Poetry or Heresy? A Review of Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts

photo credit: onethousandgifts.com

Over Christmas break, when I was between semesters of teaching and grad school, I decided to ignore my thesis for a little while and whittle down my personal “must read” list by a title or two.  At the top of that list was Ann Voskamp’s best seller One Thousand Gifts, which came highly recommended by some of the women I most respect, including my mom and my pastor’s wife.  The book’s tagline was, “A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are.”  It sounded good.  While we visited my family in Pennsylvania over Christmas, I settled into one of their overstuffed chairs and had a good, long read.

My first impression of the book was that the writing style was a little distracting.  It was a strange marriage of prose and poetry, and I was sometimes annoyed by the lengthy, melodramatic descriptions of nature.  I also couldn’t stand Voskamp’s omission of articles and her placement and use of adjectives.  Phrases like “round pizza thin” made my ears bleed.

I must also say that I didn’t agree with all of the principles Voskamp put forth, and I wished that she would have expressed differently other principles with which I did agree.  I’ll discuss these in more depth later in the post.

However, I was stunned by the profound insight demonstrated by this woman who has lived a simple life as a farmer’s wife and homeschooling mother of six.  I felt convicted, encouraged, and pointed back to Christ.  I would count this as perhaps the most influential book I’ve read outside the Bible within the last five or so years.  This is a message that needs to be learned—not just heard, not just “Oh yes, that sound nice,” but truly, transformingly learned—by everyone in the church today.

So you can imagine my perplexity when I started reading scathing reviews and hearing harsh criticisms from Christians who found Voskamp’s book not just erroneous in parts, but damningly heretical.  I found one popular review especially vitriolic.  It accused Voskamp of “panentheism” (seeing God in everything; distinguishable from pantheism, which teaches that God IS everything) and romanticism (truth is found in feelings).  I would like to propose a defense of the book that speaks generally to these and other criticisms while acknowledging the book’s shortcomings.  I know that I won’t change the minds of those who firmly believe that the book is “of the devil,” but I hope that those who might be swayed by frightening labels will consider giving it a second chance.

It’s important to begin by discussing the genre of the book, because form does indeed affect content.  Voskamp did not write this book as a series of propositions; she wrote it as poetry (I happen to think it’s not great poetry, but for the moment that’s irrelevant).  The point is that poetry cannot and should not be read the same way as prose.  Poetry has a range of possible interpretations.  It is full of subtleties, nuances, and of course, figurative language. I happen to think that the severest critics of One Thousand Gifts are those who either interpreted its poetry most ungenerously or simply read it as propositions.  We run into all kinds of problems when we don’t read poetry as poetry.  Five books of the Bible are poetry, and if we read parts of those books literally, we would be led to think that God has eyes, ears, and wings.  If we simply read Voskamp’s text as poetry and choose to give her the theological benefit of the doubt in our interpretations, that solves a vast majority of the book’s “problems.”

Voskamp not only writes from a biblical foundation, but also expresses strong, clear biblical principles throughout the book.  The beliefs that form the core of Christianity are all present in this text: a Triune God who has revealed Himself in Scripture, original sin against a holy God, salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, the need for repentance and sanctification, and placing our sole hope in God rather than in a broken world.

I think that there are a couple of places that drift into error.  The “running to the moon” chapter portrays personal experience as more helpful in the process of sanctification than it actually is.  However, Voskamp stays within the bounds of seeing nature as general revelation, a sign that points back to the Creator.  Yes, it gets silly, and I didn’t enjoy it.  But I wouldn’t call it heresy.

Then there’s the last chapter that uses a sexual metaphor to describe our relationship with God.  I didn’t find this offensive, so much as…weird (then again, there are parts of the Bible, like Song of Solomon, that get a little freaky too).  I remember the rapturous experience of traveling to Europe for the first time: looking up at the glorious ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, watching shafts of sunlight pour through the windows of St. Peter’s Basilica.  It’s easy to feel like God is more present in those places than He is in our humdrum suburban American lives.  I don’t wish to undermine Voskamp’s personal experiences, but I think she was got a little carried away looking at a stunning painting in Louvre while listening to some beautiful music.  It’s the “camp experience.”  We get hauled out of our sheltered comfort zone, we feel tired and confused, and we misinterpret the flicker of a lovely campfire flame as a divine message.

None of this detracts from the plethora of wonderful insights Voskamp provides into the Christian life.  Nor should it.  Every single human-authored book is bound to contain error. We would never throw out Augustine because he is largely responsible for the incorrect doctrine of purgatory.  He is one of the early church fathers, and his contributions to the faith are invaluable.  We ought to read EVERY book with discerning eyes, judging the author’s words against the truth of Scripture, and being careful to separate truth from falsehood.

The frightening labels applied to Voskamp’s book produce quite a “shock and awe” factor, but they are  misleading.  We are often quick to slap a scary label onto a book when we see something with which we disagree, but those labels are usually unhelpful.  Just because Voskamp takes pleasure in God’s creation and learns about Him from what He has made doesn’t make her a Panentheist.  Just because she describes things in a romantic way doesn’t make her a Romanticist.

Unfortunately, we love shredding popular things because it makes us feel elite. It’s been proven (don’t ask me why scientists studied this) that hipsters stop liking Indie bands when the bands become too popular.  That desire to be above what the masses enjoy can make us overly critical and condescending.  Sometimes, criticism of pop culture is legitimate and warranted.  But sometimes we search for scandalous labels the way we searched for dirt on the popular girl in junior high school: “Can you believe she said that?!!” It makes us feel better about ourselves.

Self-righteousness can close us off to means of grace.  Think of your life as a container and think of God’s grace as water pouring into that container.  The smaller you make the container’s opening, the less grace you’re able to receive.  Why wouldn’t we want to live our lives wide open to what God has to teach us?  When we slap a negative label onto something, we shut ourselves off to everything good it might have to say.  And out it goes: baby, bathwater, and all.  This doesn’t mean being open to deception; it means being thoughtful, careful Christians who recognize the fact that God uses broken vessels to carry His truth.  The wisest people I know are also the most teachable people I know.

Most of the harsh critiques I’ve read end with a huffy little caveat—something to the effect of, “Well, the book does tell people to be thankful, which is good…I SUPPOSE.”  This drastically underrates the book’s beautifully stated and strongly biblical teachings.  Voskamp shows us that worry and stress are just other voices of mistrust.  She demonstrates that “Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives.”  She encourages us to see all things as coming from God’s hand, and our acceptance of them as the ultimate gesture of trust.  For these and many more reasons, the book is worth reading and re-reading.  Let’s not constrict our hearts, but be open to receive knowledge and wisdom from many different places.  All truth, as they say, is God’s truth.

People don’t write enough.

We read to know we are not alone.  So why do we write?  I think we write to be more alone–to step apart from a demanding, noisy, busy, messy world, turn inward, and create a space of peace.  We get to know ourselves through writing.  We even occasionally surprise ourselves by what we write.  But in a world of constant input, much of it electronic, and most of it useless, writing affords us the chance to process the bits and pieces of information to transform them into a meaningful whole.  Writing makes life resonate and makes it stick.  It slows the furious flow of time and compels gratitude.  It gives importance to the smallest things, elevates the ordinary.  We usually focus on 5 or 6 things at once–writing keeps us centered on the letter emerging from our pen at that moment.

Magic Words: the Power of Journaling in My Students’ Lives

Photo credit: thecampingjournal.com

You know how when you read something extraordinary, something that really touches your soul, you instantly have a burning desire to share it?  I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of reading lately, and I have to share.  It’s not the latest New York Times bestseller or viral blog–it’s a bunch of 14 and 15-year-old kids writing in composition books.  Most people wouldn’t expect teenagers’ journals to be very deep, but I think that is one of the misconceptions adults have about teens.

Lest you think that I’m a weird sort of snooping teacher, let me just say that these are journals that the kids write in as a class assignment.  They write in them every single day.  When I first told them at the beginning of the semester that they would be writing in a journal every day, you should have heard the weeping and gnashing of teeth.  You’d think I had just announced that we would all be stapling our hands to our desks at the beginning of each class (I can name a few kids who might have preferred that to writing).  A couple of the more introverted students who already knew about the magic of journaling smiled quietly to themselves, but no one seemed to notice.

The first week or so was simply torturous.  Despite my painstaking instructions the first day of class (“Just use the prompt as a springboard,” “Write whatever comes to mind,” and “Put the pen to the paper and don’t stop writing”), I would write a prompt on the board and inevitably several hands would shoot up.

“Mrs. Wilson, I can’t think of anything to write about.”

“Mrs. Wilson, I can’t write about this prompt.”

“Mrs. Wilson, I’m not a writer.”

The last one always rankled me the most.  “You ARE a writer,” I would always reply.  “You write all the time.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a good writer.”

“Do you know how bad writers become good writers?”

“How?”

“They WRITE.”

They really hated that response.

I have to admit that for a while, I really doubted myself.  Was this a good idea?  Would it  yield tangible benefits or was it the dreaded busy work that I always tried so hard to avoid?

Somewhere along the way, the complaints began dropping off, and then they disappeared completely.  Each day the kids came into class, sat down, and immediately took out their notebooks and began to write.  It was a peaceful start to class, and I thought I started to detect hints of eagerness as each student turned to a fresh, clean page, took out a favorite pen, and bit their lips in concentration as they created memoir, fiction, poetry, or just random musings on life.

For the last journal assignment of the semester, I had the kids reflect on how they had grown as a writer this semester.  They turned in their journals, and I started to read, starting with the last entry.  Nearly every student started out the refleciton by saying how much easier writing had gotten, and how quickly ideas flowed.  One girl wrote that when she saw the name of the class (“Composition”), she thought English was going to be her least favorite subject this year–but that it turned out to be her most favorite subject.  I saw adjectives like “fun,” “exciting,” and “cool” connected to writing.  I think that if my December students could come in and speak to their August selves, I would encounter a lot less whining.

The other journal entries were fascinating and heartbreaking and hilarious and beautiful.  I told students that if any entry was too personal, they could just paperclip that page, and I would respect their privacy and skip it, which I did.

I was astonished by what they let me read.

I read about relationships starting and ending, family troubles, parents divorcing, mothers and fathers dying, friendships failing, betrayal, jealousy, bitterness, joy, frustration, and triumph.  I read about the whole gamut of human emotions.  What stood out the most was the kids’ brutal honesty and direct approach to life–most of them don’t have up the thick filters adults have.  The writing was (of course) not polished but full of raw emotion and potential, like an uncut diamond.

I had the privilege of seeing who my students really are, behind the facades they often wear.  And I must say, I really like what I saw.

On the first day of class next year, when I tell my students that they will be writing in a journal every single day, I will not be dismayed by the moans and groans.

“Just you wait and see,” I’ll say quietly to myself.  “Just write.“

You Really Are Your Own Worst Enemy: Four Ways We Self-Sabotage

I gave my honors composition students an assignment at the end of our unit on psychology: connect a piece of modern psychological research to one of the theorists we’d just studied in the unit.  I love assigning projects that I know will produce diverse, fascinating writing; if there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a stack of papers that are all about the same thing (hey, would you want to read 60 papers comparing and contrasting McDonald’s and Burger King?).  I wasn’t disappointed; my kids produced some of the most insightful and original writing I’d seen in a long time.

One of my favorite papers from one of my most talented students connected an article from Psychology Today with Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.  The article (which you can read here) was about the ways we self-sabotage; in other words, the ways we keep ourselves from doing the things we really want.  The student argued that the people who self-sabotage most egregiously are the people who lack what Gardner calls “intrapersonal intelligence”: a knowledge of who we are, what we want out of life, and how to achieve it.

I’ve heard the term self-sabotage before, but I’d never given it much thought.  It just didn’t make much sense.  Why on earth would we get in our own way?  We’re always looking out for number one, right?

The article claims that there are four ways we self-sabotage:

1. Procrastination.  Well, I guess that makes sense.  We all do it, right?  We sit there juggling long-term needs with short-term rewards, and more often than not, instant gratification wins in the end.  We hate ourselves for procrastinating, we rarely find it rewarding, but we all do it.  Sometimes, it’s just laziness.  But more often I think it’s avoidance–we know that getting down to business means confronting some of the most difficult, frustrating, or painful aspects of our lives.  It also means risk.  It means opening ourselves up to the possibility of failure, and we are programmed to avoid failure like we’re programmed to eat and sleep.  It’s a basic, God-given instinct.  Overcoming procrastination is often more than a mere act of the will; it requires a whole shift in mindset.

2. Dodging emotions.  This one could be aptly renamed “emotional procrastination.”  We sense a strong emotion bubbling just under the surface and instead of giving it to the light and dealing with it, we hastily shove it back deep down into the recesses of our psyche.  Strong negative emotions are never fun to handle.  We need time, energy, and focus to process things like grief over the loss of a loved one, disappointment over the death of a dream, or anger at the irrational behavior of a colleague.  But I think that dodging emotions ultimately ends up being more of an act of self-sabotage than procrastination.  We tell ourselves that stuff doesn’t affect us, that we’re fine.  Sooner or later, however, we have to pay the piper.  Those repressed emotions pop up in the most unexpected and inconvenient ways, and we suddenly wake up to find ourselves in the midst of a train wreck we just caused.  It’s not an easy mess to clean up.

3. Extreme modesty.  Sometimes I struggle with having enough confidence to do what needs to be done; other times, I drastically overrate myself and end up surprised when people don’t jump on my bandwagon.  However, I know people who suffer perpetually from extreme modesty, and it truly is an act of self-sabotage.  Prideful, arrogant people are incredibly annoying to be around, but overly modest people are just as bad.  You know the type: “Nobody loves me…I’ll never amount to anything…I’m worthless.”  I know that these are genuine feelings, but unfortunately, they’re also disastrous feelings.  Lack of confidence leaves you shut up at home wondering what you could have done with your life.

4. Addiction.  The big addictions come to mind first: drugs, alcohol, sex.  We tend to think that if we’re not tangled up with any of those things, we’re not addicts.  The truth is that I think most of us have something we’re addicted to, something beyond the basic necessities that we’ve become dependent on to keep us happy.  Addiction deadens the mind, weakens the will, and poisons the soul.

My students surprise me almost daily with their boldness and candor.  This student’s paper gave me a lot of food for thought regarding the ways I undermine my own life.  But overall, I really don’t see how these things apply to my life.  Well, I guess I should get to the dishes now…I don’t know, maybe I’ll do them later.  Dirty dishes make me so ANGRY, but I’m just not going to think about that right now.  What good is my life anyway–I can’t even succeed as a dishwasher.

Whatever.  I’m going to Facebook now.

 

Italian Obsession

Sometimes people wonder why I’m so obsessed with Italy.  If you still don’t understand after reading this blog post, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.

http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/the-colors-of-italy/#comment-8708

Words of Wisdom from a High School Student

Sometimes my high school students surprise me with their wit, their sweetness, or their clarity of insight.

Sometimes they completely take my breath away.

The following lines are from an 18-year-old foreign exchange student from Korea.  I was reading through a stack of rather boring essays, and these words shone through the dullness like glittering diamonds.

“Life is like a Venn diagram.  One circle is our dreams, the beautiful things that we desire and imagine.  The other circle is real life, which can be very harsh and cold.  The place where they overlap is called hope.”

A Sonnet I Wrote for Tim

Photo credit: ajpscs on flickr

So often writer’s pen and poet’s tongue

Immortalize a cool and distant love

Goddess whose praises high must oft be sung

By handsome knights who worship her above.

But I possess no flowing golden hair

Your Subaru is not a noble steed

I’m far too clumsy to be counted fair

You have no sword to make fierce dragons bleed

Instead I make you brownies for dessert

And you leave notes upon my steering wheel

You hold me through my darkest hours of hurt

Our love’s without illusion: strong and real

Some spend their lives in fairy tales cold

I’ll spend mine with my best friend growing old

Five Ways to Get More Readers for Your Blog and Why I’m Not Willing to Do Them

I’ve had this blog for a little over two years now.  On a good day, I get about twenty views, although most of those are people searching for pictures of Allie from The Notebook.  I once wrote a really snarky review of that movie (to read it, click here) and for some reason when you search Google images for “allie notebook,” the picture I used is like the eighteenth one that comes up.  So that’s most of my traffic.  I imagine that one day one of those die-hard Notebook fans is actually going to read that vitriolic post and I will start getting death threats that look like they were spelled and punctuated by a team of drunk monkeys.  For example, “i wish U wud be eeten by Zomby geeese you sarkastick bloging HAPyNEsS KiLLr!!!”

But I digress.

The point is that I have only a few faithful followers, like my mother-in-law (hi Vivian!) and a small handful of people who drop by accidentally.  Sure, I’d love to have tons of people reading and commenting on and liking and subscribing to my blog.  Heck, I’d just like to have more comments than I have posts.

However, after researching the matter extensively (translation: Googled it once and read half of the first thing that popped up), I have come to the conclusion that a widespread readership is not in the cards for me.  To explain why, I’ll go through each of the five things one must do to attract a large following on a blog and then reveal why I’m unwilling to do them.  Here we go.

1. Publicize to Facebook or Twitter.  I used to do this.  I have several hundred “friends” on Facebook, so it used to give me a lot more traffic.  Then I stopped.  It’s hard to explain exactly why, but basically, there are an awful lot of people on there who I only “sorta” know.  I don’t really want casual acquaintances browsing my posts like I’m a funny cat video.  It’s not that I’m posting super-personal stuff.  It’s just that if you are really interested in my life and my writing, you can seek me out.  My blog address is under my info on my profile page, and I’m not going to make it any easier than that.

2. Read a ton of other blogs and leave witty and incisive comments on those.  You know what?  No.  I’ll read what I’m interested in.  I’ll comment when I find something compelling enough to be comment-worthy.  I’m not going to go around advertising my blog on other people’s blogs.  Do unto others, people.

3.  Write interestingly and write well.  I hope I do this by default, but I don’t devote a lot of time to proofreading.  I’d probably have a better blog if I spent more time revising.  I had this professor once who was a completely brilliant woman from Mexico, stood about five feet tall and wore huge, owl-ish glasses and tons of jewelry.  I think she thought that the louder she yelled at us, the better we would write.  She would stare down her nose at us through those monstrous glasses and holler, “I WANT TO SEE PABLEECAYSHON QUALEEETEEE!!!”  I still hear her voice in my head when I write, but it usually doesn’t make me write better.  I just think “Oh, Dr. So-and-So would NOT be happy with this!”

4. Blog frequently.  I will blog when I can blog.  I have two jobs, I go to grad school, and I’m happily married.  If I am going to stay successful in each of those realms, I have to portion out my time wisely.  Also, I will blog when I want to blog.  If I ain’t inspired, I ain’t writin’.  Dr. So-and-So would not be happy with that sentence I just wrote.

5. Write about a single theme to a specific audience.  Cultivating a specific group of readers is by far the most critical step of all in the creation of a successful blog, and it is the one place where I absolutely refuse to budge.  I have a friend who has a very popular homemaking blog.  She has tons of readers and subscribers.  But she mostly has to write about cooking and decorating, because that is why her audience visits her blog.  Other successful blogs may vary widely in content, but they maintain a continuity of tone.  For example, “The Bloggess” writes about a myriad of different things, from metal roosters to hotel curtains to taxidermy, but she writes about everything from a humorous angle.  That’s what her audience expects.

This is something I simply cannot do.  I’m interested in far too many things to be consistent with content, and I have far too many changes in mood to be consistent with tone.  Some days I’m feeling reflective and I want to write a serious piece of cultural commentary.  Other days I’m feeling excited about my trip to Europe next year and I want to write an enthusiastic piece about the benefits of travel.  Other days I’m proud of myself for sticking to my weekly grocery budget, and I want to write a know-it-all piece about savvy shopping.  Other days I just want to write about killer zombie geese.

So thank to you to my faithful few readers who have painstakingly searched for my blog, read my blog even when I didn’t read yours, endured my fits of bad writing, overlooked my long periods of silence, and tolerated (or perhaps even enjoyed!) my schizophren–I mean, my eclectic content.  The zombie geese salute you.

The Teacher as…Narcissist?

I read a paper recently on the student teaching process–that is, the process by which students are transformed into teachers (you can read that paper here).  It’s a study that “describes the challenges and successes of student teachers in a high school setting as they shift from narcissistic student to other-centered teacher.”  I read that opening line in the paper’s abstract and felt immediately defensive.  I was NEVER a narcissistic student teacher.  Idealistic student teacher?  Yes.  Performance-driven and task-focused student teacher?  Of course.  Convinced that all of my bright ideas were going to work wonders and that I would forever change the world of education?  Well, I suppose I was, but that doesn’t mean–oh wait.

Crap.

I was a narcissist.

Full-fledged, no-kidding, in-love-with-my-own-reflection narcissist.

The question that popped into my head next was, did I ever get over it?  In other words, was I eventually cured of my narcissism, and is my current style of teaching truly “others-focused” rather than self-focused?  When I sit down to lesson plan, do I have my own agenda in mind, or do I think first of my students needs and give careful consideration to how I can reach them with the material they need to learn?

These are tough issues for a teacher to confront.  Teaching in and of itself is no cure for narcissism.  If you’re not a balanced person with somebody in your life to give you a major reality check now and then, you can quickly develop the notion that the world revolves around you.

Because if you’re a teacher, it kind of does.

Think about it.  We decide what’s going to happen in class each day; yes, there’s technically a curriculum, but ultimately WE’RE the curriculum.  We have a bunch of people sitting and listening to us and writing down what we say.  They have to remember what we say and repeat it to us on demand.

It can go to our heads really quickly.

In the evening, when my husband asks me how my day was, I find that I measure the success or failure of a day of teaching according to how well I thought I performed.  I think, “Oh, I was witty and really put-together in that class, so it was great” or “Oh I stumbled over my words and lost my place in the text in that class, so it was awful.”  I don’t often stop and measure my success by how much my students got out of class.  I really should.  I want to change that.  It really doesn’t matter if they learn from the book, from each other, from their own writing, or from me.  The point is that they learn.

I firmly believe that if we don’t take steps to check our narcissism, it can absolutely poison our teaching.  It’s something we have to constantly combat in order to stay fair, stay sane, and stay relevant.  I think being a student for the past two and a half years has given me a lot of empathy for my students, and there’s no cure for narcissism like empathy.  I’m also in this game because I love high school students, not just because I love English (although I DO love English!).

Yes, I’m aware of the irony of processing these thoughts (narcissistic-ally) on my blog.  However, I think there might be other teachers out there who could benefit from giving some thought to this same subject.  Teachers are often very isolated creatures (despite those brilliantly productive faculty meetings), and we need to know that we are not alone.

The thing about being a narcissist is that it’s hard to stay that way in a community of people who are constantly holding you accountable and giving you reality checks.

The Space of Life Between

John Keats once wrote the following:

“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy.  But there is a space of life between in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.”

This is the space of life I find compelling–the space I’ve made it my life’s work to speak into.  Most adults complain about teenagers, and many of their complaints are valid.  Few people know better than high school teachers how whiny, ungrateful, and annoying teens can be.  But if you take a moment to really understand where teens are coming from, you can see that these undesirable qualities come from deep insecurities and fears about the future.  They are coming to terms with a harsh and frightening world, and they know that soon they will have to face that world on their own.  Teens’ frustrating attributes arise from a lack of wisdom and maturity, and those are reasons for us to reach out to teens, not shun them or write them off.  The beautiful thing about teenagers is that most of them have not yet adopted the hard-edged cynicism of the world.  They are desperately seeking, searching for meaning, because their lives are “in a ferment.”  Sometimes they externalize their inner chaos; sometimes they internalize it.  They need compassion.  They need to have truth spoken into their lives.  They need people to come alongside them, put a hand of compassion on their shoulder and point the way toward the light.  They need adults they can trust, who are willing to look past their foolishness and see the men and women they can become.

They need love.  Lots and lots of love.