we learn from them

how to feast on mystery, taking a loaf

from the outstretched hand of the Unseen?

Luci Shaw

8-1-11

Psalm for the January Thaw Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops
that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from
the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage,
including the soggy gray mess on the deck
like an abandoned mattress that has
lost its inner spring. For the gurgle
of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when I
step off the porch. For slush. For the glisten
on the sidewalk that only wets the foot sole
and doesn’t send me slithering. Everything
is alert to this melting, the slow flow of it,
the declaration of intent, the liquidation.Glory be to God for changes. For bulbs
breaking the darkness with their green beaks.
For moles and moths and velvet green moss
waiting to fill the driveway cracks. For the way
the sun pierces the window minutes earlier each day.
For earthquakes and tectonic plates-earth’s bump
and grind-and new mountains pushing up
like teeth in a one-year-old. For melodrama—
lightning on the sky stage, and the burst of applause
that follows. Praise him for day and night, and light
switches by the door. For seasons, for cycles
and bicycles, for whales and waterspouts,
for watersheds and waterfalls and waking
and the letter W, for the waxing and waning
of weather so that we never get complacent. For all
the world, and for the way it twirls on its axis
like an exotic dancer. For the north pole and the
south pole and the equator and everything between.

Peace on earthIn the tops of the cedars
ten crows are quarreling.
They do not believe in
conflict resolution. Now
they are flying off, glaring
at each other. Nothing
has been settled.

Soft Rock

You need only to live near mountains

to feel in your bones what age looks like. Take

the sandstone cliffs along our Northwest shore:

looking out over pebbled beaches glinting

with sea glass, their faces staring down the ocean,

never as pacific as it sounds. These bluffs

have offered themselves without rest to

the winds, the waters—rising, falling fifteen feet—

the extraordinary tides, rips that tear

water from water, that scour the shores.

This windless day, I am joined with

the low shelf I am sitting on. Warm

from noon sun, it’s pitted into stone lace

by particles whirled by wind for a million years

in the rocks’ shallow wounds. Any small grit

will do, grinding at the stone face, digging deeper,

carving empty eye sockets.

Lines of barnacles like white dried flowers

grow at the waterline, footnotes

to weather’s virtuosity.

No one is watching.

Surreptitiously I lean left, touch,

test with my tongue the etched boulder

by my elbow, and taste the sharp salt of storms.

In that brief kiss I think I even sample

the ochre-gray tint of sands that once

laid down their duned lives

to become these rocks of ages.

Luci Shaw

8-5-11

shawbiz@aol.com

Sparrow

This undistinguished, indistinguishable bird–

this prototype of insignificance —

this very moment’s sparrow at

our porch feeder—makes of his compactness

a virtue. From between the wires he pecks

the black sunflower seeds, neat head bobbing,

purposeful, economical, precise.

Watchful—peck and peek, peck and check.

I have seen scarlet tanagers, purple finches,

grosbeaks, red-footed gulls, even the arrogant

displays of peacocks. In his anonymity,

this small bird is who he is, his suit

brown-grey as damp dust, eyes bright beads.

This simple-ness, this pure unselfconsciousness,

this understated…this…Oh, the adjectives multiply,

but they are too large for this small one,

who humbles my own mud-brown heart.

Sometimes in my timidity I overcompensate

and try to sound large until I know such falsehood

is a betrayal.

He poises his nimble self to flick away, quick

as scissors—a cat, a squirrel,

my movement at the glass door.

I tilt my head for a better angle, and he’s gone,

off to his green barracks, hidden in the cedar branches

until, a minute later, his next feeder foray.

LS 8-5-11

Review: 'The Shunning,' DVD written Beverly Lewis

2011-10-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

Review: 'Beverly Lewis, The Shunning'...a DVD
by Peter Menkin

Beverly Lewis, successful Christian author
of best selling books

The DVD Releases website, found here, says of the movie: Katie Lapp (Danielle Panabaker) has always struggled with the rules that define her sheltered Amish community, but when a wealthy outsider (Sherry Stringfield) begins asking questions about her family, Katie begins to wonder about her origins. What connection does this woman have to her life…and how will the unraveling secrets challenge Katie’s faith? Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning is a powerful, personal journey of discovery based on the famous novel by the New York Times bestselling author.

Variety posts this lineup, in part: Filmed in North Carolina by Believe Pictures and Lightworks Pictures. Executive producers, Brian Bird, Michael Landon Jr., Maura Dunbar; co-executive producer, Cindy Bond; producers, Mitchell Galin, Carey Nelson Burch; director, Michael Landon Jr.; writer, Chris Easterly…

In this heartfelt and even riveting DVD, Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning, this writer found it a pretty movie with vistas of the Amish country and community located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Written by The New York Times bestselling author and popular writer of Christian books, Beverly Lewis, this tale of a sorry 20 year old woman’s need to leave her family, friends, but mostly Amish religious community can’t help in its drama and story to move the movie viewer. The DVD runs 88 minutes and is from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment .

DVD released to public
September 13, 2011

Director of Photography: Christo Bakalov shot pretty and scenic footage of the Amish community, and in his restrained way let the actors play their parts without a lot of fast cuts and special cinematography of effects and methods. This made for a statement of plainness and prettiness (in the better sense) contributing in picture and color to the genuine simplicity and affection of the scenes and thespian portrayal of emotion. This is not so easy to be simple and restrained, yet effective, with a film camera.

The review itself starts here:

This writer suspended his judgments to become engaged in the unfolding tale of a tragic journey where the protagonist Katie Lapp, so well and believably played with lovely appeal by Danielle Panabaker must go into the world. Could she not work out and find herself in her community, too? Must she have left her religious community and enter our contemporary society? I wondered, how she must have been shocked on leaving the religious life, a life in which she grew up, was rooted, and deeply involved with in every aspect of living.

As a Benedictine Oblate, I felt a sense of great loss for her and her religious community. Nonetheless, as a DVD portraying so well through the direction of Michael Landon, Jr. the Amish community, its people’s lives, and their relationships, there is the key question of faith. Was her faith failing before the revelation of being an adopted child? Was it the appearance of her birth mother, Laura (Sherry Stringfield), that upset her so much? Did her failures and sins in behavior demonstrate a woman failing in her faith and religious practice, as the community understood her role and behavior to be required? These big questions of living are well wrought in love and even compassion, but a kind of toughness of character that speaks of how ones sins without contrition, confession, and amendment of ways can lead to evil and ill situations. But then you as a viewer may think she did the right thing, leaving her community because she was shunned for her actions and failures in faith and behavior. You as a viewer will be entertained by this DVD Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning. You will be engaged, and moved, and likely not able to avoid the emotion of the story and excellent acting by the cast, especially the role of the young woman’s mother, actress Sandra Van Natta.

This is a review of high praise, for it is the kind of movie this writer enjoys, and though some may say this is a woman’s film, it is certainly a Christian movie—a faith movie about an American religious community that can be called a kind of utopia.

Her sins: She likes to play a guitar, and plays forbidden music. Writer Beverly Lewis when talking with me spoke of her sympathies for the young woman, and though did not overtly declare she (Beverly Lewis) was happy she left the religious community, that message was clear. Miss Lewis spoke of having known Amish who did the same, and Miss Lewis indicated she thought them justified and right in doing so. Apparently, to Beverly Lewis, Shunning is a terrible thing the Amish do to those who are falling outside their acceptable participation in the community’s religious life, as judged by The Bishop and community.

Let me note that this is a movie that is a heart breaker. A compassionate and kind old woman who is a widow listens to the young Katie tell her stories. This is a sympathetic scene, repeated in its exploration of motivation and loves a number of times, and so genuine and touching in its actress’ work showing relationship and Christian character. Actress Nancy Saunders is wonderful and so warm, patient in her ethos of not quite being a mother, but more as a special friend of grandmotherly years to the young woman. A young woman who in one scene had just abandoned her betrothed at the altar—he a Bishop, too. Her confessor as well. Burgess Jenkins plays the role of a somewhat reserved and a little stiff character with dignity and respect. He is believable as the older widower seeking the young bride who can help with house and children.

A man who led the religious community as both spiritual leader and man who must make life decisions as a wise man in the Amish religious community. This writer will tell you, he must judge her behavior and sin. But enough said about this series of responsibilities of his and the terrible decision he makes for the woman who abandoned him at the altar. The movie is played and directed with a light touch to help bring the viewer along with the serious themes and situations shown.

For me, this movie was spellbinding at times. But it is my kind of movie. I love love stories, even this kind where love seems lost, is sought through trauma, and the need to find oneself as a young person leads to abandonment of one’s previous life. Let me ask another question: Is all that change and conflict, transformation of life and seeking really motivated in all its parts by love and not sin? Good question, this writer thinks.

There is sorrow. What is Christian life without sorrow?

Author Beverly Lewis spends some time and the DVD plays it well regarding the development of the young Katie Lapp, who is boy crazy over one young man Daniel (David Topp), earlier in her life. She cannot forget him when it comes to her decision not to marry The Bishop. It is because of his sin in tempting her to play the illegal music, which he teaches her, and also because he dies young, that she cannot forget him. Again, is this a bonding in love, or might we say they were both by their behavior bad and rebelling against the community, if not engaged in sin which he was seducing her to practice? The sin of denying her religion and faith, the sin of secret meetings, the sin even of seduction that never happens but young love that seems so real that the viewer must ask, was it, is it—it appeared genuine love between the two.

There is no doubt she has questions without answers that lead to doubt. She has difficulties with religious obedience, the cultural and familial practices of respect—especially for her father. This is no feminist film, by the way. But the Amish life is not the secular world of the 21st century that is the hallmarked world of outside living in today’s American society in town. There is no doubt, she sins and her faith is tested. It is found short, and she has no desire to go on with “the life” in religious community, let alone her family life where she was raised with love and care. Finding out she was adopted proves too much for her. It is more than shock, perhaps it is the action that leads to her critical need to leave her family and community.

The theme of the adoption, the birth mother, and the mystery surrounding this suddenly discovered truth is a fascinating issue of family and relational kind investigated by the DVD movie. That alone is worth the price of admission, and some may find they cry when watching the former television show from the Hallmark channel.

This well ordered life of the Amish, lived in God’s view, holds in this story version–DVD released September 12, 2011—plays in the show throughout its length so much intimate conversation. Before leaving, as an example of some of the wisdom and intimacy of conversation, she goes to find in the world something of living life—answers she seeks. She is told by the old wise woman that she will find what she has here (in the Amish Community) what she lives out there. The old woman doesn’t chide the young woman, or say, but you will be missing the Amish Christian life and way.

There is Christian hope, and this viewer wishes her such hope in her life. This remains, even in conflict and transformation, in character and tragedy relationship in the light of God in Christ. This couldn’t be better. You will enjoy this movie, and be moved to the heart by the film, Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning.

Beverly Lewis Library Presentation

Beverly Lewis at the Pikes Peak Library District Mountain of Authors 2009 event

TALKING ABOUT BEVERLY LEWIS’ THE SHUNNING, a DVD appearing in stores September 13, 2011. Miss Lewis tells us about her work on the story, a riveting and heartfelt, moving show that appeared on the Hallmark Channel in 2011.

Some biographical notes on Beverly Lewis: Favorite Verse:(NIV) Matthew 5:16 – “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

All her life she has longed for the forbidden things, but will her dreams come at a price too dear to pay? Why would Katie Lapp’s mother, a plain and simple Amish woman who embraces the Old Ways, hide a beautiful satin baby dress in the attic? The staggering answer comes on the eve of Katie’s wedding to widower Bishop John, throwing her life–present and future–into confusion.

Winner of the Gold Book Award (500,000 copies sold)
Winner of the ECPA Platinum Award (1 million sold)

From Christianbook description of the movie edition that sells for $9.99

Beverly Lewis has written over 100 books for children, youth, and adults, many of which have appeared on bestseller lists, including USA Today and The New York Times. The Brethren won a 2007 Christy Award for excellence in Christian fiction. Beverly and her husband, David, live in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Beverly Lewis’ series include Seasons of Grace Series, The Courtship of Nellie Fisher Series, The Annie’s People Series, Abram’s Daughters Series, The Heritage of Lancaster County, several “stand-alone” novels, and her newest adult series, Rose Trilogy. Her children’s series include Holly’s Heart Series, SummerHill Secrets Vols. 1 & 2, Girls Only! Series, and the highly acclaimed, Cul-de-Sac Kids Series.

Barnes and Noble says this about the author: Beverly Lewis, raised in Pennsylvania Amish country, is a former schoolteacher and accomplished musician, and an award-winning author of more than eighty books for adults and children, many of which have appeared on bestseller lists, including USA Today and the New York Times. Six of her blockbuster novels have received the Gold Book Award for sales over 500,000, and The Brethren won a 2007 Christy Award for excellence in Christian Fiction. Beverly and her husband, David, live in Colorado, where they enjoy hiking, biking, and making music, and spending time with their three grandchildren.

About the book (comment by one reader named Anonymous), found here on Barnes and Noble:

Simple & Sweet

The Shunning is the story of a young Amish girl and her struggle between her faith in the established rules of her people versus the desires of her heart. I chose this book because I was interested in learning about Amish customs and the strain they put on developing Amish children. The story, written in third person, tells the story of Katie Lapp, a girl who is not satisfied with her Amish life. She feels like there is something missing. At first Katie believes that she is not satisfied because being Amish does not allow her to experience the technology and the beauty of a normal life. She longs for pretty dresses and a life where she is free to sing all kinds of music. As the story progresses, questions arise when Katie finds a satin, infant gown in her attic with the name Katherine Mayfield sown on it. As Katie begins her quest to find out who she really is she discovers that what is missing in her heart is not an easier or a prettier way of life, it is Jesus Christ. On the day of Katie’s wedding to Bishop John, Katie has mixed emotions. Unable to go through with it, she runs away leaving the Bishop at the altar. Furious, the Bishop rules that Katie must confess her sins in front of the community or be shunned from it. Unable to bring herself to apologize for something she does not feel sorry for, Katie is shunned. The first 6 weeks of the shunning entail a period where she is to have no communication with anyone in the village. The period is supposed to initiate a confession from her or she would face being banned and sent away from Hickory Hollow forever. The six weeks prove to be a trying time for Katie Lapp. Without her friends and family she feels completely alone. She often finds herself thinking about the boy she loved who drowned in a storm, while on his boat. Daniel Fisher had shown her a different way, a better way. She remembers the days they used to spend their afternoons together making music on his guitar. Though she had never truly understood what Dan was talking about, his words become clearer and clearer to her each day. She comes to realize that being Christian is not about following man made rules it is about accepting Jesus as your savior. The climax of the story comes when Katie must decide between the outside world and the world she’s always called home. The plot of this story takes place in a small community called Hickory Hollow in Pennsylvania. The writer uses a rural dialect, which is very simplistic in order to mirror the Amish lifestyle. The book is a simple, but sweet targeting primarily a female audience. Though the story turned out to be quite predictable, I enjoyed it because it not only showed me a life different from my own, it showed me that sometimes you have to question your belief system in order to change it.

The DVD can be ordered through Barnes and Noble here

Other movies on DVD by the director Michael Landon, Jr. are here.

Director Michael Landon, Jr. with camera

INTERVIEW

The author Beverly Lewis talks with this writer by phone from her home Small office overlooking Pike’s Peak in Colorado. At 11:10 a.m. in that morning, this writer spoke with her using questions sent in advance from his home office north of San Francisco with hopes she would have plenty of time. Not so, as the next day Beverly Lewis was to begin a book tour September 7, 2011. Many answers were given in writing by author Beverly Lewis.

1.1. For some time you have been a successful writer of fiction. Your upcoming DVD, “Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning,” is part of the article-interview where this series of questions with your answers will appear. The first thing this writer noticed was that you are an industry unto yourself. That is, most of the material on the web that is more easily found points to success, your Christian faith, and how many books you’ve sold. Some consists of heartfelt comments by readers, genuine in their sense of being moved by your books about the Amish Community in the United States. When did you become so famous, and what is it like being something of a star in the fiction world where you are kind of an industry unto yourself? Granted there aren’t knickknacks in your name, and you don’t run for President of the United States offering bumper stickers for fans like humor writer Dave Barry. (He a real industry unto himself for others.). Still, tell us what fame has brought you in your life as a writer.

Being a writer, like many other writers, who might prefer the behind-the-scenes aspect of creating and rewriting, I’ve never sought popularity, or fame as you put it. Hearing that millions of readers have been touched by my stories is the thing that brings me true joy. Fame, if you will, has provided me many opportunities to touch the hearts of more people with the inspirational aspects of my novels set in the cloistered society of the Amish—in Lancaster County, Pa specifically.

When I’m out touring and speaking, I love connecting with my readers, being given the chance to encourage them or just listen to the hearts of the many who stand in line to meet me. I want to do my part to make a difference in this world, whether in the compelling stories I write… or in meeting and greeting my dear reader-friends

Actually in 1993 and 1994 I began writing for young readers, the Culdasac Kids Chapter Book series, and the Holly Heart series for teen girls. These books are all on my website beverlylewis.com So that was when my books became known and I began to be known as a book writer. Prior to that I wrote magazine articles and fiction for magazines: Highlights for Children, the Breakaway and the Brio magazines for children. Most of them weren’t Christian magazines. Really, really I was published in many Sunday school papers. They give you five copies for pay. For pay it took me a while to break into Christian publications.

Being a writer like many writers who might prefer the back the scene parts of being a writer as I like it. Fame has given me many opportunities to touch the hearts of millions of my readers. Especially the Lancaster series. When I’m out reading and speaking, I love getting in touch with my readers and getting to meet those in line with the people to meet me. I’m going to seven states, for two weeks and that starts tomorrow, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 [The itinerary is available on the website BeverlyLewis.com .] I will be signing the DVD on the 13th, but I am going to promote my new book, The Mercy, today. It is the third in the Rose Trilogy of the Amish series.

We were dirt poor and my Daddy was a pioneer minister. I learned firsthand how to trust God as a first experience. I learned as a grassroots experience and a faith based lifestyle. My Daddy was paid in chickens back in the late forties before I was born. He was a very young Assembly of God pastor and minister. That is how I began by being born in Lancaster County, PA in Amish country. It is pronounced “Ahmish.” That’s how they pronounce it.

1.2. For me, the television show “Shunning,” that appeared on the Hallmark Channel this May, 2011 and will September 13, 2011 be available as a DVD in retail stores etc. was a heartfelt and touching tale of honesty and genuine situation. This is real praise. I am certainly not alone for having been moved by the television show. But I did wonder if you felt the Amish had failed the young woman of 20 who leaves for the world outside her religious community to seek herself. I can’t help but wonder what if she hadn’t left for the world and as a younger woman stayed with her community to find her life. Is there really so much difference in doing so, and do you think she might have done otherwise than leave for the world? Why did you want the character to leave her community?

I wanted Katie Lapp to leave because this is a real situation. There are about 10 percent of the young people that leave the community. There are always some who are free thinkers and want to leave the rules. It’s

It was an honor to promote Michael Landon Jr.'s DVD ("Beverly Lewis' The Shunning), available September 13th, at the International Christian Retail Show in Atlanta, GA this past week. Here I am with the delightful Lovell-Fairchild Communications publicity team (Lucas and Julie). I'll post where you can see YouTube clips and other media interviews regarding the soon to release DVD.

It's hard playing the music that is forbidden in the Amish Communities; they are not allowed to play instruments. You can’t be shunned if you don’t join the Church. The parent too wants them to take their time. Katie joined the Church. She had joined as a young woman and had already made her Baptismal vow. She was shunned because she broke the vow and played her guitar and failed to marry the Bishop. She was shunned because she continued to play her guitar. It is continuing to this day. This story is based on reality, but Katie is a fictional character.

Well, we know that all cultures, and especially religious sub-groups, can be a mixed bag. While the Amish society has much to teach us—we who live with a hectic pace and the high-tech mentality of the 21st century, Amish are also quite human…just as all church groups who heavily rely on an ordinance to enforce rules and expectations. The aspect of group speak and/or embracing antiquated priority in an ever-changing world, is constricting to many in the Amish church—I’ve talked with them—and this is demonstrated by Katie Lapp’s heart-breaking story in The Shunning movie, as well as the book, where she is forbidden to express herself musically.

1.3. Sometimes these suggestions of another scenario for a story don’t really hold true, as is outlined in the question previous. Nonetheless, having read some of the material about your own experience and knowledge of the Amish, which I hear is considerable, can you tell us whether you have an admiration for that community and religious communities of their various kinds in general? Will you speak to us of the special world of the religious community, and how it may have influenced your own life as a Christian living in the world? What is your denomination faith, by the way? I couldn’t find that out in the press material that is available. Readers may be interested to know, and I certainly am as interviewer.

I do highly respect many of the qualities of the Lancaster County Amish, of which I’m most familiar. The aspect of community is very appealing—when was the last time you walked down the street of your own neighborhood and spoke to them by name—or sat on their front porches and shared your week with them, while sipping lemonade or…even being invited over for dinner? People in our society are isolated—they don’t know each other anymore. We rely on FB and other forms of social networking, hiding behind the screen of our cell phones and computers. But, the Amish, now THEY know how to interact face-to-face, sitting down as an extended family, having three squares a day.

Another wonderful draw to the Amish community is the sense of belonging. Each child is cherished, each person—no matter the age or infirmity or mental ability—is accepted and provided for. (Talk about the Dawdi Hauses—the “grandfather houses” built onto the main farmhouse, where the elderly relatives or maiden aunts live and are cared for.)

Also, the love for family and each person in the community. The aspects of submission to each other, as taught in the New Testament.

And, I think many readers would agree with me that the spiritual covering the Amish embrace over their lives is very appealing—if not fascinating in its convicting sense.

Trailer: Promo by Hallmark

1.4. You are considered a Christian writer, or what is also known as a faith writer with so many, many successful and well received, even loved books. One Saturday recently I sat at one of the big box stores near where I live (Costco) and sat with a stranger who it turned out watched your Hallmark television show “Shunning” four times. She was not really as a Christian woman a “fan” of yours, but let me say something more significant than fan; she was an admirer of you as writer and moved by your Christian conviction. But more, she was also a kind of student of your writing which she found telling to her heart, and for her money truly Christian writing. I suspect this experience of mine could be repeated a hundred, a thousand times by people who love your work. And they do love it as an admirer and reader cares about character, story, and Christian relationship in life situations. Speak to us some about people who like her have talked with you or questioned you about their own interest in your books, especially “Shunning.” Can you give us some anecdotal story about one or two people who stick in your mind? I am sure you care about your readers, for that is one hallmark of the kind of way your books are written—if I am not mistaken. Am I not correct about that?

One of my readers is a state patrolman who stood in a long line during one of my recent book tours. He said he felt compelled to meet me because my books had changed his thinking—and his life. He craved simplicity and peace and found them in my stories set in Amish country.

Another reader (from Ohio) wrote to tell me she has been shunned 5 times and struggles greatly with submitting to the authority of the Amish church—just as Katie Lapp struggles in the movie, “Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning.”) She revealed that she so admired other Amish women who could easily follow the rules of the Ordnung—the church ordinance—and wondered why she was born a free-thinker and, even, a free-spirit, trapped in the cloistered community of her heritage. She thanked me for showing all the angles of the Amish society in my many books and said she very much drew courage from reading Katie Lapp’s story, “The Shunning.”

1.5. If there is anything that I have left out of this interview, and I am sure I have missed much in the short time we’ve had together, please let me know what you’d like to add or say for the end of our interview. I enjoyed this conversation by phone, and am glad to make your acquaintance.

I want to talk about the emotional component that is laid out on the screen. I felt that Michael Landon Jr. really got it right. He chose the right cast of actors for my story: incredible casting. When I first saw the uncut, unedited version, I was so moved there were actually tears in my eyes. When I saw Daniele Tannebaker who played Katie Lapp I told my husband, that’s my Katie. I was so impressed. The wise woman Ella Mae, she was remarkable.

END NOTE TO INTERVIEW

Here is a tag to the interview above by this writer, Peter Menkin, with author of the book The Shunning by Beverly Lewis and the just released DVD Beverly Lewis’ The Shunning. The tab is an interview published in the Assembly of God magazine with Beverly Lewis, and here are three questions taken from that interview written by Jennifer McClure found on the Assembly of God website: http://ag.org/top/

The whole interview is found here.

Interview

Recently she spoke with Assistant Editor Jennifer McClure.
Pentecostal Evangel Assembly of God magazine

tpe: What does motherhood mean to you?

LEWIS: It is a blessing from the Lord — the Scriptures say that, and it is absolutely true. Two of our children are disabled, so each day for us is a gift from the Lord that my husband and I can speak into the lives of our children, and now our grandchildren.

tpe: How has motherhood influenced your work?

LEWIS: It has influenced it greatly. Readers familiar with my novels and my work will see a strong, nurturing, maternal thread. Whether it’s the main story line or subplot, there is always someone either wishing to connect with a parent or searching for her or his roots. I think I’ve been accused of being stuck on the maternal subplot or plot, but it’s so engrained in me.

tpe: Having adopted all three of your children, what advice would you give to couples considering adoption?

LEWIS: I believe couples who have longed for a child and have tried various ways to conceive their own must come to a point where they consider making this leap in their mind and emotions. Are you willing, first, and are you ready, second, to embrace another person’s child as your own?

I’ve counseled a number of women on this. Some are and some aren’t. Some would prefer to continue living with the incredible yearning for a baby or a child and walk away from the whole idea of adoption if they can’t have their own flesh-and-blood child. And that is absolutely everyone’s own decision to make.

E-mail your comments to tpe@ag.org.

ADDENDUM I

From The Hallmark Channel website, found here.

Danielle Panabaker / KatieA stunning and talented young actress, Danielle Panabaker has quickly grabbed attention as one of Hollywood’s most vibrant stars.Panabaker next stars in John Carpenter’s latest thriller “The Ward” opposite Amber Heard. She also stars opposite Bobby Cannavale in the upcoming independent feature, “Weakness.”Panabaker recently starred in Overture Films’ “The Crazies” directed by Breck Eisner. She starred opposite Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell as the receptionist at a medical center in a small town whose residents mysteriously begin going insane. Panabaker also starred as the female lead in the highly anticipated remake of “Friday the 13th,” opposite Jared Padalecki. The Paramount film, directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay, was released on February 13, 2009 and grossed over $43 million its opening weekend, setting a new record for the highest take for an R-rated horror film. She also appeared opposite Kevin Costner and Dane Cook in the MGM thriller “Mr. Brooks.” Her additional film credits include Sony Pictures’ “Yours, Mine and Ours,” opposite Renee Russo and Dennis Quaid and Disney’s “Sky High,” opposite Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston.On television, Panabaker starred as James Woods’ unwaveringly wise daughter on the CBS drama “Shark.” Panabaker also garnered much critical acclaim for her breakout performance in the HBO miniseries “Empire Falls,” in which she starred opposite Paul Newman and Ed Harris.Panabaker appeared in the Disney Channel Original Movie “How My Personal Private Journal Became a Best-Selling Novel,” where she and her sister, Kay, played versions of the same character. Panabaker’s additional television work includes starring roles in “Searching for David’s Heart,” for which she won the 2005 Young Artist Award for Best Performance for a TV Movie Leading Young Actress, “Mom at Sixteen,” “Sex and the Single Mom” and the Disney Channel Original Movie “Stuck in the Suburbs.” Her guest starring roles include “The Guardian,” for which she won the 2004 Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Series Guest Starring Young Actress, “Chase,” “Law and Order: LA,” “Medium,“ “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Eli Stone,” “Law and Order: SVU,” “CSI,” “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Summerland.”Born in Georgia, Panabaker graduated from high school at the age of 14 and received her Bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

ADDENDUM II

Excerpt from The Shunning by Beverly Lewis

From the book and DVD tour: Barnes and Noble, Oklahoma

No girl should have been made over the way Mamma carried on about me. Being Mam’s favorite was both a blessing and a curse, I decided.

In their younger years, my brothers—Elam, Eli, and Benjamin—were more ornery than all the wicked kings in the Bible combined—a regular trio of tricksters. Especially Eli and Benjamin. Elam got himself straightened out some last year around Thanksgiving, about the time he married Annie Fisher down Hickory Lane. The responsibilities of farming and caring for a wife, and a baby here before long, would settle most any fellow down.

If ever I had to pick a favorite brother, though, most likely Benjamin would’ve been it. Which isn’t saying much, except that he was the least of my troubles. He and that softhearted way he has about him sometimes.

Take last Sunday, for instance—the way he sat looking so forlorn at dinner after the Preaching, when Bishop Beiler and all five of his children came over to eat with us. The bishop had announced our upcoming wedding—his and mine—that day right after service. So now we were officially published. Our courting secret was out, and the People could start spreading the news in our church district, the way things had been done for three hundred years.

The rumors about all the celery Mamma and I had planted last May would stop. I’d be marrying John Beiler on Thursday, November twenty-first, and become stepmother to his five young children. And, jah, we’d have hundreds of celery sticks at my wedding feast—enough for two-hundred-some guests.

Days after the wedding was announced, Benjamin put on his softer face. Today, he’d even helped hoist me up to the attic to look for Mam’s wedding dress, which I just had to see for myself before I finished stitching up my own. Ben stayed there, hovering over me like I was a little child, while I pulled the long dress out of the big black trunk. Deep blue, with a white apron and cape for purity, the dress was as pretty as an Amish wedding dress could be.

Without warning, Ben’s words came at me—tumbled right out into the musty, cold air. “Didja ever think twice about marrying a widower with a ready-made family?”

I stared at him. “Well, Benjamin Lapp, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

He nodded his head in short little jerks. “It’s because of Daniel Fisher, ain’t?” His voice grew softer. “Because Daniel went and got himself drowned.”

The way he said it—gentle-like—made me want to cry. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was marrying John because Dan Fisher was dead—because there could never be another love for me like Dan. Still, I was stunned that Ben had brought it up.

Here was the brother who’d sat behind me in school, yanking my hair every chance he got, making me clean out the barn more times than I could count . . . and siding against me the night Dat caught me playing Daniel’s old guitar in the haymow.

But now Ben’s eyes were full of questions. He was worrying out loud about my future happiness, of all things.

I reached up and touched his ruddy face. “You don’t have to worry, brother,” I whispered. “Not one little bit.”

"Katie . . . for certain?” His voice echoed in the stillness.

I turned away and reached into the trunk, avoiding his gaze. “John’s a gut man,” I said firmly. “He’ll make a right fine husband.”

I felt Ben’s eyes boring a hole into the back of my head, and for a long, awkward moment he was silent. Then he replied, “Jah, right fine he’ll be.”

The subject was dropped. My brother and everyone else would just have to keep their thoughts to themselves about me and the forty-year-old man I was soon to marry. I knew well and good that John Beiler had one important thing on his mind: He needed a mamma for his children. And I, having been blessed with lavish mother-love, was just the person to give it.

Respect for a husband, after all, was honorable. In time, perhaps something more would come of our union—John’s and mine. Perhaps even . . . love.

I could only hope and pray that my Dan had gone to his eternal reward, and that someday I’d be found worthy to join him there.

ADDENDUM III

Excerpt from The Mercy

Mercy book, third and final of the three part Rose Trilogy published by Bethany House

The Mercy

TheMercy

Christ Church, Savannah breakaway from Episcopal Church: Report

2011-09-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Report on Christ Church, Savannah, GA and its breakway from the Episcopal Church: a look at a Property Dispute, too

by Peter Menkin

Christ Church, Savannah. Poster circa 1920.

Worldwide, Anglicans who were upper class women of England mostly–100 years ago–are today on average an African Black woman of about 21, poor, with one child. It is a very different world for Anglicans than 100 years ago. (A Facebook posting.)

The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States, but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe. The Episcopal Church is the Province of the Anglican Communion in the United States and most other territories where it has a presence (excluding Europe). The Episcopal Church describes itself as being “Protestant, Yet Catholic”. In 2009, the Episcopal Church had a baptized membership of 2,175,616 both inside and outside the U.S. In the United States, it had a baptized membership of 2,006,343, making it the nation’s fifteenth largest denomination. (Episcopal Church Facebook.)

The Anglican Church in North America unites some 100,000 Anglicans in nearly 1,000 congregations across the United States and Canada. The Anglican Church is a Province-in-formation in the global Anglican Communion committed to reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The Most Rev. Robert Duncan is the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America and Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. (Anglican Church in North America Facebook.)

In this article-interview that covers the property dispute between the Episcopal Church and Christ Church, Savannah regarding the breakaway Christ Church leaving that Communion and joining the Anglican Church in North America, this writer had the privilege of talking with a number of key people. Included in this group of people with whom the writer spoke was The Reverend Jim Elliott, an attorney who is Chancellor of the Diocese of Georgia (Episcopal Church). Reverend Jim is the lead attorney in the case before the State of Georgia Supreme Court asking for the Episcopal Church Communion’s property back. The breakaway Communion and the two Christ Church, Savannah claimants have a conflict of belief, so Christ Church, Savannah who holds the property says.

This email was sent to Reverend Jim Elliott in the course of our conversation by phone and conversation by email:

Dear Reverend Chancellor:
Here from my notes of a conversation with Archbishop Duncan are a few of the theological arguments for Christ Church, Savannah leaving the Episcopal Church Communion. I spoke with him while he was in London just this week for about 15 minutes. During this appointment by phone, when he arrived in his office after a trip from another place in the city by underground, the conversation focused on theological matters. Because he had a meeting with the Primate of the Southeast Asia part of the Anglican Communion, we were unable to get to the property issue questions involved in the Georgia Supreme Court case. That was too bad, for it meets my needs and purposes for the article. Perhaps to your mind the last attribution to him in this list of notes and quotes is relevant to property issues.

Archbishop Robert Duncan,
Anglican Communion in North America,
called, "his Grace."

The theological issues in brief:

Quote:
If you wanted to understand at the very root the theological issues are, they all surround the English reformation that the Holy Scriptures were the ultimate of the faith. The Bible is determinative of what the faith says, or what the order of the Church Christian morality would say. Everything really hangs on that affirmation of the Reformation. That was reiterated in the Chicago Quadrilateral.

From notes, not a quote:
The Episcopal Church has in the areas of Christology: Jesus is what he says he is. Is Jesus the Son of God? Is there any other way to go? The answer is no. The Episcopal Church has increasingly answered those questions in a different way. Towards universalism or … a multifaith way towards salvation. That is at the heart of the Christological issue.

Again, a paraphrase from notes:
The morality issues of marriage, chasteness, same sex (marriages)– The Episcopal Church is giving different answers (from us). You can see how this has all tied back to the scripture as understanding.

Notes on a statement by the Archbishop re Property Rights and Issues:
In that case, it’s true for Pittsburgh, San Joaquin, [both Episcopal Diocese that left the Episcopal Church] we didn’t leave anything [that is, these Dioceses did not leave the Episcopl Church, but the Episcopal Church left the Dioceses]. The Episcopal Church is claiming when the Church changes the parishes or diocese have to change. The Saints did not change. We would claim you can’t change from the faith once delivered. We’re thankful for their courage.

Your comment to these individually or as a group is welcomed and hoped for, and if you want to frame it as a Property Issue, do so—even in the negative to say these are not relevant to the case before the Georgia Supreme Court, or that they do not bear witness to the dispute at hand either in a legal or any other sense. I encouraged this so I will have a clear statement for the published piece regarding the position of the Episcopal Church as seen both by you as attorney in the case and for The Diocese of Georgia.

With thanks for your consideration, and early response,
I am yours sincerely,
Peter
Peter Menkin

In a lengthy and complete reply, The Reverend Jim Elliott wrote an almost 900 word statement regarding the Diocese of Georgia arguments and position about the property dispute. In so doing, he reveals some of the attitudes and some of the bitterness in this legal fight for property. He does not believe that theology has much if anything to do with the issue of who owns the property, and who is the legitimate historic Christ Church of Savannah, Georgia.

The Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop said “No,” to making a remark or statement on this case of dispute through her spokeswoman. The Diocese of Georgia’s Bishop chose to make no remark or statement regarding the issue, so its spokesman said. They did make available a written commentary on the case, some of which is quoted in this article. It is expected that the Georgia Supreme Court will rule on the matter by the end of 2011. An inquiry to the Court indicated there was no statement on the case available at this time.

The New York Times reports in November, 2010, in an article titled, “A Church is Divided, and Headed for Court,” by Ellen Goodman, December 5, 2007:

In November, the Diocese of Georgia filed a lawsuit to keep control of Christ Church’s assets, which include a $3 million historic building and an endowment estimated at $2 million to $3 million.
Its claim is based on a church law, adopted in the 1970s, called the Dennis Canon, which says that all parishes hold their property in trust for the diocese. But Christ Church, which was established in 1733, asserts that it has firm legal footing to keep control of its building and property because it existed before the Episcopal denomination, which was established in the United States in 1789.
“That would make the case a pure property case rather than a religious liberty case,” Mr. Witte said. “They will have to argue that their church is closer to the values of the late 18th century” than the Episcopal Church is today. And that, he added, is “an argument that hasn’t been tested in federal courts.”

Churches of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

A video showing the 70 churches, 3 chapels and convent in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, which encompasses the lower two-thirds of the state.

Here is The Reverend Jim Elliott’s statement in its full text:

I am a Priest in The Episcopal Church and a practicing lawyer. I have practiced law in Georgia for twenty-six years and have been the Chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia since 2004. In our Diocese, the Chancellor is appointed by the Bishop and confirmed by our annual Diocesan Convention, which is the elected governing body of the Diocese.
I am counsel to the Diocese and Christ Church Episcopal in their suit against the former rector and former members of the vestry (the local church’s governing board) who left The Episcopal Church and who remain in possession of my clients’ property.

Christ Church Episcopal is the Mother Church of Georgia. Christ Church Episcopal remains a faithful Parish in The Episcopal Church and we want them restored to their rightful church home.
The suit that we filed on behalf of the Parish and the Diocese is to recover the property. The suit is not and indeed cannot be about theological disagreements. The United States Constitution prohibits our courts from adjudicating theological disagreements.
The group currently in possession of The Episcopal Church’s historic church building in Savannah is no longer part of The Episcopal Church. That group of individuals left The Episcopal Church and joined another church which is not nor has it ever been a part of The Episcopal Church. They have since apparently affiliated themselves with a different group which is not nor has it ever been a part of The Episcopal Church. They are not Episcopalians.
That group left The Episcopal Church and joined the Church of Uganda, taking our property with them in violation of the rules of the Church and Georgia law.
Their clergy and members of the church’s governing board all took an oath promising to uphold and follow the rules of The Episcopal Church but they have refused to do so.
We have had to resort to the courts to regain the property in which faithful Episcopalians have worshiped for generations.
The Chatham County Superior Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals have upheld longstanding legal precedent in our state and have confirmed that Christ Church Episcopal and the Diocese of Georgia are entitled to possession of the property that the departing group of individuals took with them when they decided to join a different church.
The law in Georgia has held for over 200 years that churches such as ours and many other non-congregational churches hold their property subject to the rules and mode of government of the church. That was the law when Christ Church became a parish in the Diocese of Georgia in 1823 and it is still the law today.
Churches such as The Episcopal Church (which has an elected representative form of government) and many other denominations require that the church’s property be held for the benefit of those who remain part of the denomination. Georgia law and the rules of such churches do not permit removal of property to another church or denomination.
The Georgia Court of Appeals’ ruling upholds the longstanding rule that churches such as ours have a Constitutional right to govern themselves as they choose without fear that their property will be taken away from those who wish to remain part of the church.
Congregational churches govern themselves differently and have local control over their property by virtue of the way they choose to govern themselves. The Court of Appeals’ ruling in our case does not change that.
However, the Court of Appeals has said that all of our property should be returned to us and that the group that left the Church has no right to it. The decision of the Georgia Court of Appeals has been appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.
The individuals in possession of the Church’s property argue that our Supreme Court should cast aside longstanding Georgia law purportedly in the name of “religious liberty”. They ask the Court to ignore generations-old rules of the Church and the promises made by church members and clergy to uphold and follow those rules. They ask the Court to tell churches that they are no longer free to govern themselves as they choose. They ask the Court to rule that a group of local church members can deprive faithful Episcopalians and the Episcopal Church of their property. They ask the Court to deprive Christ Church Episcopal of its religious liberty because a group of people decided they wanted to join another church.
The individuals that left The Episcopal Church are certainly free leave and join another church but they may not take with them a church which was built as a Parish of The Episcopal Church and consecrated and set aside for divine worship in The Episcopal Church. They may not deprive faithful Episcopalians of property which may only be used for the mission and ministry of The Episcopal Church.
The Supreme Court of Georgia heard oral argument in May and we expect a decision before the end of 2011. Regardless of the outcome, we will remain what we as Episcopalians have always been. We will remain faithful witnesses in word and in deed to the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Diocese of Georgia says this is its theological premise:

Our Beliefs
We believe first and foremost that we can best come to know God, our creator, through a relationship with his son, Jesus Christ. The clearest statements of what we believe are to be found in The Apostle’s Creed and The Nicene Creed. These 2,000-year-old creeds (short statements of faith) are held to be true by billions of people around the world today. Beyond that, the best place to learn what Episcopalians believe is the Bible, which is the source of our theology, and the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). The BCP is not only the guide to our conduct of worship, but it is also articulates our theology.

Life of the breakaway Parish continues its appeal to friends and Parishioners to come to the aid of their cause, give money to the defense of their position as owners of the historic property. This YouTube shows their Rector Marc Robertson in that appeal.

Christ Church Savannah: Gospel Defense Fund

INTERVIEW WITH THE REVEREND MARC ROBERTSON

In its websites remarks of welcome, the Parish statement reads: Christ Church, the Mother Church of Georgia, has been an Anglican house of worship since 1733. We seek to know Christ by being a Bible-based congregation, we seek to grow in Christ by being a family-focused community of faith, and we seek to go in the name of Christ by being a mission-minded parish.
In a world of confusion and unbelief, Christ Church stands for the historic Christian faith. It is our joy and privilege to join God in His mission to expand His kingdom and raise up faithful servant-leaders to minister to the last, the least, and the lost of this world. We invite you to join us in this profound mission. If you live in Savannah, you are welcomed to be a part of this Christian family. If you are planning to visit Savannah, please join us for worship – we look forward to seeing you. – Marc Robertson, Rector

The Church website reports of the Rector:

Marc was born in Gadsden, Alabama, where he grew up in the Episcopal Church. He received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary, with theological studies at St. Mary’s Divinity School in St. Andrews, Scotland. He holds masters degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary and St. Luke’s School of Theology (Sewanee, TN), and a doctorate (D. Min.) from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Marc has been rector at Christ Church since January of 1992. He and his wife Alice, and their two sons, Jon and Matt, live with a number of animals (mainly dogs) at his home south of the parish.

Email mrobertson@christchurchsavannah.org, or call (912) 232-4131 x 102

The Reverend Marc Robertson (left)

This interview held by phone has been both transcribed from that conversation between this writer, and The Reverend Marc Robertson. As well, Reverend Marc has made some written comments as additions. Some paraphrase to help with clarity was done by this writer. Made by phone to the Rector’s office at his Church in Savannah, this writer spoke from his home office north of San Francisco. No tape recording was done of the phone conversation. The date of the interview is August 22, 2011.

1. Please tell us something of the historic nature of Christ Church, Savannah and in what ways (the how, if you will) that this move from the Episcopal Church to the Anglican Church in North America is a theological statement of historic kind? Will you also say something of the theological areas that are of positive value you’ve found outside the Episcopal Church with the Anglican Church in North America?

The interesting thing historically of our move from the Episcopal Church was [it was] the Episcopal Church that moved, not Christ Church that moved. It was the Episcopal Church that failed to follow traditional values. They introduced a new understanding of marriage, and they introduced a new understanding of what it means to be a Bishop. In our view, we just wanted to remain where we were. We were not prepared to go with the Episcopal Church with its innovations. Having said that, we had to take deliberate actions to disaffiliate ourselves from the Episcopal Church.

Our decision was to stay; the decision of The Episcopal Church (TEC) was to move, to embrace innovations that went beyond the historic identity of Christian Faith and Practice. The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) affirms Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life” and “no one comes to the Father except through Him” (John 14:6) in its opening Theological Statement.

In the ensuring seven affirmations, the ACNA clearly affirms its belief in the authority of Holy Scripture, the two “gospel sacraments” of Baptism and Eucharist, the historic creeds and Ecumenical Councils, the Book of Common Prayer (the 1662 Book being the standard), and the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion. All of these affirmations are clear and unwavering, and are either abandoned or significantly weakened in formal affirmations of TEC. (See http://anglicanchurch.net/?/main/page/about-acna)

Of course, some of those actions included several years of study, engagement both with our members of our congregation, and with the Bishop and staff members of the Diocese. The issues for us had to do with the Episcopal Church’s move away from … Biblical creedal Christianity. One example for me is … the book, “Dirt, greed, and Sex,” by William Countryman.

As a paraphrase, one of the footnotes refers … [to] … the Church not having any concern with such things as bestiality…
… “Dirt, Greed, and Sex,” was published in the early 80s. It was copyright 1988. If you stop and think about that it was over 20 years. It’s been a generation of seminary students who have been engaged with this kind of ethical thinking.

Countryman’s work has served as an ethics textbook in several seminaries. I think matters of like this go quietly underneath the radar. I would be glad to have a charitable debate on this. But seminarians will take this at face value without any opportunities for critical analysis or comparison with traditional Christian ethics. That’s just one example, but rather pointed.

2. The Christ Church, Savannah congregation has been on a journey of change and prayerful decision making in its relationship with the Episcopal Church. In a phone conversation with you, some of your remarks went: They [the Vestry and congregation] did not want to drag the church and the congregation into unnecessary and serious considerations [of leaving the Episcopal Church]; [and they] very seriously weighed out all the possibilities to avoid the dynamics of walking out. [In the Parish’s decision to leave], there is an historic statement that is made, a weight of history of elements of their identity that few congregations …have [had] to weigh. Our obligations as stewards of the Gospel [were] to take this move. We’re obligated to be stewards of the mother church of Georgia in this area and in the world. We’re the home of the first hymnal in the US language, the oldest continuous running orphanage. We have also a member who was a founder of the Girl Scouts. We have a strong history of an identity that influences the Church well beyond our walls… Talk for a minute or more about this journey, (1) its difficulties, and (2) how it weighed on the congregation, and, (3) finally some of the theological concerns that led to the decision to leave the Episcopal Church?

The difficulties: I want to talk personally of the impact it had one me. I’ve been an Episcopalian all my life. I was baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1954. I’m like many people in today’s denomination. I remained faithful to the Episcopal Church my entire life…until the Episcopal Church began to express an expression of Christianity I could not recognize. In terms of our congregation, we were founded in 1733, which means we [not only] predate the founding of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, but the foundation of the Episcopal Church in the colonies. From my understanding our participation in the first meeting of the Episcopal Church was negligible. But in the early 1800s, we were one of the founding Churches of the Diocese. For some of us, the fifth and sixth generational members here, this [split and property dispute] is incredibly disruptive.

Clarification: It is my understanding that the Christ Church sent a representative to the General Convention, but that he was more or less a “bystander,” and did not take the lead in any matter of Convention. It is quite possible the representative did not stay for the entirety of the Convention (something not unusual in that day), but I cannot say that for certain. The point of this ambivalence is that Christ Church considered itself an independent parish from the founding of the Episcopal Church. It did not acquiesce to the formal structure and governance of The Episcopal Church right away, and has carried with it a sense of historic “independence” in many ways throughout.

The Reverend Marc Robertson was interviewed. He Rector of breakaway Christ Church, Savannah.
We have worshiping with us three generations or more of the same family: parents, grandchildren and children. That same family is buried [here], their parents and grandparents before them, [also]. So the prospects of being forcibly evicted from the building are enormous. Another aspect is a lot of folks are good friends with those locked up in the legal problem. That is just what happens.

I have parishioners who have college buddies they no longer have relationships with. We have married couples who are divided between husband and wife. They do everything to maintain their marriage, but it becomes very painful in their life.

At this time the words that Jesus said become alive: Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law… (Matthew 10:34-35). But this is just one verse in the Bible among scores of verses which were hypothetical for us, but now they’ve become very tangible.

I’m very well aware that distress falls on both sides here. We’re not the only ones who distress falls upon… Some of the other burdens of our journey are the embarrassing misrepresentations of us. We’ve been called prejudiced against homosexual persons, as bigots, or just plain stupid. I would be the first to say we fall short. We are sinners. But that doesn’t make it any less painful when we are misrepresented over the television or in the newspapers.

What I’m trying to say here is that I acknowledge the pain on both sides of this issue. There are those who feel they have been “dispossessed” by Christ Church, “run out” of their home congregation and forced to worship in a building not their own.

My reply would be: You are always welcomed at Christ Church. It was your decision to leave us. You may disagree with the duly-elected leadership and the direction taken by the church, but leaving and then turning around and bringing legal action against us is a bit like killing your parents and then pleading for mercy because you are an orphan.

With regards to misrepresentation in the press: This is a complex matter, and theological differences [between us] do not sell papers. Thus, it is understandable when I am interviewed that media representatives are looking for something “juicy,” “sensational,” or rife with conflict. It is my responsibility, however, to bring to the discussion the theological underpinnings of this decision. I have no desire to ridicule my opponents; I do, however, wish to refute their arguments with charity as well as clarity.
While the courts cannot legally give attention to such matters, I can do so in and through the media, when they allow me. There is some resemblance to Paul’s appeal to Caesar in the book of Acts. Paul waded through the secular law courts of Rome, and while he was being tried as a seditionist and a threat to the Roman state, his message was constantly about the bodily resurrection of Jesus and its implications for humanity.

3. The Times-Herald reporter writes on July 11, 2011 about one significant issue of theological kind that divides Christ Church, Savannah from The Episcopal Church and may have been one key reason the Church chose to leave the Communion and join the Anglican Church in North America. He says, The “Mother Church” of Episcopalianism in Georgia has sharp divisions that reflect national trends in that denomination — and have led to a protracted lawsuit.

The Times Herald Reporter talks about issues… among important theological ones…the ordaining of gay clergy… That they may not be married and that their relationships are blessed. That becomes the exotic issue that moves the press along. That is the tip of the iceberg. In order to get to that point where one can get to gay marriage or support the ordination of non-celibate persons, be they homosexual or heterosexual, they have to bypass or undermine five tenants of Christian faith: 1. Authority of Scripture; 2. Nature of marriage; 3. Our understanding of human nature itself as complimentary to the sexes; 4. The nature of Epistemology (the understanding of truth); 5. The historic Christian assertion that we live in a moral universe.

4. In what ways does the Anglican Church in North America welcome the Parish, Christ Church, and will you tell us something of how it speaks to your parish in ways important in liturgy, communion, and faith? You’re quoted as saying, This disagreement is not about real estate. It is about the basic tenets of the historic faith, proclaiming Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. And it is about freedom: freedom of religion, freedom to practice our religion as and where we have for over 275 years, freedom to choose to follow the Jesus Christ of Holy Scripture and not a culturally-manufactured Jesus.

First of all, and I would speak … personally… the leadership of ACNA has been very warm, cordial and receptive to me and to Christ Church. It has been refreshing for me to be a part of a community of faithful, dedicated individuals who seek to come together as a living Church with a common mission. Not that we are all cut out of the same cloth. By no means. Some of us are Anglo-Catholics, some are Evangelicals, and some are Charismatics. And there are other expressions of diversity in our ranks. But we are one in our affirmation in Christ, his Lord, of a Biblical and creedal Christianity, and of the classic Anglican tradition.

The ACNA …affirms the authority of scripture, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the historic creeds, and other similar professions of historic Christianity. Now the ACNA has also stated in its constitution in writing (as well as our Diocese here in the South East), there is no interest in congregational property in any way, unless it is clearly stated by the congregation in a legally, recognized form. [This is different from the claim of the Episcopal Church.]

Also the ACNA affirms the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as the liturgical standard for us along with the majority of the Anglican Communion. In our two Sunday morning services here at Christ Church, one is the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the other at the main service (10:30 o’clock) is the modern form of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Both are affirmed by the ACNA.

Archbishop Robert Duncan,
Anglican Communion in North America

I think it is interesting to add that … Archbishop, Bob Duncan, has given me his personal cell phone number. My first bishop in ACNA, John Guernsey, called me on Christmas Eve (!) and prayed with me over the phone… that my sermons would be powerful and my pastoral ministry effective on that important day. I have known my current bishop, Neil Lebhar, for twenty-five years, and we are part of a support group that meets annually to review our ministries and encourage one another. I never had such offers of support, friendship, and mutual partnership in ministry in my 25 years as a priest in The Episcopal Church.

Thank you for your willingness to do this interview. It’s been good making your acquaintance in this way. If there is something you want to add or say, will you do so here for I may have missed a good issue or question. A major part of the confusion and complexity in this matter is the use of language. The Episcopal Church continues to use religious language, with words like “resurrection,” “the Bible as the Word of God,” or “Jesus is the Son of God.” But when you explore more deeply what such words or phrases mean, they diverge in to a hodge-podge of various personal opinions that can, in the final analysis, only be described as one’s own personal taste or preference…not the historic Faith handed down from generation to generation.

The leadership of The Episcopal Church, much like the leadership of much of mainline Protestantism in the U.S., has consciously or unconsciously embraced the post-modern skepticism as it pertains to language. It is the “Humpty-Dumpty” philosophy of language, when Humpty tells Alice, “When I use a word, it means precisely what I want it to mean; no more, no less.”

Alice retorts, “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.” Humpty then replies with a telling rejoinder: “The question is which is to be master – that’s all.”
In a universe where no objective Truth or Morality exists, all that is left is power and control, and words can be twisted to meet those purposes. In The Episcopal Church (and more broadly, Western society), where a universe is posited that has no objective Truth or Morality, language is a means to an end, and that “end” is reduced to who has the power or control. So we have over fifty lawsuits in The Episcopal Church, almost all of which have been initiated by TEC, in an effort to gain power and control. Our appeal to Truth and Morality seems antiquated in today’s post-modern world, but it is an appeal we believe is true to the Christian Faith.

For readers who want to dig deeper into the legal arguments between the two Communions and specifically the two Christ Church, Savannah contenders over property and identity (who is the real Christ Church, Savannah), these links lead to the oral arguments made in May, 2011 before the Georgia Supreme Court. These the oral statements in video as available on The Daily Report website. This is an earlier story from the Savannah Morning News (January 15, 2011), here. A reader can see that the property issue is no small matter either to the two Christ Church parishes in contention, or to other denominations that have a similar structure.

In a comment to the Savannah Morning News report published in January, 2011, someone who calls himself, “Old Verger,” writes:

Old Verger

… The Episcopal Church is a hierarchical church. It is governed at the national level, with about 100 subordinate units called dioceses. Each diocese has subordinate units that are generally called parishes or missions. Most parishes are organized as individual corporations. But according to Church law, they must hold their property in trust for the next highest organizational unit (the diocese). And church law also prohibits “alienating” property without approval of the next highest organizational unit (the diocese). Christ Church agreed to all of this when the Diocese of Georgia was formed, which is how it was allowed to become an Episcopal Church in the first place. Christ Church is still a Parish in the Episcopal Church. Unfortunately, its congregation is being deprived of its own meeting place at the present time. What this legal matter is really about is the right of the continuing congregation of Christ Church, Episcopal, to occupy and enjoy its own property. Secular courts are required to recognize the authority of Church law in these matters, and the Georgia courts have done that. That is what the original trail court did and what the court of appeals upheld. Of course, individuals are free to leave the Episcopal Church at any time, and some do. However, they may not take the Episcopal Church’s real property, bank accounts and altar silver when they go.

The conservative editor of the news service Virtue talked with this writer by phone and made remarks about the litigation that has gone on between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion of North America about previous property disputes that went to court.

Editor David Virtue does not paint a positive picture for the outcome for the Episcopal Church if they win the Georgia Supreme Court case. He says there are, “millions of dollars” in property, and that, “The property has tremendous historic value. The Diocese will claim their history. The Parish will say we lost the building and we will take the theology of Wesley with us. The Diocese will have a pyrrhic victory. They will have to sell the building, if they can’t sustain it with the remaining of the congregation.”

He reports with opinion that his remarks reflect, “What’s happening in Virginia, Pittsburg… the bishop’s cut deals. You can have the building at cost, but you cannot join an Anglican Jurisdiction in five years.” The reason deals are being made, he explains, “It’s not just worth the litigation costs anymore.”

Editor of the online Virtue news service indicates his prophetic opinion regarding an outcome in Georgia for Episcopal Church: “Even if they win the property, they aren’t going to win the people. The judge in Diocese of Fort Worth case remarked, I don’t want to see any more empty churches. The Dioceses think they are winning, but they are losing.” To support this remark, Editor Virtue points out, “The average Episcopalian is now in his 60s and the average parish is 68.” He foresees this result for the Episcopal Church and arguing about Gay Marriage and other issues of sexual acceptance by the Episcopal Church sees, “The juncturing or merging of Diocese.” He pointedly remarks, “Sexual sin never wins; they’ll empty the Church doing so [the Episcopal Church will]. They are not winning the hearts of the people. The Episcopal Church is slowly going downhill…Those that are Gospel driven are growing.” He claims about his news service, Virtue Online, “We’re the largest orthodox Anglican news service online.”

Christ Church Episcopal, in a press statement says, with this remark by their Rector:

Father White … “We know that if the Court upholds the two previous favorable rulings, we will return to our church home on Johnson Square and maintain our abiding commitment to Christian grace, joy, humility, and forgiveness.”

Rector Michael S. White, Christ Church Episcopal, Savannah

“The case involves a dispute over the control of the real and personal property of Christ Church,” said Mimi Jones, the junior warden for Christ Church Episcopal. “It is not about religious faith or depriving someone from practicing their faith; however, such individuals should not do so from the Christ Church building which does not belong to them.”

Father White also noted, “Each day, we seek to be faithful stewards of Christ’s Word and Sacraments. We are a people grounded in the worship of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our congregation continues to be inspired by the strong support and encouragement from the Savannah community and from so many religious organizations in the U.S.”

An important question for Episcopalians is this: What of the validity of the movement, Rediscovering Christian Orthodoxy in the Anglican Tradition. The 111 page paper in PDF by George F. Woodliff III is a kind of favored work by Orthodox Christian Episcopalians. Or so I understand from the Rector of Christ Church, Georgia (ACNA) who recommends it.

A significant premise of the paper is apparent from the preface, written by The Rt. Reverend C. Fitzimons Allison:

George Woodliff’s careful work exposes the impotence of human conjecture to give rational solid ground to the very structures of civilized society. He shows, step by step, how the Episcopal Church has embraced a view of sexuality that is not scientific, biblical, or part of the historic faith. This loss of Christian heritage is not only a problem in the Episcopal Church; it is a dividing issue in virtually every denomination and tradition in the West.

The infiltration of secularism in Christian churches, and its rapid replacement of Christianity in industrial nations, has been spearheaded by the issue of homosexuality. It is conceded on all sides that same-sex behavior has gained unprecedented approval in the media, entertainment, and academic worlds in an astonishingly short time. Michel Foucault observed that “the sodomite has been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species [The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, An Introduction, Tr. Robert Hurley (NY 1980), p. 43].”

Jerry Z. Muller, Professor at Notre Dame, noting the rapidity of this transition attributes it “in large part to a total lack of articulate resistance [by which] homosexual ideology has achieved an unquestioned and uncontested legitimacy in American life.” (First Things, Aug. / Sept. 1993). George Woodliff’s book is a masterful and articulate exposure of the groundless claims of recent sexual ideology.

One must ask: how was this radical change possible? Among the many factors is the contemporary epistemological naïveté that omits the role of trust in gaining knowledge (cp. St. Anselm, M. Polanyi, et al.). The exclusively skeptical hermeneutic in the study of scripture since
the 19th century has inhibited and undermined confidence in Revelation within the churches.
Another factor is the loss of the concept of sin (cf. Carl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin?) coupled with the culture’s trivialization of God (cf. Donald W. McCullough, The Trivialization of God).

The Rt. Reverend Allison, author of the Preface, is a former Episcopal Bishop, now part of the breakaway Communion, Anglican Communion in North America.

It is clear that the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia sees the dispute as legal, not at all theologically based. They want the property returned. In May, 5 2011 in Savannah Georgia they say in a press statement:

Several Christian denominations representing a broad spectrum of religious faiths have filed with the Georgia Supreme Court “amicus curiae” or “friend-of-the-court” briefs supporting The Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia and Christ Church Episcopal in a case involving the ownership of the historic church building located on Johnson Square and other Church properties and assets.
Those filing briefs supporting the Episcopalians include the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the United Methodist Church and the Church of God.
“These denominations have similar structures to that of the Episcopal Church, so their positions are very relevant. We are indebted to our Christian brothers and sisters for supporting our effort,” said Bishop Scott Anson Benhase. He added, “We remain steadfast and confident in our cause and are humbled and gratified by the overwhelming support we have received not only from our community but also from the world-wide Anglican Communion and a broad spectrum of other Christian denominations.”
The friend-of-the-court briefs ask the Georgia Supreme Court, which will hear the case on May 9, to affirm the Georgia Court of Appeals’ July 2010 ruling in favor of the Episcopalians. That ruling upheld Superior Court Judge Michael L. Karpf’s October 27, 2009 judgment that that the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia is entitled to legal possession of the historic Christ Church building and other Church assets for the benefit of those who remain faithful to the Diocese and The Episcopal Church.
In affirming

In the meantime, over the four or so years of dispute, life at the Parish Church of the Anglican Communion in North America continues its work and activities. If that Parish that is breakaway from the Episcopal Church feels stunned to the point of inactivity or depressed faith over the split, it doesn’t appear so in this YouTube offered below of a beautiful Compline.

Compline at Christ Church Savannah
[ACNA] (The Final Préces)

ADDENDUM I

There is another Communion of Anglicans in the United States, for the reader’s information. Called Convocation of Anglicans in North America, they say of themselves:

Definition of CANA:
CANA is the “Convocation of Anglicans in North America” which is a missionary district sponsored by the largest and most vibrant province of the Anglican Communion, the Church of Nigeria which at c.19 million members accounts for about 25% of the membership of the entire Anglican Communion. CANA’s members, who reflect a wide scope of ethnic and racial identities, embody a healthy balance of the catholic, evangelical, and charismatic streams of Anglican Christianity.

Mission of CANA:
The mission of CANA is to provide orthodox clergy and congregations in North America with (a) an episcopate based in North America that has an authentic connection to the Anglican Communion, and (b) an ecclesiastical structure with representative leadership by member clergy and congregations.

Vision of CANA:
The vision of CANA is to be a building block and an incubator that works to build up the Anglican Church in North America as the provincial structure for orthodox Anglicanism in North America within the next several years.

Distinctives of CANA:

CANA’s clergy and congregations are authentically in the Anglican Communion through the sponsorship of the Church of Nigeria.
CANA’s clergy and congregations are full-fledged members of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), by virtue of CANA being a founder of the ACNA.
CANA’s episcopate and ecclesiastical structure is based in North America.
CANA’s structure maintains the Anglican tradition of the “councils of the church” with representative leadership by CANA clergy and lay delegates from CANA congregations.
CANA offers a comprehensive competitively priced national healthcare insurance policy, 403b retirement fund, and other insurance plans for clergy and congregational employees.
CANA’s episcopate and clergy are a blessed reflection of the diversity of the American populace, with significant numbers of immigrants and minorities.
CANA is committed to modeling for American Anglicans the possibility of respecting both integrities regarding the ordination of women within one ecclesial body.
CANA is a gift to American Anglicanism with no strings attached—with an American financial structure, there are no requirements to provide financial support to its founding province.
CANA has built mission partnerships with Anglican provinces in the majority world based on decades-long relationships.
CANA was established after TEC had rejected the Anglican Communion’s unanimous recommendations in “The Windsor Report.”
CANA’s episcopate is led by Bishop Martyn Minns, with Suffragan Bishops Roger Ames, David Anderson, David Bena, Amos Fagbamiye; supported by two CANA archdeacons and Canon Missioner Julian Dobbs.
CANA’s Chaplains Deanery is led by Lt. Col. Derek Jones (USAF ret.) and is an endorsing agent with the Department of Defense.

ADDENDUM II

Note written during the writing process of this article-interview posted to this writer’s Facebook page:

More notes on the writing of the piece about the breakaway Christ Church, Savannah property dispute w/Episcopal Church
by Peter Menkin on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 9:04am
Still doing some work intermittently on the piece about the breakaway Christ Church, Savannah. It occurs to me that it is still an awkward manuscript. Compiled by piecing together related material. Now at 4,408 words it needs help, including the piece that is the interview with Rector Marc Robertson. This is an important part of the article, certainly. Sometimes one reaches an impasse with this kind of process and must take a break; also one must look for more relevant material that will move the piece along and aid the reader with worthwhile material that if it doesn’t illuminate, will inform. Now I’m thinking of how to end the piece, and so far have thought of creating an Addendum. The piece is important because it is supposed to be fair and equitable, give the Christ Church, Savannah side while keeping the Episcopal Church represented well. Some people may be less interested in this dispute, as one press officer of the Episcopal Church told me, “As to the piece about a breakaway church in Georgia, I really have no interest in that as a topic. We’ve moved on.” Seems touchy, touchy, touchy in response to me. The Georgia Supreme Court rules on the property dispute at the end of the year (2011), so it is a very much a live issue. I would say others of the Episcopal Church also don’t want to hear about the subject published, as when talking to New York’s Episcopal Church national press officer, her curt and touchy, touchy, touchy response showed a similar impatience of recognizing even the existence of the breakaway Communion with one word on getting a quote or comment from the Presiding Bishop or national Church: “No.”

Bishop of the Episcopal Church Diocese of Georgia
who had no current comment, either.

AThe Reverend Jim Elliott of Diocese of Georgia,
Chancellor and attorney
for the Episcopal Church Diocese gave a detailed statement for attribution.

ADDENDUM III

In another property dispute with the Episcopal Church over a breakaway Parish in California, George Conger of The Church of England Newspaper, London wrote in part:

First published in The Church of England Newspaper. This version from The Reverend Canon George Conger’s blog, here.
Civil courts may not adjudicate ecclesiastical disputes, the California Court of Appeals has ruled. On Nov 18 the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno overturned a lower court order that had given trusteeship of the property of the Diocese of San Joaquin to a faction loyal to the national Episcopal Church.
In its 11 page decision the Fifth Court of Appeal held that while civil courts would accept the determination of the Episcopal Church as to whom it recognized as one of its bishops or dioceses, the court would not extend that power to the disposition of property. Church property disputes in California would be governed by “neutral principals of law” where the court would look to title deeds and trusts, and not to canon law or church polity, in determining ownership.
The “First Amendment rights of individuals and corporations” along with “general California statutory and common law principles governing transfer of title by the legal title holder, the law of trusts, … and general principles of corporate governance” control the disposition of church property in California.
The court held the dispute “whether Schofield or Lamb is the incumbent Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin, is quintessentially ecclesiastical. Accordingly, the trial court erred in adjudicating that cause of action and, upon proper motion, must dismiss that cause of action.”
Both sides in the San Joaquin case have hailed the court’s decision as a victory. However, the ruling is likely to undercut the church’s national legal campaign. Its “strategy of claiming the property of a departing diocese because it is somehow ‘hierarchical’ today went down to defeat in Fresno,” canon lawyer Allan Haley said…

…Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori responded by deposing Bishop Schofield and calling a special meeting of synod, which elected the retired Bishop of Northern California as the diocese’s acting bishop. Bishop Lamb and the minority faction then deposed the clergy who supported the secession, and initiated a lawsuit seeking control over the diocese’s property.
On July 21, 2009 the trial court granted a motion in summary judgment on the first count of the complaint brought by Bishop Lamb, which asked for a “judicial declaration that the amendments finally adopted by the Diocese in December 2007 were illegal and void under the Constitution and Canons of ECUSA, and that as a consequence Bishop Lamb had succeeded to the position as bishop of the Diocese, incumbent of its corporation sole, and president/trustee of its associated property-holding entities.”
Bishop Schofield and the now Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin appealed the motion, which effectively gave the minority faction absolute control of the property. However, in its ruling the Court of Appeals held the trial court erred in determining who the proper bishop of San Joaquin was.
The trial court was instructed to determine who the lawful owner of the property was by way of a review of the property transfers made by Bishop Schofield and to determine if these transfers were valid under civil law.
In a statement released after the verdict, attorneys for Bishop Lamb accounted the decision as a victor. San Joaquin Chancellor Michael Glass claimed the decision means “the defendants can no longer assert in court that a Diocese has the right to unilaterally secede from The Episcopal Church, or that Bishop Lamb is somehow not the Bishop of the Diocese.”

Episcopal Church Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop,
shown with Bishop Jerry Lamb. Bishop Lamb came out of retirement
to lead a California Diocese that was reformed after
the original Diocese broke away from Episcopal Church

ADDENDUM IV

In this case regarding a property dispute, web site, Thinking Anglicans comments and reports this on their web page, quoted in part; but for the full text, look here:

Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Appeals Court upholds Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh
Updated again Saturday morning
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports: Court upholds Episcopal Diocese’s claim to assets.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has upheld an Allegheny Common Pleas decision awarding centrally held property of the Episcopal diocese that split in 2008 to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh rather than to the rival Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.
About $20 million in endowment funds and other assets is at stake. The ruling has no direct impact on ownership of parish property, other than indicating that Anglican parishes must apply to the Episcopal diocese to negotiate for their property, rather than vice versa.
The Anglican diocese has not decided whether to pursue a further appeal.
Lionel Deimel has further details of this, see Details of Commonwealth Court Ruling.
The full text of the judgment can be read from a PDF file here.
There is now a fuller story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Episcopal diocese wins a legal round.
Episcopal Bishop Kenneth Price Jr. welcomed the decision, which arrived the day his diocese reached the first settlement with an Anglican parish. It required that parish to cut ties with the Anglican diocese for five years.
“We are pleased with the court’s findings and hope this will be the final legal challenge concerning this issue,” he said…
…The Episcopal Diocese has issued this press release: Appeals Court Upholds Diocese in Assets Case

ADDENDUM V

Litigation History and Background

Historical Matters

Christ Church was the first church in the Colony of Georgia, and in 1758 an act of the Royal Council granted it ownership of the church building and cemetery (now known as the “Colonial Cemetery”, on Abercorn Street). Subsequent to the Revolution the Georgia legislature granted a charter of incorporation to Christ Church, giving the corporate entity the name The Church Wardens and Vestry Men of the episcopal church in Savannah, called Christ church [sic], and confirmed the corporation’s ownership of all property then held by it or afterwards coming into its possession. (Note that the name of the corporation subsequently was changed to The Rector, Church Wardens and Vestrymen of Christ Church in Savannah, which it remains to this day.) The Rector, Church Wardens and Vestrymen of Christ Church in Savannah (herein generally called “Christ Church”) has not conveyed title to its real property to any other party, nor has it assigned any ownership interest in its personal property other than as security for the repayment of certain loans from time to time.
In 1823, three churches in Georgia, namely Christ Church, St. Paul’s, Augusta, and Christ Church, Frederica, created the Diocese of Georgia and contributed funds for its operations and mission. Christ Church has contributed to the financial support of the diocese ever since. The diocese has never given any financial support to Christ Church.

In 1918 the corporate charter of Christ Church was amended, for reasons that are somewhat unclear, to provide that Christ Church “does hereby acknowledge and accede to the doctrine, discipline and worship and the Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America [the national Episcopal organization, now called “The Episcopal Church”], and the Constitution and Canons of the same church in the Diocese of Georgia.” The Constitution and Canons of the national church and the Diocese of Georgia at that time did not include the Dennis Canon.

In 1979 the General Convention of The Episcopal Church (”TEC”) purportedly adopted Canon I.7, Sec. 4, the so-called “Dennis Canon”, (see a copy at the link below) in response to certain judicial developments arising out of controversies in the Presbyterian Church in the 1970s.
On March 30, 2006, the corporate charter of Christ Church was revised so as to repeal all amendments thereto since the original act of incorporation in 1789, and to add appropriate modern provisions required by the internal revenue code of 1986 and the Georgia Non-profit Corporation Code. One result of these revisions was the repeal of the 1918 charter amendment described above, and the addition of a provision that Christ Church “shall be in full communion with all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as the Lord has commanded in His Holy Word and as the same are received and taught in the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal of 1662, and in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.”
Lawsuit

On October 14, 2007, the congregation of Christ Church voted to recognize that TEC and the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia had abandoned the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer and the historic Christian Faith as received, and in so doing had abandoned the communion previously existing between themselves and Christ Church. (See a copy of the resolution at the link below.) On November 14, 2007, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, Inc., (hereinafter called the “Bishop” or the “Diocese”) filed suit in the Superior Court of Chatham County against Christ Church, Fr. Marc Robertson, and the individual members of the vestry (including the clerk) (Civil Action No. CV 07-2039KA). The lawsuit seeks a declaration from the court that all “real and personal property of Christ Church is held in trust for The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Georgia”, and a temporary and permanent injunction ordering Christ Church (i) to stop using such property except for “the mission of The Episcopal Church” and (ii) to relinquish control of such property. It also seeks a judgment against Fr. Marc for all “pecuniary benefits” (salary, etc.,) paid by Christ Church since March 30, 2006, a judgment against the individual vestry members for funds of Christ Church used for purposes other than the “mission and ministry of The Episcopal Church”, and for “such further relief as may be necessary and proper.”

On January 10, 2008, the parties met for formal mediation in an attempt to reach some resolution without litigation. In preliminary discussions prior to the mediation certain ground rules had been laid down regarding what matters were open for discussion and so forth. However, when the parties met for the mediation it became apparent immediately that the Bishop did not intend to follow the agreed protocol. Among other things, the Bishop attempted to bring to the table certain former members of Christ Church, not parties to the lawsuit, and allow them to participate equally in the mediation.

On January 11, 2008, TEC filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit, that is, to be allowed to participate in the lawsuit as a plaintiff. Both Christ Church and the Bishop consented to such intervention.

On May 27, 2008, a group calling itself the “Wardens and Vestry of Christ Church Episcopal” (hereinafter called “CCE”) filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit as a party plaintiff. Christ Church opposed this motion on the bases that (i) there was no showing that CCE was a legal entity with capacity to sue, and (ii) CCE’s intervention would improperly introduce new issues into the lawsuit. A hearing was held on the matter, and CCE amended its motion to allege that it was an unincorporated association with legal capacity. The court then granted the motion and CCE joined the lawsuit as a party plaintiff on September 9, 2008.
Legal Matters

The primary basis for the claims of the Bishop, TEC, and CCE is the Dennis Canon. The Dennis Canon purports to create a trust for the benefit of TEC and for the local diocese over any property held by or for a parish. The main issues are (i) whether the Dennis Canon was effective to create a trust, and (ii) if so, what effect that has on the authority of the vestry of Christ Church to deal with the church’s assets.

Several questions have been raised as to whether the Dennis Canon was properly adopted, i.e., whether the procedures required by TEC’s own Constitution and Canons were followed. Strangely, critical portions of the official records kept at the time of the 1979 General Convention dealing with the Dennis Canon have disappeared from the custody of TEC. Even if the Dennis Canon was validly adopted in accordance with TEC’s rules, its legal effectiveness to create a trust has been called in question in several court cases and never directly decided in a final judgment. Cases presently are pending in the Supreme Court of California in which it is anticipated the court will decide whether the Dennis Canon is legally effective under California law. The court is expected to rule sometime no later than January, 2009.

Note that the legal effectiveness of the Dennis Canon to create a trust in favor of TEC and the local Bishop is a matter of state law, which governs the creation and operation of trusts. Thus, whether and to what extent a court decision from another state bears on Christ Church’s case depends on the precise rationale of the decision, the degree of similarity between the trust laws of Georgia and the other state, and related matters.

A “trust” is defined generally as a fiduciary relationship with respect to property, arising from a manifestation of intent to create that relationship, and subjecting the person who holds title to the property to certain duties to deal with it for the benefit of one or more other parties. It is useful to think of the ownership of property as consisting of two essential aspects: the right to control and manage the property, and the right to benefit from the property. Most of the time these two aspects of ownership are held by the same person, but where a trust exists they are separated. The right of control is held by one or more parties called the “trustee(s)” and the right to the benefits of the property (e.g., its income) are held by one or more other parties, each of whom is called a “beneficiary”. Where a trust exists the trustee has full control over the management of the property but must exercise this authority for the sole benefit of the beneficiary of the trust. The beneficiary generally has little or no power to control the management of the trust assets so long as the trustee is not abusing its power in some way. It is axiomatic that the person creating the trust (termed the “settler” or “grantor”) must own the property over which the trust is imposed at the time the trust is created. This is the great issue with the Dennis Canon, aside from the question of whether it was validly adopted in the first place.

This report appeared originally in Church of England Newspaper, London, September, 2011 by Peter Menkin.