Last weekend I gathered in Michigan with hundreds of writers who attended the Festival of Faith and Writing. By my count, this is my ninth time attending (and it’s hosted every other year!), and it never disappoints.
Again and again that weekend many of us echoed the same sentiment: it’s a rare and lovely gift to have a common watering hole. Writing is solitary work and we all tasted it that week: a special collective effervescence that happens when kindred minds gather in the same time and space.
I got to hug the necks of writers I’ve only ever worked with on the other side of a screen.
I was ecstatic to receive the gift, from one of my authors who writes about a sorghum boil in the south where she lives, a little honey bear bottle of sorghum, to take home and share with my kids over pancakes.
I had the absolute pleasure of running into former colleagues with whom I share years of history, the way one might run into an old friend at the farmers market or the post office.
I got to take in the phenomenal art show of Scott Erickson’s work, from a book we got to work on together from afar.
I shared a table with a writer friend who once hosted an Embodying Advent event blending her yoga practice with readings from my book, all online, but that night we split plates of vinegar fries and Michigan walleye.
I got to meet with agents who’ve become friends in person, catch up with writer friends I’ve known for decades, and meet new ones I’ve only ever known through our screen-mediating avatars.
We all felt it: that something special that happens when the world of ideas breaks out of the cognitive and becomes embodied. This is a true incarnational event, and that’s the heartbeat of our work as writers: words not solely for the sake of words, words meant to become flesh. Words meant to make a better world.
I say this with recognition that it’s easy to read or see these joyous accounts and feel left out if you weren’t there. I’d encourage anyone who can make it to the Festival to attend, in particular, and more broadly, I implore you to find kindred minds both in your local world and long distance discourse. We need each other. If you feel alone in your craft, maybe that’s a signal that it’s time to make the first move, make your own invitation, and instigate a group of your own.
My cup was full. But then, on the last evening of joyous IRL reunions, I received some deeply unsettling news. The early learning center where our two kids are enrolled is unceremoniously closing, just like that.
It’s difficult to express just what this center and its community has meant to our family. From its director to teachers we adore to neighbor-parents who have become dear friends, this school has been a pillar in the community for nearly 40 years, and a gift of stability and deep care for our kids. But the governing authorities, who have nothing to do with the daily life of the school, have unceremoniously decided: it’s done.
I cried the entire way of my 6am flight home, thinking how am I going to tell the kids, and what are we all going to do now. The kids both cried when we told them. “Why?” They want to know. Quinn, 5, is working on her protest letter, complete with angry face art. “I want to stomp it,” says Soren, age 2. Me, too.
In every way you might imagine, this has thrown 80-some families and 29 staff members into a community crisis. The decision-making powers-that-be had every intention of closing with zero notice. The ONLY reason we now have two weeks notice is because parents and community members emergency-fundraised to keep doors open for two more weeks.
We are grieving, we are enraged, we are scrambling, and we are organizing. You would not believe the high-caliber of mutual aid happening on our local level right now. We wrote a letter to the board putting our protest on record, we took the story to the media. We’ve got Signal chats, spreadsheets, Costco runs, fundraising budgets and planning committees for teacher appreciation and a closing ceremony such that our kids and the staff deserve. If anything is buoying me right now, it’s this.
This, too, is a true incarnational event.
We’re finding our way in our own local moment, and we will, but I can’t help but parallel in my brain right now the joy of seeing long-distance writer friends in real life, and the deep solace of banding together in our local community in a time of need.
Stories are not meant to be merely shelved, but lived.
The many glittering gifts of the written word are meant for more than the page; they are meant to take up residence in our embodiment, this in-real-life story we are living in the world. To be absorbed into our nervous systems, building deep reserves of courage and psychological safety.
Eugene Peterson writes in Eat This Book,
“Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul—eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight.”
If language doesn’t matter on the local level, on the ground of our embodied being and daily lives, I’m not sure that it matters much at all.
If ideas are stranded in the realm of abstraction, never giving rise to embodied growth, what good are they to begin with? Conversely, the Incarnation—the story that most inspires my spiritual imagination—shows how deeply our bodies matter, and the hope that the “words” of life, love, joy, and peace might be at home in our physical home.
I wonder where you taste that special collective effervescence of being in kindred community, or what corners of the global writing community you are most drawn to.
I wonder how your personal writing practice emerges from your local life, and how it night be enriched by your presence and engagement right where you are.
I wonder what Incarnation means to you, and what your vision is for your own words as they rise up off the screen or page into language that lives in the real world.
I wonder how we can stay grounded in a world with very real global and national concerns and crises, as well as just as real concerns and crises in our homes, neighborhoods, and cities.
Take heart and stay feisty,
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