imagination – Stories of Yearning

Winter Eyrie: “Day’s End” by Becky Hunsberger and “Pantoum” by Reagan Dregge

March 10, 2022apollard73 Comments

Fresh snow, a new stack of books waiting for me at the library, a cuddly cat, and a goofy dog are giving me a cozy week. I’m trying to brighten these last weeks of winter by enjoying all the indoor things that are less attractive in warmer weather: lighting scented candles during work hours, rereading my book of Scottish fairy tales, and curling up with a quilt as I write.

The next two contributions to the “Winter Eyrie” project are poems by Becky Hunsberger and Reagan Dregge. I love how these two pieces, planned and written separately, juxtapose different aspects of late winter – coziness and dreariness, chaos and peace, sadness and hope – within themselves and between each other.

Becky’s poem, “Day’s End,” translates the gap (or bridge?) between mundane and magical, or work and dreaming, into exquisite imagery. As a fellow remote worker, I identify with this poem so much – how the transition from work to rest, labor to play feels more mental than physical when you don’t have a commute. It inspires me to make a better “eyrie” of my own workspace.

Reagan’s poem, “Pantoum,” is a masterful expression of Lenten meditation, of faith and lament. A pantoum is a complex and beautiful form, very difficult to create at all, much less with such rich figurative language and cumulative meaning. I had to keep rereading this poem to take it in and found new beauty in it each time.

Enjoy!

Day’s End

by Becky Hunsberger

Orchid and fairy lights at a desk by a window — Photo by Becky Hunsberger

A cup of tea—Earl Grey, decaf—
Sits steaming to the side of the step-stool
Set up on the counter, as a podium
On which my computer rests. Faces
Of colleagues from across nine time zones
Animate the screen, but I gaze absently
Past, soaking in the glory of the peach-
Glazed clouds skimming across the window panes.
The sun sinks slowly below the tree-lined horizon
Signaling the end of another working day.
Darkness falls. The meeting draws to a close.

I gather the stool, notebooks, and papers,
Replacing the clutter of my home office
With a pink & white orchid, climbing
Its way out of the ceramic teal pot that just
Matches the accent tiles on the walls.
The soft glow of fairy lights outlines
This cozy kitchen niche, transforming
My top floor eyrie into a place for dreams
And imagination. Gone is the work of the day;
Here, in the darkness, poetry blooms.

Pantoum

by Reagan Dregge

Eagle's nest in a winter prairie — *Photo by Reagan Dregge*

I shuffle through strewn pages smudged with ink
Beneath my window cleft, entombed in cloud
From gravely gathered fields to buried brink
The ground like ash, the sky a woolen shroud

Beneath my window cleft, entombed in cloud
Bare wind-warped trees like huddled mourners groan
The ground like ash, the sky a woolen shroud
A hoarse and hollow keening rattles bone

Bare wind-warped trees like huddled mourners groan
The pockmarked crust of winter ebbs away
A hoarse and hollow keening rattles bone
Awaiting gentler rain and warmer ray

The pockmarked crust of winter ebbs away
From gravely gathered fields to buried brink
Awaiting gentler rain and warmer ray
I shuffle through strewn pages smudged with ink

Becky Hunsberger

Born a Colorado mountain girl, Becky now lives near the English coast. As a teacher without a classroom and introverted homebody turned global leader, Becky tries to make sense of the many paradoxes in her life through her poetry and writing. When she’s not writing or traveling for work, she is often found curled up with a good book and hot cup of tea or taking a wander around the English countryside enjoying the natural beauty that abounds there. You can read more from Becky on her blog The Sojourner.

Reagan Dregge

Reagan loves names and words and stories. She once studied creative writing and theatre arts, but today she homeschools, writes handwritten letters, and salvages her own little house on the prairie with a husband, daughter, and multiplying menagerie (one dog, two cats, and a flock of chickens). Her favorite seasons are winter, spring, summer, and fall. Follow her blog, The Grace Book, to read more of her work.

Blue Dreams and Green Stories: Summer Travel in Scotland

July 15, 2021apollard73 Comments

I finally got to travel. After yearning for it in the golden fall, dreaming of it in the windy winter, and planning for it in the cool green spring, I finally got out to the Highlands & Islands and a bit of the Lowlands: the Isles of Mull, Staffa, and Iona one weekend, the Isle of Skye, and then Edinburgh.

It’s been glorious, exhausting, enlightening, stressful, blissful. Hikes across emerald slopes sprinkled with tiny daisies, buttercups, purple heather, and fluffy cotton-grass; cozy evenings in wood-paneled pubs with tartan carpeting and paintings of antlered deer; ferry rides past rugged peaks and lonely islands; views of faraway blue hills and glimmering lochs; laughter and long talks on train and bus rides.

Each place gave me memories, dreams, and fragments of stories.

Iona

Sacred Haven

Iona is a tiny island, 3 square miles, with only 150 permanent residents and herds of grazing sheep and Highland cows (“coos”). It is also the place where St. Columba landed from Ireland in the 500s (1500 years ago!) and started an abbey. A replica/rebuild of the abbey is there today, full of the remnants of Celtic crosses, new sandstone pillars covered in intricate carvings, and ancient gravestones.

One of my favorite insights was seeing the snake-and-boss design. Despite the Edenic tradition of snakes as creatures of evil, apparently the medieval Christians saw the casting and regrowing of skin as a symbol of death and resurrection. I have heard whispers of the richness of Celtic Christinaity, of thin places and rhythms of life and mysteries incarnate in the natural world (such as clovers representing the Trinity) but I want to study more. The whole island felt quiet and sacred – a place to come and heal, walk the pasturelands and talk to God, and feel connected with the great cloud of witnesses that is the universal Church.

Story fragments

A sacred place of healing
An island at the end of the world
An abbey with a buried treasure

Staffa

Lonely Marvels

Staffa is even tinier than Iona, shaped by some geological process I still don’t fully understand to have natural hexagonal pillars. It looks giant-carved. We rode out by ferry for an hour, chilled by the sea-wind and enchanted with a fluffy white dog who loved us dearly, and then had an hour to explore it. We sprinted down to the wonder of Fingal’s Cave, aquamarine water in a deep black vault, and then back across the steep cliffs to see the PUFFINS. They were just as clownish and cute as we hoped, though tinier. They didn’t care anything about us, but launched off into the sky as a dark seabird flew overhead.

Story fragments

People resettling uninhabited isles and encountering magical creatures
An echoing cave that is really a shadow kingdom
A tour boat crew that has a special understanding with the mermaids in the area

Skye

Blue Kingdom

Skye is more rugged than Iona, Mull, or Staffa. It’s also many shades of green and blue, with steep cliffs, purple heather, gray rock, and the same sprinkling of wildflowers. Slender waterfalls wend their way down the hills, among the evergreens. A Scottish shepherd recommended a gorgeous hike across the cliffs that gave us exquisite views: distant azure mountains, white sailboats on the sea, and window panes glittering in the town. We couldn’t capture it in photos, though we tried very, very hard. The shepherd also told us about the Nicholson clan of Portree (Port Righ in the Gaelic) who went broke in the 1800s and emigrated to Tasmania and the Carolinas.

We spent Sunday afternoon with Skye’s Magical Tours: an ex-fisherman named Brian took us to the glimmering Fairy Pools and around the island. Skye was magnificent, so old and huge that I felt small and lonely. We filled it with laughter, with dinner of shepherd’s pie and philosophical discussion, mornings of berry-and-Nutella crepes and foamy cappuccinos.

Story fragments

Cloud-creatures in a mountain country
Fairy folk who are defined by the color blue (as opposed to green, the traditional elvish color in Scottish lore)
Visitors arriving at a shepherd’s cottage
Selkies at twilight

Edinburgh

City of Stone

After several trips in the wild, it felt strange to be in a busy city: buses and trams on Princes Street, women in flowery dresses, shops with tartan scarves and Celtic jewelry, gardens of pink roses and fragrant honeysuckle, Gothic architecture, and modern tinted windows. We feasted on the best of Edinburgh: touring the gilded halls of Holyrood Palace, cullen skink and clotted cream raspberry cheesecake at a cozy pub, dizzying views from Arthur’s Seat, dappled sunlight on the river by St. Bernard’s Well, and golden hour in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

Story fragments

A tiled fireplace with a secret message (I fell in love with Holyrood Palace’s tiled fireplaces)
Swans and a ruined abbey
Queen Ann’s lace on a dormant volcano
A locked well with healing powers
A brownie who lives at an Air BnB

Meditation: Commercialization vs. Reenchantment

In Edinburgh, thoughts planted on Mull, Iona, Staffa, and Skye finally took root and began to sprout: I realized how dramatic the tourism industry is in Scotland, and probably in other places. I mean “dramatic” in the sense of performative or theatrical: the little shops in Iona, Portree, Old Town, and other places shout all the most distinctive and unique aspects of Scottish culture and history to attract attention. The symbols of Scotland’s Scottishness – tartan, bagpipes, highland cows, the Loch Ness monster, Celtic runes and symbolism, ancient ruins, haggis, thistles, unicorns, and teapots – are the most prominently displayed where strangers and foreigners like me can purchase them and carry them home, like chipping stones from a crumbling castle. Scottish people cannot love tartan that much; it’s outsiders who want the flavor and breath and music of Scotland, because we want to come and experience something fresh and different and fully its own, individual self, somewhere unlike our home place. Most Scottish people shop at the T.K. Maxx or luxury mall we visited, which are almost identical to retail in America.

That made me sad. I know the Western world has many similarities – celebrities are popular in multiple countries, and so on – but I would hate to have all the beautiful distinctiveness of Scottish lore and heritage as a thing of the past. I have only been a Master’s student in an international university town for a year here, so I don’t feel that I really know the Scottish people and culture. But the sheer clamour of a few shops in New Town in Edinburgh made me uneasy, as if only the tourist industry wants to preserve full and distinctive Scottishness – and then, only to sell it.

But I have tasted Scottish culture in literature. I’ve been a dragonfly skimming the depths of it: Scottish fairy tales like “The Well at the World’s End” and “The Black Bull of Norroway,” ballads like “Tam Lin” and “Thomas the Rhymer,” the mesmerizing fantasies of George MacDonald, the Jane Austen-ish societal explorations of Margaret Oliphaunt, the exquisite prose of George Mackay Brown, the haunting tales of James Hogg, and the simple profundity of Alexander McCall Smith. My side-project next year will be to delve more deeply into these and more.

These writers imbibed Scottish tradition and added to it, weaving the desires, dreams, fears, and tensions of their own time into the loom of myth and legend. As I writer, I want to follow in their footsteps and tell stories that help reenchant places like this. I want to reawaken the wonder of selkies on the beach in the moonlight and fairy folk dancing under the green hills, as well as capturing the mystery and dangers of our own time: the whispered rumors and masked faces of COVID, the political tensions that are re-tribalizing countries and regions, the seductive illusions of social media, and the now-too-familiar marvels of the Internet and smartphones.

St. Andrews

Gray Havens

After so many buses, trains, and ferries, it is good to be in St. Andrews again. I’m astonished to find that after magnificent peaks and staggering views on Skye and Arthur’s Seat, the soft, golden-green beauty of fields and woods heals me instead of overwhelming me.

This place is not home. It’s only mine for the rest of the summer. But I will love every day I have left.

The Magic of Late Winter, Part III: Guest Post by Reagan Dregge and Kristen Kopp

March 6, 2020apollard72 Comments

Sunset over snow-covered trees — *Photo by Kristen Kopp*

This blog series on the magic of late winter has been a cross-country exploration of regional beauty – Kimberly Margaret Miller gave me a glimpse of winter sunlight in the deep South, and Loren Warnemuende showed me the snow and flowering dogwoods of southeast Michigan. This week’s post is written by Reagan Dregge, with pictures by Kristen Kopp. These writers are from Minnesota, the prairie, where Laura Ingalls Wilder spent a year On the Banks of Plum Creek and temperatures can drop to -30 degrees Fahrenheit in winter (wind chill can drop to -68 degrees).

Reagan Dregge‘s breathtaking imagery reminds me that we live in a world of wonders, a place just as wild and magical as Faerie. Kristen Kopp‘s images remind me to open my eyes to the beauty of the ordinary, the precious gift of snow and sunlight, leaf and sky. Enjoy!

Winter Magic

by Reagan Dregge
pictures by Kristen Kopp

You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
– Annie Dillard

By late winter the air is scorched ice. The snowscape is sucked dry, colorless. Lungs burn. Skin stings. The ground is a slick slab of sheer adamant. Frost laces windowpanes like fractures into faerie. The frozen world is transparent. I can see through every stilled molecule, through trees that crack the sky, through the thin atmosphere all the way to the Milky Way wrapped like a scarf around our galaxy. The frigid stars blaze bright and sharp. I imagine standing on the surface of the moon. The constellations spin above in dazzling clarity.

Have you beheld a sundog-flanked dawn? The sun, shattered into shards? Three fire pillars pierce the cobalt firmament, diamond guardians of earth’s rim, or an archangel with two swords barring reentry into paradise? On winter evenings, neons melt on the horizon. Charged particles scatter solar flame. Unnamed, unnumbered hues are born in the bent beams, next to which rainbows are a faded polaroid.

Bitter winds writhe and moan across the plains. Windows rattle, porch bells ring. The shrill surgeon slashes and severs, casting withered sticks and shriveled limbs across the brittle bier beneath attending silver maples. Huddled hedges offer brief respite from the biting chill. Fog’s froth condenses and crystallizes, coating every stem, twig, and chain link with rime ice armor. Glass-sheathed grass sheaves gather at the edge of ditches. Lake waves freeze into a gleaming fleet of fairy sails. The cold cuts words short, and they drop to the ground like bubbles blown in subzero temps or evaporate instantaneously like a pot of boiling water thrown into the air. Weather fluctuations can be detected in the length of icicles dangling from every lip and gable, dripping into their own trenches or dropping like grenades in the night.

Spread out under an open sky the snow sparkles like champagne, and in the crisp gold light a toast is raised. Blizzards blow across the plains, covering forest and field with mountainous shifting drifts. The polar vortex unfurls its coffers and foams forth layer after layer over the bounding breadth. Clusters of vapor flurry and fall, spun and splintered and studded. No two alike, each flake a delicate intricacy. They melt the moment they touch tongue or alight eyelash, existing brief as a breath, fleeting as a flower. From wet heft to pellet sleet, snow’s forms are as bottomless as Mary Poppins’ carpet bag. The sounds of my walk down our quarter-mile driveway change with every day: creak, crunch, slurp, slush, swish, sweep, whisper-soft absorption.

Deep within the frozen earth, amphibians sleep in soundless stasis. Bird and butterfly have long since flown south, but woodpeckers and white-tailed deer remain, subsisting on bark and acorns. Rabbits and mice trace patterns in the morning dusting. I once saw a hawk’s wingprint stamped in a snowbank. Wisdom and miracle abound in this stark and solitary season.

To those who find winter blank and monotonous: you must write your psalm and I must write mine. There is glory hidden in the gray—look for it when the cold burns and the light dims. Look, and you will find winter crowning the year, robed in alabaster, strewn with rubies, fragrant as juniper, fresh as citrus, warm as cinnamon.

Reagan Dregge
Reagan loves names and words and stories. She once studied creative writing and theatre arts, but today she homeschools, writes handwritten letters, and salvages her own little house on the prairie with a husband, daughter, and multiplying menagerie (one cat, two dogs, a dwarf netherland rabbit, and a small flock of chickens). Her favorite seasons are winter, spring, summer, and fall. Follow her blog, The Grace Book, to read more of her work.

Kristen Kopp
Kristen lives in a cottage on the prairies of Southern Minnesota. She works in her local Community Development Department by day and spends the rest of her time wandering in the woods, writing letters, and gathering with friends and family to share meals and play board games. Follow her on Instagram at @kristenannakopp.

Musings from the UK: Oxford

June 9, 2019apollard7Leave a comment

On June 2nd, I flew back from a week in the UK – exhausted, content, pondering, and with a renewed sense of yearning. May was an intense month of travel (Colorado Springs, Denver, Pennsylvania, and then the UK) and I was more than ready to come home.

But it was beautiful. The rich history and traditions of Oxford, the mysterious beauty of the Lake District, the medieval look and modern busyness of Edinburgh, and the green peace of Durham gave me images and insights enough to ponder for a long time. I still need to sift through my hundreds of pictures and thoughts, but at first glance, here are a few things I discovered.

Oxford

Oxford has layers of loveliness: the old beauty of stone walls, buildings, spires, and statues, all covered in the fresh spring beauty of yellow roses, green ivy, and flowering vines. We walked through the green parks every day, dodging bikes and other foot travelers, listening to birds cooing in the trees and watching ducks, swans, and ravens hop around among the lilly pads and cattails in ponds.

The town was full of tourists like us, the murmur of many languages, and students in black robes. We got chai tea and Italian hot chocolate (my life will never be the same) at a tea shop, wandered through a curio/bookshop full of quill pens and gilded masks, and explored the stalls of the Covered Market.

We heard echoes and whispers of the spirit of Oxford. The town and university are centered on thought leadership and intellectual discovery, but remember faith: we attended a lecture on “The Failures of Political Journalism” at Green Templeton college, wandered through the University Church of St. Mary, went to exhibitions on language and 3-D images at the Weston Library and Museum of the History of Science, and enjoyed an Evensong at Magdalen College.

Every day brought so much to ponder and so much to enjoy. I’ll reference this trip in many future posts, but for now, I came away with some important resolutions:

Enjoy nearby beauty

Oxford was breathtaking with its ancient stonework, glassy rivers, yellow roses, and silver skies. But I had a recurring realization: New England is just as beautiful: its starry mayflowers and pert black-capped chickadees, fragrant beach-roses and green maple trees. Though traveling is great in many ways, I only need to step out my front door to see beauty. I need to value the treasures around me, not just those that are far away.

Seek unity in diversity

Most of the “content” we found at Oxford in lectures and exhibitions presented a set of different opinions on each topic, without identifying any as primary or true. Diversity, inclusion, and redefinition (breaking down old meanings of humanity, gender, faith, language, science,etc.) were celebrated as the highest good.

I love listening to people who are different from me, being sharpened as iron sharpens iron. But I believe that the highest good is celebrating true things, not just different things. The original purpose of universities was to seek unity in diversity, with every individual discipline striving together to unravel mysteries. I yearn to seek transcendent, unifying truth, Wisdom, in literature, art, language, and theology, and from people of all nations, backgrounds, and experiences.

Burn bright in darkness; cultivate in the desert

While rushing to the lecture, we had two minutes to duck into the Eagle and Child Pub, were Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings used to meet. My glimpse of the place stayed with me: dark, tiny rooms dimly lit by light bulbs, with barely enough places to squeeze faded armchairs beside brick fireplaces. The famous Rabbit Room was plain, with only a wooden table that may have seated five.

Lewis and Tolkien lived in a dark time: through the blood, fire, and fear of two world wars, sickness, grief, and a growing cynicism and loss of belief. But in imitation of God in Genesis 1, they spoke worlds into being: stories that acknowledge darkness and despair, but burned bright with love, beauty, and hope. The Inklings’ fellowship by the fire nurtured friendships, creativity, and joy that they poured out in stories that still kindle imaginations today.

The Christological center of Lewis and Tolkien’s imaginations stirred me deeper still. People of different faiths or no faith at all (like George R.R. Martin, Philip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, and Patricia McKillip) can also imagine worlds into being. But the narrative of an all-powerful, loving Redeemer who sacrificed Himself for humanity is the greatest Story; all other good stories echo it.

The world is still dark – maybe darker – today. But there are many light-bearers and dream-cultivators, people of strong faith and abundant imaginations, in Oxford (including Michael Ward, Sarah Clarkson, Joy Clarkson, and many others), in New England, and in the whole world. I can’t wait to discover more of them.

Reflections on the STC Conference 2019

May 10, 2019apollard7Leave a comment

In the gray days of February and March this year, I realized that the two conferences I wanted to go to in the spring were both in Colorado, both concerning writers, within a week of each other.

I returned home after the first one last week, the Imagination Redeemed conference. On Sunday, I flew out to Denver again for the Society for Technical Communication (STC) conference and returned late on Wednesday night.

The Imagination Redeemed conference was in Colorado Springs, that blooming valley in the mountains; the STC conference was in downtown Denver, where the brick-and-stone buildings were too short to block the rain-gray sky (unlike the dark skyscrapers of Manhattan – I couldn’t help comparing), and trees with bright green leaves or fresh blossoms dotted the sidewalks.

Though I didn’t plan to attend two conferences back-to-back, and my head spun with altitude sickness the first night and day, comparing the two gatherings was fascinating. Both organizations attract thoughtful, creative, and dedicated communicators who want to hone their craft and connect with people like them.

The STC is made of technical communicators, who help their coworkers or customers understand and use technical information: technical writers and editors, librarians, instructional designers, content strategists, and information architects from software, manufacturing, medicine, business and finance, and other industries.

As technical communicators (I’m a technical writer), we work with brilliant people – software developers, engineers, mechanics, architects, and others – to translate their complex knowledge into simple steps for audiences who benefit from their work. I attended sessions about integrating images and text, the power of story, career planning, best practices of knowledge management, and more.

The Imagination Redeemed conference focused on faith and beauty, imagination and worship; the STC conference focused on transforming the creations of geniuses into plain language and clear concepts. These gatherings represent two sides of my mind and heart that I’m cultivating in work and in play, united by a growing sense of yearning: I long to be a messenger, a world-maker, teacher, and healer through my writing, in my job and my own work.

Soon, I hope to write about how technical writing is so much more than the boring manual-writing I though it would be: how it’s as challenging, inspiring, and wonder-ful (in the old sense of the world) as studying English literature. For now, here are some resolutions as a technical writer to match the ones I made at the Anselm Society conference:

Tell stories for good – The STC conference reaffirmed what I already knew: that stories are powerful. From a technical writing perspective, stories help people understand complex concepts (think of how some people can remember all the plot threads in the Marvel universe) and remember important information. As a technical writer, I want to tell stories for good, to help people gain the knowledge they need to thrive.

Critical consumerism – One of the last speakers at the conference described how we can be critical consumers, thoughtfully examining the evidence to evaluate claims and rationales. Does the speaker’s conclusion exaggerate the evidence or ignore key findings? In the workplace and the rest of my life, training myself to examine evidence will guard me against misconceptions and manipulation.

Wonder in the ordinary – Several speakers emphasized the ancient roots of technical writing: from cairns marking paths in the mountains, to cave paintings, to medieval manuscripts, humans have been teaching each other to do complicated tasks since the beginning of time. I used to think technical writing was dull work, typing up thick manuals of small black text that no one wanted to read. Over this year, I’ve tasted the joy of learning how to uncover the creative genius of software developers and communicate it to non-experts: detective work as close to my childhood dreams of being Nancy Drew as I’ll probably get in real life.

It’s good to find wonder in your work; good to sit in awe of the mind of the Creator as you see the beauty of the human mind in lines of software code, or complex machinery, or the rhythm of a sonnet. In my technical and creative writing, I want to awaken that wonder in others.

My real vocation – A speaker on a podcast I listened to yesterday said that “you work to feed your dream, and then you work on your dream to feed your everyday work” (clumsy paraphrase). Am I a technical writer in the “real world,” to earn a living, or am I “really” a creative writer who has a day job so she can eat? Both – maybe not forever, but for this season, my real vocation is to become skilled at both types of writing.

But I’m back to New England again, at least for a few weeks. The cherry trees are blossoming in bright pink clusters; the rest of the leaves are peeking from the edges of tree-fingers; and I can walk along the beach at sunset with my sister and talk about life. Summer is stirring, and I have writing to do.

Meditations on the Imagination Redeemed 2019

May 1, 2019apollard71 Comment

Glen Eyrie, a castle in the mountains. — Glen Eyrie

On Monday morning, I flew back to New England from the Imagination Redeemed conference in Colorado Springs – exhausted, full, and inspired. The conference was hosted by the Anselm Society, which hopes to spark a “renaissance of the Christian imagination” – a new understanding between the Church and the arts of how we can glorify God through visual art, music, literature, poetry, theater, and dance.

The conference was a feast of wisdom and fellowship. Scholars, artists, teachers, and writers discussed re-enchanting the church, medieval cosmology, sacred art, the moral imagination, writing as image-bearing, and more. I had wonderful talks with fellow attendees – writers, artists, ballet teachers, graduate students, opera singers, and others – about their work.

I’m tired. The richness of ideas and insights was overwhelming, and the red-eye return left me barely holding onto consciousness (my first all-nighter ever). But I’m also encouraged and inspired to meet so many people who are doing what I want to do, or share my ambitions: to glorify God through my art, to create and cultivate beauty, to share wisdom and joy through retelling God’s story.

I’ll probably reference the conference many times in future blog posts, but for now, I’ll share some of the goals the conference inspired:

Write – Heidi White’s talk about creating art inspired me to pour out essays, short stories, and books with greater courage, even if my words are only read by a few, because I’m not writing for my own fame or glory, but God’s. Lanier Ivester’s sonnet-writing workshop encouraged me to capture the inexpressible with imagery and challenge myself to greater creativity with meter and rhyme. Lancia Smith’s discussion of writing as image-bearing motivated me to bear or “bring forth” transcendent truths in stories.

Explore how my doctrinal beliefs shape me and my art – Though all the speakers were Christians, many came from an Anglican or Catholic background and discussed doctrines or practices that are outside of my faith tradition, including sacramental theology, a division between the clergy and the laity, and liturgy. Though Christians are all united by the blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit, doctrinal differences like these do shape our thinking and behavior. I want to explore my own theological framework to ensure that it is Biblically grounded and see how it affects my imagination, writing, and life choices.

Connect with other artists – I had so much fun meeting people who spoke my language, who know and love the same stories, who have similar dreams and challenges. Though I can travel to connect with other artists and writers, I would love to engage in that community here in New England, where geographical closeness makes it easier to build relationships.

Study – The speakers introduced me to so many fascinating ideas: musica mundana (medieval cosmology – “the music of the spheres”), kairos vs. chronos time, and more. I want to relearn Latin, study New Testament Greek, and read dozens of books and articles – a huge task, but all things I can accomplish eventually.

Engage with the Word – Junius Johnson, one of the speakers, encouraged artists and theologians to intentionally connect with each other. Theology is one of the best sources of inspiration, and art is a beautiful way to worship. I want to study the Bible deeply, reverently, and joyfully to better express God’s love and wisdom in my writing.

After learning so much and meeting so many wonderful people at the conference, I got to enjoy the beauty of Colorado Springs: Pike’s Peak shining with snow above the dark ridges of other mountains; Glen Eyrie castle tucked in a green valley; the Garden of the Gods, huge red rocks towering over the hills.

But it’s good to come home. In New England, soft pink buds are opening in the cherry trees, and new leaves are coming out in Scottish green. I’m tired, but full – eager to learn, to study, and to write stories of yearning.

The Magic of the Ordinary

February 16, 2019February 8, 2019apollard7Leave a comment

New York City skyline in the glow of sunset.

Nurtured by books like The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, I used to believe that modern technology has no place in literature. Medieval technology such as swords and ploughs, and maybe even Industrial Revolution technology like trains and mills, were acceptable, but nothing later than 1920s-era technology belonged in books.

My logic for this assumption ran deep into my beliefs about stories. I believed that stories were the exclusive realm of the mythical and the wonderful: ancient forests, splendid castles, beautiful princesses, and so on. As an avenue of the imagination, stories should be above the minor, ugly details of life, like technology.

This subconscious assumption ignored the wonderful details of ordinary life which Lewis, Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Edward Eager, Edward Ormondroyd, E. Nesbit, and others use. In Lewis’s Prince Caspian, Edmund remarks that being summoned from England by a spell without warning is “worse than what father says about being at the mercy of the telephone.” Ormondroyd uses an elevator as a key part of his Time at the Top.

Mentioning current technology also gives stories the precious stamp of regionalism – memorializing a certain place and time so readers can visit it. Now, I love tasting the flavor of past decades through references to slates and record albums.

My assumption also glossed over the very real fact that swords and ploughs, trains and mills were just as boring and ordinary to our predecessors as subways and cell phones are to us. For all their mythology, swords are really just romanticized pieces of metal.

G.K. Chesterton explains this phenomenon of ignoring the romance of the present with reference to modern-day detective stories. He praised detective stories for capturing

. . . some sense of the poetry of modern life. Men lived among mighty mountains and eternal forests for ages before they realized that they were poetical; it may reasonably be inferred that some of our descendants may see the chimney-pots as rich a purple as the mountain-peaks, and find the lamp-posts as old and natural as the trees. (from here)

The storytellers from whom the Grimm brothers gleaned their material wove their tales with commonplace objects. Spindles are immortal because of Sleeping Beauty, but they were as normal as cars or coffee pots to the people who used them daily.

Chesterton’s perspective reveals the amazing possibilities of our world. We don’t need to reuse crowns and Gothic castles to spice up our stories (at least, not all the time). Why not mythologize Brooklyn apartments and Iphones?

The technology of our day has near-magical capabilities. Google puts a world of knowledge at our fingertips; planes let us fly over thousands of miles in a single day.

With that in mind, I’ve put some story ideas below which realize a few possibilities of modern technology, the way fairy tales used magic rings or carpets:

Glitch in one particular Iphone which lets the user call other dimensions
Car (specific make and model) with a radio which begins receiving messages for help from another world/time
Computer virus which spreads a real, biological virus via the Internet
Windmills which were made not to generate clean energy, but to guard against holes in Earth’s magical atmospheric shield
Subway train which gets lost and discovers a network of caves full of secrets (treasure, ancient warnings about disasters, lost civilizations, etc.)
Stopwatch which begins to count down the days/hours/minutes until the next terrorist attack
Energy beings (aliens?) which communicate with the entire country using the powerlines

Material: The Ordinary and the Exotic

February 15, 2019February 15, 2019apollard7Leave a comment

Last year, I set out on the noble, if reckless, task of reading through my old school anthology of Romantic Literature from cover to cover. I loved the course, and the sight of the book sitting unread on my shelf filled me with so much guilt that I finally gave in. It’s alphabetical (sort of), and William Blake nearly overwhelmed me – his language! His images! I haven’t lingered on each poem as long or thoroughly as a worthy scholar would, but I’ve begun to pick up a certain pattern between Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Sir William Jones, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Blake, and Shelley (I skipped ahead to him): a focus on what I call “exotic materials.”

The Romantics had a deep love for the natural world that they conveyed beautifully. They celebrated the “stuff,” the materials, of nature itself such as the sun, moon, and stars; wood, stone, leaves, flowers, grass, fire; water, ice, and snow. (See Barbauld’s “Summer Evening’s Meditation” or Charlotte Smith’s September 1791 poem about the moon – they’re breathtaking).

However, when the Romantics discussed the “stuff” or materials of the human world, I see a contrast between the exotic materials of dreams and the homelier stuff of everyday. For example, Blake discusses soot and bricks in poems such as “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London,” but he dreams of gold, silver, precious stones, and melting metals in his formidable vision The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Shelley discusses a whole list of exotic materials in his enthralling poem Alastor: diamond, gold, crystal, chrysolite, pearl, gems, and alabaster (somewhere around lines 90-114).

Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge and the other anthologized writers also contrast the exotic materials of dreams and visions with the uglier, commonplace materials of Regency England (especially London). Note: British Orientalism hovers in the background of this fascination with the “exotic.”

As a writer, I realized that I, too, have a tendency to fill my dreams with exotic materials – expensive, intoxicating “stuff” that become the set and props for my daydream adventures. I made a list of the kind of materials that fascinate and compel me, that carry with them associations of magic and intrigue, adventure and romance:

gold
silver
silk
satin
velvet
mahogany
marble
bronze
iron
steel
copper
mahogany
cedar
crystal
glass
gems

Gold and crystal chandelier in front of a mirror and some red velvet curtains.

Like Anne of Green Gables, who loved the idea of an “alabaster brow” before knowing what it was, I love thinking about these materials and using them in metaphor and simile. However, I believe that writers have an obligation to reveal the beauty of our own place and time. I started to make a list of the materials I encounter every day:

concrete
plastic
styrofoam
cardboard
paper
wood
metal
rubber
cement
ceramic
paper
cardstock
aluminum
tin
sawdust

Unfortunately, this list felt increasingly negative as I kept listing. Where is the poetry in plastic? The magic in concrete? The fascination in cardboard?

Back to the Romantics: in an age hovering on the brink of the Industrial Revolution, they too saw and touched ugly things every day. Even nature has its ugly moments: mud, sleet, slush, decaying bark, ashes, mold, and more. This is a fallen world; a truth-loving perspective acknowledges loveliness and hideousness, and joy celebrates and encourages the former.

With that in mind, I made a goal of listing “good” materials I encounter every day, or seeing “ugly” materials in a positive light:

The shining smoothness of glazed pottery
The dreamy reflections in a car’s gleaming exterior
The cheerful cleanliness of fresh paint
Frost glittering in the cracks of pavement
The crinkly delight of tissue paper

What materials construct your world? How can you describe them in order to create a vivid, tactile experience for the reader?

Gray Days: Finding Joy at Winter’s End

February 9, 2019February 9, 2019apollard71 Comment

A sheet of broken ice on the ocean. The sky is dark gray until the horizon, which is gold with sunset.

The most difficult time of year for me (emotionally) is revolving back to us again: late February and all of March, winter’s deathbed. The bitter cold or gloomy damp, the gray skies, dirty snow, and slush, the wet bark of leafless trees, and the fierce winds weigh tend to drag my mood down to the depths.

Why is this season harder for me even than the darkest time of year, December 31st? Holidays and “human” seasons (as opposed to the earth’s seasons) have a lot to do with it: November and December are made cozy and warm, exciting and communal by Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. The difference is aesthetic, too: though it’s dark and cold, the fresh bright snow glitters in the sunlight and glows in the moonlight; jewel-toned lights glimmer on porches and trees; fireplaces within and cold without make indoors cozy and inviting. Somehow, actual blackness is easier to romanticize and enjoy than the ambivalent, soulless gray we often face at this time of year.

Certain memories of this time of year also depress me; in the not-so-long-ago school years, March especially was the month farthest away from the relief of vacations, when my motivation to study was running dry. In fourth grade, I read Astrid Lingren’s Pippi in the South Seas and almost cried as I dreamed of escaping my cold, boring, lonely winter days to a tropical paradise of friendship and adventure.

One of my joys as a writer and thinker is the transcendence of dreams. Even as the outside world is drab and colorless, the inside world, literal and figurative, is always under our control. I always turn on the inside lights on overcast days and sometimes light a scented candle, or bring our gas fireplace to roaring cheer. As to the inside world of my mind, I can transform that in two ways: imagination and recognition.

Imagination

I love the flight cliches for the imagination: our imagination jumps, soars, and has wings because it’s transcendent. We tap into the unknown and unseen and create new worlds that not only heal, comfort, and entertain, but when realized with the right amount of action, can manifest themselves in reality.

I can imagine away this winter-sickness by transforming it. For example:

Damp: The humidity that hangs heavy in the mornings isn’t the mold-nurturing misery it seems; it’s silver mist heavy with secrets, the fog of mystery and imagination, in which the phantoms of fear and longing take shape.
Ugliness: I can survive this time by recreating the loveliness of the other seasons, especially summer. My mind is an infinite landscape of green spaces: zephrys whispering through weeping willow branches, gardens lush with the curling petals of peony blossoms, sunrises like burning roses over rippling lakes.
Boredom: The dull, unchanging days are the persevering striving in the middle of a quest, like Frodo and Sam’s wanderings in the Dead Marshes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, when the heroes are tempted to abandon their quest.

“The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” said John Milton in Paradise Lost. If our minds can become prisons, they can also become paradises.

Recognition

And yet . . . “When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances He doesn’t mean for us to imagine them away,” says Marilla wisely in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Imagination is a wonderful escape, but those who accuse dreamers of being of no concrete help make a valid point. I can dream away the ugliness of this late winter season – or I can recognize the beauty underneath it, inside of it, to which my demand for clear skies and natural life blinds me.

Humidity: The gray, overcast skies and moist air are nurturing the earth and preparing it for the glories of spring and summer. Secret beauties are growing under the bark of trees and under the sparse grass and mud as the world softens and awakens from winter’s rest.
Boredom: Instead of bracing myself for dull months as if I’m helpless, I can use this time to treat myself with some old favorites. With some exceptions, the Bronte sisters seemed to write about landscapes that remind me of March – stormy skies and wild moors. I can read Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights, and Shirley in front of a cozy fire with a more empathetic enjoyment than I could on a hot summer day.
Ugliness: There are many gray days in this time of year, but the silver-pearl skies reflect serenity as well as gloom. Often a false thaw in February gives way to new, shining snow before winter’s end. The days of sun also have a strange, mystical radiance. In the woods that border the highways, afternoon’s gold illuminates the ash and russet in the bark of leafless trees and the gracefulness of the tangled bittersweet vines.

Even as winter sickens and dies, hope and beauty are eternal; imagination and recognition just open the window.

How can you use imagination and recognition to face this time of year?

Why Do We Love the Wild?

February 4, 2019February 4, 2019apollard7Leave a comment

Humankind has covered most of this earth with cities and farms, villages and fields, but the idea of the Wild still haunts our legends. The idea of some vast, unknown region full of mystery and danger and wonder has latched on to our imaginations. From the Wild Wood in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to the Western Wild in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, we fear and love fearing the untameable.

My story-loving heart treasures even the word wilderness. Spoiled 21st century child that I am, I am safe from the real, unromantic hardships that pioneers faced in hacking a living out of a cold, dangerous world. I have the luxury of curling up on my bed and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series or William Durbin’s The Broken Blade and tasting the excitement without the suffering.

In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented a paper on historians later named “The Turner thesis” or “the frontier thesis.” He argued that the idea and reality of the frontier, a vast stretch of land open to conquest, was essential in forming the American national character of democracy and individualism, opportunity and escape. In my own words, Turner argued that the Wild, or the conquest of the Wild, shaped America. (Read an article about the thesis here).

I think Turner’s insight is very valuable, more than even he knew. The sense of destiny, of power, of righteous and ruthless progress, along with its dark side of violence, suffering, and guilt, has settled deep in our consciousness.

Why do we love the wild, the wilderness? Why do we love the dog but romanticize the wolf? If we have evolved to supremacy by taming creatures, building farms out of forests, and conquering landscapes through cartography, why do we love the Wild instead of hating it?

The idea of the Wild is entertaining; a character stumbling through a dark forest or cold mountain ridge tugs at our interest and sympathy. The reality of the Wild, however, fulfills a different urge: the human longing for something greater than ourselves, something to strive for, something to seek with all our strength.

Whatever it is, the Wild is an idea with staying power. Below are some ideas as to how writers can incorporate the Wild into new stories.

The traditional Wild region in a fantasy land: forests, mountains, lakes, oceans, swamps, deserts, any kind of geography becomes fascinating when a writer endows it with mystery. Make your Wild region unique, though, or it will be a tired cliché. Invent ways to make the landscape frightening and beautiful – creatures, plants, magic, anything. (See Jasper Fforde’s The Eye of Zoltar for an incredible example.)
The Wilds of space: space is the greatest Wild because it is the greatest unknown. New stars, planets, galaxies, intelligent creatures, clever ways of traveling (like tessering in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time) can never be boring as long as they are original creative.
The Wild of other spaces: create a Wild world within something unexpected, like:
Mirrors (like Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass and Heather Dixon in Entwined).
Artwork (like Jacqueline West in The Books of Elsewhere, though I’m not a fan of the occult she adds in later books).
Photographs (kind of like Jenny Nimmo in the Charlie Bone series).
Music (I’m picturing something like Fantasia, but really, how can music be a Wild space?).
Hearts and minds (like Inside Out).
Dreams (like Inception or The Matrix).
Stories (like Fantastica in Michael Ende’s Neverending Story).