#3 - We Write Not To Be Understood But in Order To Understand: The Integration of my Faith and Development as a Writer

My application process to Seattle Pacific University for their MFA program in Creative Writing required that I write an essay about my development as a writer and my faith. I thought some of you might be interested.

“I never remember a time when I did not love God.” So said Louisa Boren Denny, the main character of my Seattle novels and woman who laid the city’s very first foundation. I stumbled across her remark in a battered 1909 publication of her daughter’s book, Blazing the Way, and smiled. Growing up all shades of Baptist, I’d always felt left out at testimony time because there was never a “moment” of conversion for me. I was thirty-eight, Louisa dead sixty-five years, when we connected; and I have yet to find a better expression of my own faith.

But if I never remember a time when I did not love God, I do remember a time when I did not write. I drew in lieu. Boxes of crayoned pictures
give evidence to my earliest struggles to understand the world around me. I didn’t realize I was doing this, of course—until we drove over the Pitt Meadows Bridge on a Sunday afternoon drive. Four years old, I twirled over the front seat to try and articulate whatever it was that distressed me. Mum interrupted. “When we get home, draw us a picture. Then we’ll all understand.” I reared back, amazed at her. At me. By the time I was six and ready for school, though, I knew that my drawing could take me only so far: there were things color and shape couldn’t be made to say. I started to get anxious. How would my teacher teach me to read and write?

By Halloween I was suffering my grandfather through Dick and Jane. By Christmas, my father had taken me to the library, checking out stories. The day I realized I was actually reading on my own is mirror clear. There I was, a skinny little kid in a pixie cut, wearing Jean Dickson’s hand-me-down dress with the embroidered JD, an embarrassment because the initials were not my own and screamed for explanation, but there I was lollygagged on Dad’s old chair, an overstuffed thing all flowery, bouncy-trouncy. Suddenly, I’m reading! I sat up and looked around. How did this happen? It didn’t matter. By Valentine’s Day I was reading Wind in the Willows, by Easter my first Bobsey Twin book, by May Day a children’s version of Pilgrim’s Progress. On Memorial Day, my birthday, someone gave me Yertle the Turtle. I was disgusted. And out of my head, down through my fingers, pencil instead of crayon—I wrote.

I sent my outrage to my great Auntie Vi. She wrote back: “Of course you’re not a baby. Of course you are much smarter than that.” She ended, “And someday you will grow up to be a great Christian writer.”Six months later my little sister, Heather, arrived with large hole in her heart and God walked out of the cotton balls glued to my Sunday School projects and right into my life.

Tresa, Me, Heather, Linda
taken a few months before Heather died

She spent the first eighteen months of her own life at Vancouver General, with brief forays home. I was seven the night I awoke from a deep sleep. Something was wrong. I crept into the hall. There, down the long hallway, at the far end, was a sliver of light slipping through the crack at the bottom of my parents’ door. An eerie glow washed over Mum’s well-polished tile floor. “Daddy?”

I found him seated on the edge of the bed holding Heather in one arm, the oxygen mask in the palm of his free hand. She’d always been afraid of the mask; she’d thrash in panic if you set it too close to her face. Years later, I understood why. The smell of the rubber is so noxious it suffocates. Mindful, Dad held the mask an inch or two from her mouth, precious oxygen escaping. At the sound of my voice he looked up, then gravely nodded to let me know I could come in and sit down beside them. The bed sank a little under my weight. Heather startled, she struggled to see me. I reached over and curled her all but lifeless blue fingers around my own. At the end of the bed, Mum paced. In front of me was the oxygen tank.

In the odd silence of tension and the quiet gasps of my sister dying, I became fascinated by the gauge needle slipping closer to the red empty mark. I gave Dad a running commentary. Finally, in uncharacteristic abruptness, he said, “Brenda, it would be better to pray than chatter.”

I instantly let go of Heather’s hand, shoved both of mine down between my legs, and bowed my head in agony. I’d been caught pretending she wasn’t dying. But she was. I did know this. And I knew that if she didn’t regain her breath within minutes, before the oxygen was gone, the sun would rise without my sister in its light. Frantically I prayed. I begged. I pleaded in panic as I watched the needle sink into the red zone, like the spinner in Shoots and Ladders settling on the line between six and one even as I, at last, sensed my sister relax. The hiss of the oxygen tank suddenly sputtered out. I jerked toward Heather. She’d fallen asleep.

“Daddy?”

He looked at me.

“She didn’t die, Daddy.”

She died two years later, while I slept.

I spend time on Heather because she informs both my writing and my faith. People used to criticize my parents for allowing my sisters and me front row seats to the drama of her short life and lonely death. Did they fear God’s impotence? True, my childish guilt over her ultimate death haunted me for years, but when a child sees God’s face in the mirror of pain, she knows God’s love. She knows he tempers the wind for the shorn lamb. And she knows she can trust Him. Even if she doesn’t understand Him.

And so I wrote, trying to understand. Not just in this first difficulty but in the many to follow: numerous moves; medical errors; poor health; a near-death experience from asthma; sexual molestation; my little brother’s broken neck, his paralysis; a bankrupt marriage. . .

Marriage was the darkest hour. Job’s friends rallied and drove me to despair. My doctors told me I would die and now God was the enemy, but my loyalty to Him tolled the bell. Though He slay, yet I will trust Him. . .

I actually began publishing in high school, a lonely girl who watched the world and wondered. I wrote from a troubled heart, my emotions raw and real. Then one day I married and emotion was silenced. I retreated deeply into myself. Denied expression and question, I held fast to a fading memory of God’s love reflected in my little sister’s pain.

And then one day, in the fullness of time I suppose and sick of Job’s friends no doubt, I turned to Job himself. “Behold, He will slay me; I have no hope,” he told his friends. Wait…he isn’t done. “But yet I will defend my ways to his face. And this will be my salvation.” How could I forget that I can shove my hands between my legs and bow my head in agony of mind and soul before the very throne of God and pray in a panic for life?

Shoreline Community College was offering a class called “Writing for Pleasure and Profit.” I picked up my pen and met God head on. In between, I wrote for my teacher and sold all six assignments. My father sent me four months pregnant with my third child to Billy Graham’s School of Christian Writing in St. Paul where Roger Palms began the conference by saying his prayer was not that any of us would learn how to publish but that we’d learn if God wanted us to write. An hour later, in Lois Walfrid Johnson’s nonfiction class, I found myself skewered to my chair by the sensation of a heated rod that went from the top of my head, down through my body, and into the seat. I could not move. Futilely I squirmed in the terrible discomfort as Lois read:

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth;’ for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”

Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me. “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth…”

I went home in a daze. A week later Sherwood Wirt, editor emeritus of Billy Graham’s magazine, called me. He’d found one of my manuscripts and wanted to know if I could send something to Decision. And thus I began writing my way back to God; not the god of my marriage but the God of my childhood; a God of love, of joy. A God of mercy and grace. I sold everything I wrote. A year after my inevitable divorce, I sold my first book.Divorce thrust my three children and me into a world of poverty, abuse, oppression, disease, and despair--not so much ours but others. Divorce opened my eyes to what goes on outside the safety of white middle-class America; and I began to chafe at the restrictions imposed by the religious publishing world. I had things to say, that needed to be said, but I was to keep my notions to myself and deliver only what the “marketplace” warranted. So my writing, rather than helping me understand the tragic world around me instead cut me off from meaningful exploration of truth and honest emotion. I had three mouths to feed, and so buckled down. I churned out novels, articles, short stories, radio scripts, and supplemented our meager income, as Alice Walker put it, by selling apples on the street corner. I did this for years. Finally, frustration drove me back to school, where I could again have the freedom to delve and discover, and begin again to find my diminishing faith and voice.

I had identified a pattern. Denied honest expression in my writing, my faith would wither. I recovered both my voice and faith at Fairhaven College in 1988. The environment was ironically cynical, at times hostile, to western religion; yet I found it intoxicating, exhilarating, for I had an open road and unfettered feet. Professors plied me with books to read, reports to write, ideologies to dissect and rebuild. I worked them hard as I plowed through Jungian Psychology, Women’s Psychology, Women in History; as I explored patriarchal science through a feminist paradigm; as I studied the goddess before god; as I learned new words for old truths and struggled to articulate new faith. One that centered on Jesus, whose first mission after resurrection was to visit women who cried. A heady, exhilarating task in the tumbler of cynicism and agnosticism that ever honed and shaped me and, truth to tell, awarded me the first professional respect I’d ever known. I emerged with a contract from HarperCollins to write Taming the Dragons and entered graduate school with another contract to write the third novel in my Seattle Sweetbriar series, by now the bread-and-butter of my family’s existence.

Taming the Dragons came out two years after I received my MA. But just weeks before the pub date my editor at Harper left. Taming was released an orphan. A bitter disappointment. The book remains in my mind as the greatest piece of literature and analysis I have ever written. Conceived in the years of my silence, born in the hallowed halls of academia (an alchemy of magic that drove me to my best), there was no one to nourish my project and so the book floundered. I’ve not found another publisher to reprint it. Wizards and fairy tales and stories of Ashtar? More “Christian fiction,” please.

I tried. But three more books and I was burned out. I turned to teaching at the community college, only to discover that 500 essays a quarter from students who couldn’t care less about words was cancer to what little was left of my creativity.Years ago I studied under Charles Johnson at the University of Washington, where I wrote a rough draft of my family’s experience at a Christian camp following Heather’s death. Last winter I pulled it out and rewrote the first chapter. I gave it to my youngest son. “You have to write this.” I tried it out on a friend. “This is your masterpiece.” I sent it back to my professor. “You are a wizardly writer. Your professionalism and skill,” Chuck e-mailed, “come singing off every page.” Perhaps this is the writing for which God skewered me to the chair?

I don’t know.

Frederick Buechner says truth can’t be stated; truth is the silence before the word. Truth can only be experienced. Poetry and art, he says, frame the silent truth. I am therefore applying to SPU so I can again delve and discover in the hallowed halls of academia; be nurtured in my writing and faith; and find a way to frame the silence of my life so that others experience the truth that I know. Truth I learned from the front row seat to the drama of short life and lonely death with all its answered and unanswered prayer. For whenever I pick up my pen I meet God in the silence of everything I cannot understand, I see him reflected in the mirror of pain I cannot explain. He tempers the wind and this I have come to understand is true.

#1: Self: River and Rock

Self: River and Rock

Last week I reconnected with the man I deeply cherished in high school. We were 17, enjoying our last year; and though we were not romantically involved, Wayne and I shared a unique bond. We were both pseudo orphans.

Wayne and his younger sister Carol had absorbed some of the responsibility for their other siblings, particularly Carol. For health reasons, I had to leave home in Iowa to live with friends in Arizona. I left behind a traumatic health history and the kind of social stresses that would leave any girl feeling lost and unsure. So there we were, orphans of sorts, with secrets and shame, struggling to find our way in the world. Wayne became my sanctuary in a conflicting, critical stage of my development. And while we eventually went on with our own lives, he remained part of my heart.

I tracked Wayne down once when we were 30: I was in crisis and needed his input. I tracked him down a second time when my youngest son turned 17. I was simply nostalgic for my friend. This Christmas, though, I found myself really missing him. I tracked him down again and sent a Christmas card. He replied--and delighted me by sending me his sister's e-mail.I wasted no time but shot off an e-mail to a woman I hadn't seen or spoken to in some 35 years. Two days later we were on the phone, talking two and a half hours. What struck me most was that Carol hadn't changed; she'd simply become more of herself. When Wayne called later that same day, we talked another four or five hours. I had the same impression. Wayne is simply more of the man he had been. The core of his being, where everything lives that counts, is the same: honor, truth, passion, humor, insight... And while I'm sure they're both vastly different in many of their beliefs, ideologies, and views of life--after all, middle age is vastly different than being seventeen--life's ups and downs have not diminished them at all but brought them into a measure of wholeness. My head has been reeling ever since. Have I evolved into more of who I was? Or have I allowed myself to be altered by life's ups and downs, and been diminished rather than brought into a measure of wholeness?It's a hard question to answer.

Wayne sent me a CD of some of his published photographs; several of the Grand Canyon. I've been there. I've walked down to the Indian Gardens, seven miles down, seven miles up. My sons have walked to the river itself, twenty-one miles to where water laps rock. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the canyon, with its strata of rock and stone a mile high. It's easy to focus on the color and texture and enormity of something immobile and so solidly fixed. But look, way down there, way way down, runs the river. There it is, bubbling, rushing, catapulting, pooling, crooning, thundering, lapping, slapping, splashing, a steady swathe of water that keeps on going and going--and plunging over and around--year after year cutting down through the walls that surround.Maybe the question is hard to answer because I've fallen into a habit of defining myself by the walls. There they are, all that granite and quartz and fragmented marble, all that basalt and limestone and Jurassic slate. All that towering "hard stuff" hard to ignore. Yet there is the river, too: dogged, persistent, unrelenting, cutting down through all that "stuff" and running on. Amazing.

To truly appreciate the Grand Canyon, you have to see it from bottom up. From the Indian Gardens, the canyon is astonishing. From the river's edge? I can only imagine. But it's dead, all dead. What's alive is the river, where everything that counts lives. Fish and bacteria and moss and frogs and flies and water-skippers and the DNA of the world.

Have I evolved into more of who I was? Or have I allowed myself to be altered by life's ups and downs, and been diminished rather than brought into a measure of wholeness? Looking into the river of everything that counts, I can answer my own question. If Wayne still holds in his soul honor, humor, and insight... if Carol still is rooted in faith, loyalty, commitment.... then here am I, grounded in the essential elements that have always defined me: unstoppable, unwavering, persistent, dogged. An old boyfriend once gave me an "eel of the year" award because I refused to give up in face of high odds. Okay, so I throw up my arms in that splash of despair over there; I fall into this side place of despondency; I eddy in hopeless circles of confusion and futility. But I get the job done, and behind me stands the impressive walls of life's ups and downs that don't define me at all. Monuments, if you will, of life lived well.

And if I really want to get all philosophical about this, I suspect behind us all stands astonishing monuments of mute testimony to our collective survival and triumphs.
Thank you to Wayne and Carol for letting me talk about them; and thanks to Wayne for allowing the use of his photographs.

Spirit of Washington Dinner Train


This year for Christmas I gave the oldest pair of my Bobsey Twin grandsons a ride on the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train. Their excitement knew no bounds and they managed to capture everyone's attention as they hurtled thither and yon in yip-yelping glee.

"Wow, Nathan, look at the wheels! They're humongous!"

"Yeah!" Nathan wrinkles his nose, he angles his head. "What's this, Rome what's this?"

Rome hunkers down, checks out the wheel thingy-ma-jings. "I don't know! But wow!"

"Hey, over here, come quick! Look!"

And off they'd go. And off I'd go. Everyone around us laughing.

Once on board, they were fascinated by the lamps, the windows, the tables, then out came the muffins and bread rolls and a plate of cheeses!

The train, however, didn't give a whistle warning before starting up, and so the two of them very nearly pitched into their plates nose first. But they came up giggling and laughing and whirling to see out the window. Who wanted those muffins anyway?

After a bit, dinner arrived. Rome and I traded places so they could each have a spot by the window and you should have seen the window by the time they were finished eating. Noses breathing fog onto the window pane--while chewing Tony's pizza and chicken strips--left a distinct pattern to the glass that I'm quite certain was not there before.

Next thing we knew, we were at the vineyard. Out they clambered on the run--Nathan had to go "poop!" The line to the ladies' restroom was long--but Nathan's jumping up and down got us moved up the ladder rather quickly. Once he got himself behind a swinging stall door, the ladies in que got a running commentary on the whole big hairy deal.

"Oh, my, did you ever!" one little old lady exclaimed, fanning her heart.

The boys, of course, were not interested in the winery or sampling the wine. They wanted to go back on the train. So back on we went. This time they raced from one car to another. They got down to the last car. Locked! Now why would they do that? Very good question, but Rome was quickly distracted by the drop-off to his left. Before I could blink, he'd gone sailing off the stoop, Nathan right after him. I was just getting ready to yoo-hoo them in when, this time, the train did whistle. My word, you never saw such panicked youngsters in your life.

Rome, I think, leaped straight up and was going straight back down when I snagged his wrist and hauled him in. Nathan, at this point, was in sheer terror, straining and struggling, jumping, clawing, trying to get up. I grabbed him under the arms and gave a heave.

"Granny! If you weren't here we'd be left behind!" cried Rome in glorious safety and taking another gawk from our perch.

"You guys are just darn lucky I like you."

"Can we do it again, Granny?" Nathan asked.

Desert on the way back was, for them, apple strudel. Chocolate mouse for me. They took one look at my desert, though, and dived right in. Half way through it, Rome looked like he was going to be sick.

"You all right, Rome?"

"Huh, huh, I'm fine," he said, going sheet white, but shoveling in another mouthful.

Nonetheless, I quick grabbed a cup and just managed to get it shoved under his chin before he upchucked. He sort of shook himself out and then smiled, and all the color came flooding back into his cheeks and the sparkle came back to his eyes. I don't think I've even seen a transformation so fast. High spirits sliding into I'm-going-to-puke and then bouncing right back again to high spirits. But he didn't take another bite, I noticed, of my desert.

I taught them how to play dot-to-dot. Rome wouldn't quit, demanding game after game. "I love this game! It's the best game ever! Don't you love this game, Nathan?"

"I want my mama."

But by this time we'd pulled back into the station. The boys insisted on being the last ones off. Headed for the car, they spotted something fun. I let them play and thought, this was their gift, but I think it turned out to be mine.

Little Jack Horner
sat in a corner,
eating his Christmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb
and pulled out a plum,
and said,
"What a good boy am I!"

I was surprised to hear so much whining from family and friends over the dirth of news in my "Little Jack Horner" card this year--and I'd sent so few out, too! So I decided to resolve the complaints by writing a Christmas letter on my blog. Here goes...

Many of you have asked about my new house. I've been here a year, and still settling in. It was downright cozy during the big snow storm the day after Thanksgiving. Some of you heard about it on the news. I had snow banking as high as four feet!

A big contributor to feeling more settled is my friendship with the Alesees, owners of Birch Bay's famous C Shop. It's half a block off the beach and just down the hill from me. During the summer Patricia hired me to work part time in the candy side of their candy shop and cafe, and I enjoyed looking out the window every time I scooped ice cream. I was able to keep tabs on the tide and seaside activity--one of the finest summers the Northwest has had in years. We broke all the records for sunshine and heat! A great time to be scooping ice cream, making snow cones, and snitching Patricia's peanutbrittle crumbs!

The C Shop
in the old Birch Bay Resort Hotel
cafe on the left, kitchen in the middle, candy shop on the right
Pat and Pat live upstairs
I live behind, up the hill, under the moon

Because the HePat and ShePat have lived here so long, I was introduced to all the locals. At times I felt myself a character in some sort of story book, for the atmosphere is a decided side step in time and perfectly delightful. I was/am surrounded by characters of all kinds that really ought to be in a book! And so I've got this Cozy Mystery series splish-splashing around in my head. It's like right there, but not.

Patricia and I walk the beach and she tells me about the history and all the stories. I borrow her printer--mine was carried out to the garbage in a body bag, hemoraging ink all over the place. Sometimes the three of us--the two Pats and I--go for dinner, a play, a movie. The best, though, is that Patricia invited me to join her writing group. The writing is good, the girl talk fun. I really do enjoy having so many writer friends, and so near me.

I made my first venture back into writing by going to Mt. Hermon last spring. The industry has changed so much I felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. It remains to be seen whether or not Wilbee is officially Hasbeen.

Before I quit, I have to tell everyone about the plum in my own Christmas pie of 2006. Her name is Evelyn Rose; she was born September 28, my first girl after four boys! We are all tickled pink to have her. Kudos to Katie!

My delight in Evelyn Rose, however, does not diminish my delight in the boys. Rome will be 5 next month, a percocious conversationalist who thinks big things. Nathan is 4 1/2; he lives in his head, his imagination a fascination, and reminds me every time I see him how much he's like his dad. His wheels are spinning, unseen. Kodiak is 2 1/2, a pill. He has to be, to circumvent big brother Rome. Jamie is 2, a cherub child who comes up quietly, tugs on your hand, and cuddles into your arms. Here they all are, lined up on the sofa--only Jamie doesn't suck his thumb and his mama took away his pacifier.

Kody & Jamie & Rome & Nathan

So that's about it for me! Hope this satisfies your curiosity.

Hoping you all find a plum in your pie this year. Merry Christmas and the very best of a Happy New Year!

Brenda

Old Woman's Day

Today is International Very Good Looking, Very Damn Smart Woman's Day, so says Jane. She sent me one of those very-irritating-emails I normally delete. But, because Jane's a new friend, and to humor her, I scrolled down instead of deleting and found the sentiment worth thinking about.

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO what a ride!'"

I remember the day my son Blake talked the Chinese ticket-taker at the Great Wall into letting him shoot down the mountainside in their tin bobsled run, a quarter mile or more of snaking switchbacks, a real-live shoots and ladders game. The old guy made everyone stand in line for ten minutes while the guy getting on just before Blake made the bottom, thus clearing the way for Blake. Grin on his face and raring to go, Blake was on his way. From up top, we could hear him whooping and hollering all the way down, his voice and echos trailing behind like a thousand kite tails; now and then we caught blurred images of him careering downhill through the trees. What a ride!

When it came to my turn, I actually dared to let up on the brake and allow myself to hurtle so fast that the spotters along the way "thumbed down" in frantic signal for me to slow down. No way! I got to the bottom all wobbly with the adrenalin rush. Two old equivilents to London's White Tower Beefeaters, only with no teeth, left Blake's side and animated chatter to flank me. Blake came over and, with a very odd grin on his face, translated. "They think you're hot."

Ah! Is that what skidding sideways into the grave is like? What I'm trying to figure out right now is, How did I forget that lesson?

Thanks, Jane!