Jeff’s class inspired one of his students to write her own book. I will be reviewing that book in my next post. The syllabi here lose some of their formatting in this software, but I think you can get all the content!

The two syllabi are from the same course, but since they include different book lists, I will do one syllabus but two lists.

Syllabus: ENG 305                                                                                                    Spring 2009

Advanced Writing: Nonfiction (Memoir: Spiritual and Otherwise)                     Jeff Gundy

Tuesday 6:30-9:15 Cent 207                                                 ext. 3283 or gundyj@bluffton.edu

“What can any [one] say when he speaks of thee? But woe to them that keep silence–since even those who say most are dumb.”

            -St. Augustine, Confessions Book One, Chapter IV

Because inside human beings

Is where God learns.

            -Rainer Maria Rilke, “Just as the Winged Energy of Delight”

    Say this is enough, right here, right now.

   That you will learn to want

    only what you have.

   Go ahead. Try.

       -Julia Levine, “On the 12:50 Out of Fairfield”

Reading List:

 Judith Barrington, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. 8^th Mountain, 2002.

Annie Dillard, The Annie Dillard Reader. HarperPerennial, 1994. 

Annie Dillard and Cort Conley, Eds., Modern American Memoir. HarperPerennial, 1995 

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies. Anchor, 1999 

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions, 1961.

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe. North Point, 2006.

 At least since St. Augustine, writers have been reflecting memorably on their lives and journeys, spiritual and physical, in the form of memoir. This course will involve writing and reading personal essays that reflect on and refract our lives, using the mirrors and lenses of memory, observation, narrative, and reflection. We will read, discuss, and try to emulate writers such as Thomas Merton, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Scott Russell Sanders, Kathleen Norris, and Dave Eggers. These authors cover a broad spectrum from the devoted to the doubting, the earnest to the hilarious, the orthodox to the offbeat—but they share a genuine quest to grasp the deepest truths of their lives and find the best means to express those truths in prose. I hope this class will share that quest, and that range of styles, attitudes, and approaches.

 Some Premises and Postulates

 This course will ask you to do a lot of reading and writing, and to put your absolute best efforts into everything you do for it. But it is also a chance to read–with curiosity and patience—some of the best classic and contemporary writing on spiritual topics, and for us to explore together what it means to be human beings in search of meaning and truth.

 I cannot imagine such an exploration taking place without considerable expenditures of energy, fair amounts of struggle, unavoidable tensions and anxieties, and copious laughter. As Yeats said, “There’s no fine thing / Since Adam’s fall but needs much laboring.” But we can be serious about the work without being solemn.

People possess four things

that are no good at sea:

anchor, rudder, oars

and the fear of going down.

 -Antonio Machado, tr. Robert Bly

I want to suggest, even plead, that you write the most reckless things that come into your head. We may ask questions about how well they work as writing, but we are all free to think any thought, to express any opinion, to question (or affirm) any belief.

 If the writing seems true, authentic, and/or necessary at the moment you put it down, you’re off to a good start. Much of the rest is just tactics and details. It’s crucial not to agonize about how “good” your writing is, especially in the early drafts.

 However, Flaubert famously claimed that God is in the details. We will work hard at polishing and refining our writing, and at developing our sense of how to do so.

 Two large potential impediments to work of this nature are lack of seriousness about the effort on one hand and taking oneself too durn seriously on the other.

Two other debilitating pathologies we will seek to do without: fear of the unorthodox and scorn for the traditional.

Course activities:

 Reading, including quite large chunks for some of the weekly sessions. Some of our texts can be profitably read by dipping into and out of them, but careful concentration, deep response to  selected passages, and broad reading for a sense of larger patterns and effects will be required. We will often look closely at specific passages and aspects of the texts, but your own reading for passages, strategies, and approaches that speak especially to you, and that you can make use of in your own writing, is equally important. Mark the books up as you go!

Regular responses/journals. These will be posted on the Jenzabar Forum and form an important channel for conversation about the readings and preparation for further discussion in class.

One entry each week will be in response to some element of the week’s reading. I hope and expect that from these will come seeds and starting points for your larger writing projects. These entries are due by 2 p.m. each Tuesday that we have class and a reading assignment.

 Another regular element will be “Discovery” entries. These should include brief quoted passages from sources outside our regular reading, with some commentary on why you find them worth bringing to our attention. To receive full credit for this element, make at least one Discovery entry during each month of the course (four in all).

A series of essays in the first half or so of the course. Some will be brief (a page or two), several others more extended (3-5 pages).

 A longer writing project, its form and subject matter to be worked out between us later in the term.

 A review of a book of memoir/spiritual writing.

 A portfolio of revised work at the end of the course (in lieu of a final exam).

 Reading and responding to your classmates’ work, which will be available in the box outside my office (Centennial 318). Plan to spend at least an hour after each essay set comes in browsing through the essays and leaving signed comments on three or four each time. 

Regular attendance and active participation in class activities. Because we meet only weekly, missing even one class session will put you out of synch with the course. Please make every effort to attend all the classes. Grades may suffer from absence.

 Grade Calculations:

 Weekly journals                                  15%

“Discovery” journals                             5%

Book review                                        10%

Final portfolio                                     60%

Attendance, participation,                  10%    

comments on “Box” material              ____

                                                            100%

Tentative Course Outline

Jan. 6 Course introduction. St. Augustine et al. What is memoir? What is spiritual writing? Beginning possibilities.

Jan. 13 Barrington, ch. 1 and 2. Some classics and starting points. Augustine, excerpts;

Modern American Memoirs: Buechner, Gornick. 

Jan. 20 Barrington, ch. 3 and 4. MAM: Ozick, Baldwin. Due: Joining the Conversation essay (brief).

Jan. 27 Barrington, ch. 5. Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. Due: Narrative/reflective essay (brief).

Feb. 3  Barrington, ch. 6. New Seeds, 2.

Feb. 10 Barrington, ch. 7. Lamott, Traveling Mercies.

Feb. 17 Barrington, ch. 8. Traveling Mercies, 2. Due: Contemplative essay (brief).

Feb. 24 Barrington, ch. 9. Dillard, An American Childhood.

Spring Break

Mar. 10 Barrington, ch. 10. Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Due: Place/nature essay.

Mar. 17 Barrington, ch. 11. Dillard, Holy the Firm Work on longer projects begins. Due: Book review.

Mar. 24 Sanders, Private History of Awe.  

Mar. 31 Sanders, part 2.

Apr. 7 Readings from MAM, TBA.

Apr. 14 TBA. Due: Project Drafts.

Apr. 21 TBA

Final Exam/Celebration

 The 2005 version of this course included this reading list:

Reading List:

Annie Dillard, The Annie Dillard Reader. HarperPerennial, 1994. 

Annie Dillard and Cort Conley, Eds., Modern American Memoir. HarperPerennial, 1995 

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies. Anchor, 1999 

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions, 1961.

Dinty Moore, The Accidental Buddhist. Broadway, 1997.

Kathleen Norris, Dakota. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Cynthia Yoder, Crazy Quilt. Dreamseeker/Cascadia, 2003.

 This course, with special support from the Pathways Project, will explore spiritual writing and memoir. As models and inspiration for our own writing we will read classic and contemporary writers as diverse as St. Augustine, Henry David Thoreau, Kathleen Norris, Anne Lamott and Dinty Moore. These authors cover a broad spectrum from the devoted to the doubting, the earnest to the hilarious, the orthodox to the offbeat—but they share a genuine quest to grasp the deepest truths of their lives and find the best means to express those truths in prose. I hope this class will share that quest, and that range of styles, attitudes, and approaches.

This book contains an equal measure of travelogue, mystery story, medical diary, and cultural history.  Underneath the excitement of the courtroom drama, murder trial, and many escapades in a new culture, lies the story of how one man’s spirit grew, first in his own country and his own faith and then in a new country with a different faith.  Welcome to spiritual autobiography as only a Mennonite medical missionary could write it.

The number 100 plays a significant role in Dr. Miller’s story because it is an important number in both Muslim religion and Somali culture. A crucial piece of information, explaining the title, is that the blood price for a murdered male in this culture in 1972 was one hundred camels.

But the number 100 plays another, more subtle, role. Somali prayer necklaces contain thirty-three beads that are fingered three times each during which time the ninety-nine names of Allah are uttered.  One name for Allah exists, not in the mind of human beings but in the mind of another creature, a nearly sacred animal in Somalia-the camel.  The camel contemplates what humans cannot know-the one hundredth, unmentionable, name for God.

Throughout this book the careful reader can find many clues about the mysterious nature of God as the young, humble, resourceful Midwestern American doctor attempts to share his faith in action.  Curiosity is one of his gifts.  Even though he has an incredible number of medical and language challenges, he does not focus just on work.  In his youth Dr. Miller thought he would become a veterinarian.  He grew up on a small farm and continues to be fascinated by animals.  Africa opened great opportunities to explore the animal kingdom, and he shares this amazing world with the reader. He is alert to the signs of the holy, connecting all of nature to its Creator and recognizes the central role of the resilient desert animal, the camel.

Because Dr. Miller deeply respects the Muslim culture in which he finds himself as an emergency replacement on a one-year assignment, he does not question either the ninety-nine names for God or the unknown hundredth one.  Having asked God at the very beginning of the time in Somalia for help “that we might show through our actions Jesus’ love,” Dr. Miller’s prayer is answered. He sees God in other people.

These people have names like Martha, Pauline, Elsie, Chester, Catherine, Harold, Barbara, Neil, Margaret, Velma, Anna, Mary, Shari, Marlis, Stephen, Perry, and Lucille.  They also have names such as Hussein Sadad Hassan, Fatuma Abdulle Mohamed, Hassen Nur, Mariam Mohammed Hassen, Lul Abdurahman Hussein, Mohamed Aden, Omar, Ibrahim, Uglo, Akim,Hawa, Lul,and Abdi.

He sees God in the Southern Cross constellation in the night sky and goes to sleep to the “circular beat” of drums.  He sees God in the “bright orange flowers of the flamboyant trees” and the “fragrance of white frangipani blossoms.” He sees God in all the presenting problems of his patients-cataracts (he teaches himself how to do surgeries and provides sight to scores of people), worms, wounds, Rabies, leprosy.  If the patient needs his rare blood type, he gives his own.  If a baby loses his mother in childbirth, he brings the child into his own home. He recognizes the wisdom in the ancient proverbs he hears and incorporates many more into the written version of his story more than thirty years later.

Because he looks for God, finding new names for God in a Muslim, African, country, Dr. Miller is prepared to pass his greatest test:  trial for murder.  What is most amazing to me about this story is not how big a role it played in his life, but how small.  When one lives within a community in which Jesus and his willingness to suffer for the sake of love is one’s true north-or Southern Cross-false accusations with potential felony, or even capital, consequences lose their ability to shake the ground upon which one walks.

Dr. Miller tells us that a chance encounter on an airplane prompted him to think about writing his story.  We can imagine that an unmentionable name for God passed between these two men sitting side-by-side.  And we can imagine a camel lumbering along in Jamama, Somalia, smiling.

How can both be true?  The recent teaching comes in the form of workshops I have blogged about previously– three sessions at the Fetzer Institute and two about workshops given at my church. Each of these experiences reminded me of how much I love the interplay between teaching and learning.

That love began in childhood with my admiration for and occasional adoration of some very good teachers.  There was Mrs. Lochner, in the sixth grade, who doubled as both the principal and a teacher at Fairland Elementary School in Manheim, PA.  She was tall, pulled her grey hair into a bun but not so tightly that wisps could not escape and form waves around her face.  When she walked, she might have been a general, striding across the battlefield, leather strop in hand.  Or a mother lion, moving so gracefully that one might forget those same liquid limbs have mawed other animals into meat in seconds.

Mrs. Lochner picked me to be a reader.  Every day I would open the book of the month to a new chapter and read to the whole class after lunch.  The book was The Wind in the Willows I wanted to be a teacher myself from that time forward.

I taught high school English for two years at Harrisonburg (VA) High School.  Then Stuart and I went to grad school at the University of Texas at Austin, where I taught in both the English and American Studies departments.  In each of these locations I taught writing, always learning myself along with the students.  I found that when I could get them engaged with their own interests, telling personal stories, they would write much better than if the were describing the pros or cons of capital punishment or other subjects remote from their view and their experience.

At Goshen College I taught English and women studies.  My favorite assignment in one of my most frequently taught courses was the personal essay, which is very much like a memoir, except that the essay still follows the thesis pattern and a memoir is more like a series of scenes.  I don’t remember any of the research papers my students wrote, and I graded into the wee hours of the night, but I do recall the personal essays–the wig worn by one student’s mother as she laughed at breast cancer and won, the way the stars looked from an outhouse at midnight in a foreign land, why Pepsi is better than Coke, a cathedral’s impact on a student’s vision and identity.

Goshen’s signature program is international service-learning in a “significantly different” (usually third world) culture.  Stuart and I led two groups of students:  Haiti in 1980-81 and the Ivory Coast, West Africa, in 1993.  All students write daily journals about their experiences, and we as leaders, read all of these. 

Here I am with son Anthony overlooking the denuded mountains outside of Port au Prince, 1981.

What have I learned from my students?  That’s a question I’ll answer next.  Have any other questions about memoir or about me?

I learned to appreciate timed writing when I took a workshop with Barbara Samuel, who is also Barbara O’Neale and has just published a new book:  The Lost Recipe for Happiness, a novel, which is off to a great start. Here’s how Barbara herself describes her recent life:  “It’s been a thrilling few months, with auctions in the US, between the UK and Australia, and in Germany. The book has also sold to Denmark, Holland; to Recorded Books (read by the wonderful Bernadette Dunn, who has read all of my books). It’s also available in electronic form. My new website should be up and running by the end of this week: www.barbaraoneal.com and you can always still find me at my regular blog, A Writer Afoot.”

Barbara used a lot of five-ten-minute writing assignments last summer at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.  I was amazed to see how much good work and insight can come from asking interesting questions in a safe and stimulating environment.

I can’t tell you what the students learned from me, but I can describe a few things I learned from my students today:

• each of them wrote a gem of a story within 15-20 minutes
• each of them has nourished a hidden desire to write, perhaps even a repressed calling to write
• each of them experienced love in childhood that still exists as sensory-rich memory
• workshops give people a structure and an audience, two things aspiring writers cannot take for granted
• loving and truthful criticism helps writers gain courage
• writing helps people sort their thoughts
• writing helps us deal with fear and anger without taking out these feelings on others and may help the writer transform fear and anger into love and forgiveness
• learning more about each other in a setting like this workshop brought us closer together even though we work in three different units of our organization. Writing increases love!
• love naturally leads us to gratitude. We were grateful that on a very wintry day in Michigan we could experience together our organization’s mission through the powerful combination of writing and memory.

We shared a meal together, recalling rituals from our childhoods–mealtime prayers both serious and comical, night-time prayers.  We talked a little about memory itself and its function in our lives.  Most people were in their fifties and above, so reflection on the past came easily.  I described my grandfather’s practice of “returning thanks”–a second prayer–at the end of a big family meal.  Someone in the class said, “That is a German tradition.”

Again we divided the workshop into two parts.  I will detail them below.  Anyone could duplicate the process.  Feel free!

I.  This exercise was taken from Tristine Rainer’s book Your Life as Story: Draw the floor plan of the favorite house you lived in as a child.  Imagine yourself coming toward the house, open the door, enter, look around.  What do you see inside?  What do you remember about living here?  “Place yourself inside this room and allow your writing to go where it will, exploring your feelings and thoughts at the age you were when you lived in this house, concentrating on your interaction with the other people in the house.”  Reflect, remember, and then write rapidly for 5-7 minutes.  Share your writing with the group if you wish.

II.  Choose a biblical or hymn text that has meaning for you.  Chew on it lectio divina style.  Then write rapdily for 5-7 minutes.  Share voluntarily.  Discuss.

This simple structure allowed us to become a community in just a few hours.  Most of us knew each other, some for quite a while.  But some folks knew only one or two people in the room.  The conversation hummed.  We laughed and were touched by each others’ wisdom.  Something magic guides the pen when body, mind, and spirit concentrate on collective meaning making.  Psalm 91 will always be Carolyn’s psalm for me from now on.  I will ponder Karen’s comment on how writing within a group brings out thoughts we might never have on our own.  And I will remember the look of loving attention on the faces of each person as they listened to each other.

We celebrated our entwined lives the way Grandpa would have liked–by returning thanks.

Each participant will receive a Moleskine notebook, “the legendary notebook” of Hemingway and Picasso.  Watch out world–the writers of the Fetzer Institute are getting serious!

I am trying to go deeper with my understanding of this famous quote, which I loved from the time I first read it in Letters to a Young Poet.  Like most mothers, especially those who are also teachers, I find advice-giving comes naturally to me.  If I learn something, my immediate desire is to share it.  This enthusiasm for learning and sharing can sometimes be counterproductive to the goal of transformation.   We can’t learn as well from second-hand experience as we can from immediate experiences of our own.  The secret to great teaching and to great community building is to ask the right questions.

Rilke’s famous advice to the young poet–live the questions–came alive in our program staff meeting yesterday.  Using Peter Block’s book on community as a guide, we worked together to answer the kinds of questions that Block recommends.

Many questions people ask in groups are directed at placing blame (e.g., “how do we get people to be more responsible?”), and especially at projecting it outward.  Good questions carry commitment for the individual to examine his or her own mind, heart, and spirit.  Block says a great question contains three qualities:

1.  it is ambiguous.  Meaning is assigned by the listener, not the asker.

2.  It is personal.  Questions derive power from the passion of personal connection and commitment.

3.  It evokes anxiety.  Here is a Peter Block sentence worth pondering a long time:  “It is our wish to escape from anxiety that steals our aliveness”(106).

I believe Rilke would like these three characteristics of great questions.  I want to spend the weekend pondering what kinds of questions to ask my class on Monday afternoon.  What will awaken enough personal connection, ambiguity, and anxiety to be useful?

Peter Block, Community:  The Structure of Belonging, describes six conditions which create conversations that build community:

• invitation
• possibility
• ownership
• dissent
• commitment
• gifts

Block’s description of how to create community applies as much to teaching writing and managing an organization’s team as it has to its intended purpose of improving community development processes.  I will illustrate more of these applications tomorrow.

I regret that I never met John Fetzer before he died.  But I meet his ideas every day.  He loved to learn and to help others learn.  He read voraciously and talked with scientists, philosophers, theologians, and ordinary people who had extraordinary experiences.  He was especially interested in metaphysics.  “Love is the core energy that rules everything,” he wrote in the 1970′s.  Our mission today, ” to foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community,” is based on his vision.

So how does the founder’s vision connect with the upcoming workshop?  First of all, it is just one set of gatherings within the context of our organizational learning philosophy.  In the last four years we have offered employees the opportunity to attend workshops on science, spiritual practices, and wellness.  This short series will be just one more opportunity for those with an interest to meet with others equally curious.

Secondly, it allows me, a teacher at heart, to practice the art that first called me.  One of my mentors and friends, Parker Palmer, has long been involved in the work of the Fetzer Institute.  His definition of teaching will guide me:  To teach is to create a space in which the community of truth is practiced.  Here is his classic text.

I will describe the workshop as I continue to reflect on how to begin it.

Since it is time to go to work, I will conclude and pick up from this point tomorrow.  I want to get to work early enough to spend at least a little time in the meditation room, practicing what I hope to live today.

1. Begin with meditation.

2. Using examples from this book, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs, we will break the ice by trying to describe our lives in six words.

3. We will then do three timed-writing life story exercises:

a. My life as a story of empowerment

b. My life as a story of tragedy, failure, victimhood

c. My life as a story of grace

4. We will conclude with gratitude for the pied beauty of our lives and for the opportunity to learn together.

The basic structure of this one-afternoon event came from Marilyn Chandler McEntyre who wrote an essay called “Growing in Grace” in Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life. Marilyn has taught courses on spiritual autobiography to both undergraduates and adults for many years. “I have nothing to give that was not a gift to me,” she says.

When we recognize our endebtedness to others and to God, we fill up with abundant wisdom and grace to give, keeping the cycle of growth alive.