To My Friends Who Have Abandoned Faith
Kathleen Norris: Acedia and Me
If you’ve been turned off by the excesses of evangelicalism or the big-business, industrial mindset of a megachurch, or if you’ve become weary of a clergy-centric approach to faith, or if you are tired of trite, pat answer to life’s really thorny questions, consider reading Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life (NY: Riverhead books, 2008).
If you’ve turned your back on faith entirely and see no point in going back to the social club that seemed to promise transcendence, especially then, read Acedia and Me. If you’ve become weary of the automatic linkage between Republicanism and Christianity, well Kathleen Norris does not speak to that sorrow. But, patience: within a generation that unfortunate concatenation will be far less automatic.
Kathleen Norris is an engaging writer who addresses the life of one’s spirit wholly without the overweening sentimentality that usually comes with such discussions. Ms. Norris sought answers from an unlikely set of conversation partners: old dead guys who wrote when people could count the centuries on two hands or even one. Many of these old desert monks had abandoned the newly popular, powerful, and politically-connected church. Instead they sought the quiet of the desert to confront their demons.
Acedia, which is perhaps the heart of Ms. Norris’ book, is not easily translated. Some read it as depression. Some read it as sloth or boredom or torpor. Ms. Norris traces the word through the ups and downs of her own life as a writer. Her own marriage is a key player in the story and she seems to hold little back in illustrating her struggle.
I was particularly taken with her definition of sin, which had less to do with breaking a set of rules and more to do with recognizing that people are made in the image of God and there is something hopeful and fetching about aligning one’s direction to recognize that.
In the end, she has a fresh take on one’s faith. You may agree. You may disagree. But you’ll be engaged. And better yet, you may even hold off from tossing everything over.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Challenge: Get People To Cover Their Dinner. Tools: 73 words.
Let us revisit the sordid picture of the dining fly.
How You Say: Not Just “What” But “When”
A word is a fuse. Light the fuse.
I’m teaching a freelance copywriting class at the University of Northwestern—St. Paul. Yesterday was our first day and I wanted the students to begin the shift from writing papers for professors to writing words to make a difference. I maintain that excellent copywriting is the very opposite of spewing malarkey and hype. Especially today, when anybody who can read and/or listen and absorb marketing messages has their BS meter set on high all day long.
The best copy doesn’t call attention to itself. The best copy is nearly invisible and absorbed without realizing it. The best copy latches on to or illustrates a larger idea and leads the reader to the idea threshold. The best copy is emotive and rational. If it can be silly too—all the better.
We talked about the differences we perceive in writing for non-profit, mission-driven organizations and for-profit organizations. At first glance we might think one organization is all about mission and the other is all about money. But that is a mistaken notion: for-profit organizations can be all about mission and non-profits can be all about fundraising. Examples abound in each category.
One of the things I love most about teaching these particular students is the sensitivity to mission. They are cool with the notion of using your writing skills to help others. Many are considering starting work with non-profits, but that is not unusual for many studying the liberal arts. These particular students are often eager to trace their motivations for helping others back to some of the ancient texts that drive much of this school’s mission.
But one thing that is not so clear is that mission-driven work exists in both non-profits and for-profits. One’s mission comes largely from within. Our job—that thing we get paid for—is an outward-focus of the mission we bring with us. A copywriter with a sense of wanting to help others can find a home in any number of organizations, whether for-profit or not-for-profit. And using that copywriting skill to bring a reader to a life-changing realization can be a primary motivation for the whole task of writing.
I would like to see more copywriters with that motivation.
My go-to example is the quiet laugh from the writer in this four-minute film. Listen for the laugh. Think about what that laugh says about delivering the right words at the right time:
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Lady Gaga: Onstage Vomit Sells Doritos? Of Course.
“Selling In” Not Quite Opposite “Selling Out”
One adorned in a plastic tarp need not “sell out.”
Lady Gaga made a plea for “selling in” at SXSW last week. Doritos sponsored her onstage vomit-art, which attests (she said) to her artistic success. But read the Rolling Stone article and you’ll find a more complex, nuanced notion that falls short of completely bowing to the demands of the sponsor.
When Kerry Miller (@DailyCircuit @KerriMPR) wondered aloud what people thought about “selling out,” she echoed a sentiment borne decades before when the big rock and rollers first roamed the earth and bowed to the demands of advertisers to create art to propel commerce. Ms. Miller’s comment generated responses from scholar Patrick Cox (@patrickcoxMN) and others on just what corporate sponsorship was beginning to look like.
Ms. Miller’s generation (also my generation) labeled such people “sell-outs” and tried to work up disdain for them even as we bought the cans of soda or beer or whatever they shilled. Even as we ourselves sold out to the company we worked for. And never mind that the notion of patronage has been around for as long as artists have starved.
Watch the recent Frontline “Generation Like” and you’ll get a sense of how Millenials approach the art vs. commerce question. Gen Y seems largely happy with getting free swag and brandishing logos on their social spaces/shirts/tattoos/hair cuts.
“What’s the big deal?” [They might ask.]
Ms. Kerry’s generation (my generation) is quick to point out that “You, sir, have sold out.” The Millenials I teach might return: “You, sir, have also sold out.” Which would be entirely accurate.
Maybe Gen Y has done us a favor by repackaging the connection between art and commerce: That repackaging looks more like an articulation of authenticity. It is a voice we need to hear today. I’ve been arguing that craft and service (and art and faith) do better together than separated into holy, inviolable silos.
Gen Y is articulating some of this. Not perfectly, but they are closing some gaps and opening others. The “selling out” conversation has changed.
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Image credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW via Rolling Stone
How to Cherish Your Provocateurs
Who has the power to rile you?
If you were an all-powerful despot, you might rid yourself of those who disagree. That’s the path of the Stalins, Hitlers and Kim Jong [Whatevers] of the world:
- “Off to Siberia with you.”
- “Work will make you free in this concentration camp.”
- “Here, Uncle, let’s execute you and your entire family.”
But the rest of us don’t have that power. And that is a good thing. Because it turns out we need these people around us who disagree and who see things differently. That’s because no one of us sees things entirely clearly. We need each other to piece together the big picture.
In my country, the United States, we are fond of cocooning with other like-minded members of our tribe. So we listen only to people who agree with us. We develop and watch television and listen to radio that reinforces what we think. We read only the diatribes that we might have written. In our age of cozy groupthink communities, we are quick to hit the panic button for any word that is off ideology, and quick to dissociate with those with a whiff of aberration.
Perhaps other countries have the same problem.
But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if these different people, these provocateurs actually were providing us with a new, even more true way of looking at the world? What if these people were a kind of gift to us? And what if starting to see from their perspective was more akin to finding a $20 bill in the street?
Big groups of foreigners routinely make their way to Minneapolis and St. Paul. They are very odd, they speak in strange tongues, where strange dress. Have odd habits.
Until they don’t and aren’t.
Until they are us.
Walk back through the public rolls far enough and you’ll find your grandparents were these foreigners. Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, Finns, Hmong, Somalian. I suspect you’d even find a few people from Iowa. If the housing stock in South Minneapolis could talk, it would speak all these languages and many, many more.
The point: rather than fear the stranger, can we ask what there is to learn from this other way of looking at the world?
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conversation is an engine 