In my senior seminar class, students study the creative process, then create an artifact to help them to remember how they want to live their lives. One of my students designed a poster, and this is what it said:

Promises I Swear To Keep To My Creative Self

1) I promise that I will do something creative every single day to feed my inner artist. Be that an artist date, a creative project, or enjoying the creativity of another person, I will always feed my creative mind in healthy, whole ways.

2) I promise I will always remember that I am introverted, task oriented yet flexible, friendly and outgoing, a golden retriever who moonlights as an otter, a feeler who can walk in another's shoes, an emotional soul who believes emotions are the colors of life, a words of affirmation / physical touch [love] recipient and giver, and that I am perfect just the way I am.

3) I promise I will never ever EVER let the negative voices, the negative influences, the negative people, the negative circumstances stifle my joy for living or my creative work. If there is anything that sets me apart, it is my joy and my hope. As James M. Barrie once said, "Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."

4) I promise that I will embrace my imperfection, learning to laugh at myself with great care and affection because it is only in embracing my imperfection that I will do what is required of me to the best of my ability in whatever circumstance I am in.

5) I promise I will always remind myself that the difference between the novice writer and an expert writer is experience, not talent, and this is the same reasoning behind other areas of creativity as well. I will not let the fear of rejection destroy my hopes to share my creative gifts with the world.

6) I promise that I will always invest wholeheartedly, genuinely, and fully in the lives of other people because other people need me. Yes, they need me, as much as I need them, because it is in the fellowship of other human beings that we experience life to the fullest.

7) I promise that I will find a creative domain that is accessible to me and I will run after it with all my strength. The door will open only if I have the courage and the opportunity to pull the handle.

I  promise that I will celebrate my accomplishments and take pride in the things I excel in and the things I work hard for. I will not feed my pride with vanity and an bloated sense of self-worth, but rather I will glorify the Giver of the gifts bestowed upon me that is my responsibility to share with the world.

9) I promise that I will do something crazy once a week in order to see sides of the world I did not know existed. I will go out on a limb, get out of my comfort zone, and discover new worlds, people, and ideas that I would not have known if I had stayed in the same place.

10) I promise that I will never ever allow myself to become bored with my creative life, nor any other area of my life. Should I come to view anything as boring, then I promise to read these things that I have listed and remember the creative gifts that I have been given.

When you see a picture of your book on Amazon?

When you win a writing award?

When you actually hold your first published article in your actual hand?

When you get your first fan letter?

When wikipedia decides that you are "notable"

When you read a glowing review of your book?

When you pull out a special pen and sign your first autograph?

When you are asked to give a keynote address at a writers' award ceremony?

When you see people sitting around reading something you wrote?

When Oprah picks your book for the book club?

I'm thinking that it's possible to have all that going for you and still have doubts. 'Because each one of those things depends on someone else deciding who you are on the inside. And if somebody can give you that identity, then someone else can take it away. If a good review makes you a good writer, what happens when the review is bad? If an agreeable publisher or a happy fan or an enthusiastic radio interviewer can define you, what happens when things are disagreeable, unhappy, and bland? So how about this instead:

If you can lose yourself for an hour or more writing and rewriting a single paragraph, you are a writer.

If your day feels fuzzy and your brain feels foggy until you've had a chance to write, you are a writer.

If you don't know what you think until you see what you wrote, you are a writer.

If office supplies make your eyes sparkle, and a sharpened pencil and a fresh pad of paper give you a thrill, you are a writer.

If you have ever hugged your moleskin journal and sighed contentedly, you are a writer.

If you have little scraps of paper and a very odd assortment of pens squirreled away in every corner of your house, you are a writer.

If you find yourself staying up way past your bedtime because the muse won't let you go, you are a writer.

If you have ever rudely interrupted a friend by saying, "Wait. Just a minute. If I don't write this down now, I will lose it," you are a writer.

Or this: If you know what it means to push words around on a piece of paper until (ah!) something clicks into place and settles in your soul, you are a writer.

In my lecture this weekend, I'll talk about Tolkien's poem "The Tale of Tinuviel." Here is a link to a recording of Tolkien reading that incomparable poem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhDgJwcJcVk&feature=related

"The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering."

It's a great course, and I have great students. Our final activity for our poetry unit is this: I ask students to bring a copy of a poem that impacted their life in some way, and share it with the class. I sit in the back of the classroom. One by one, they stand and talk about their real lives: loss and confusion and loneliness, death and pain, the splintering of their hopes and fading of their dreams. I hold my breath. They tell me that a poem helped them make it through their brother's funeral, a song gave them courage when they wanted to quit, a chorus repeated through their head again and again and helped them put their feet back on the floor.

It is for me one of the greatest privileges of my life: that my students lift the veil and let me catch a glimpse of the shadow-part of their daily lives. For one hour, we are not a class in a classroom. We are ordinary people, doing the best we can as we try to make sense of our lives. And it is absolutely certain to all of us in that sacred space that poetry really means something.

I do not participate on that day. It is their class, and they take us to unexpected places of joy and tears. But this morning, as I woke up and thought about what they taught me  just yesterday, I realized that if I were called upon to share a story, this is what I would say.

In the early 1990's,  I got a job offer from a little school in southern Missouri. At the time,  I couldn't have told you where Missouri was on the map. But it was a season of "retrenchment," and my own job was next on the line, so I moved.

It was a ghastly time of transition. I didn't know a soul. I'd drive around in my car going nowhere in particular. I'd put on my favorite James Taylor's album, "New Moon Shine," and I'd crank the volume. High.

There was one song I'd play over and over and over. It's called "Like Everyone She Knows." The chorus goes like this:

Hold tight to your heart's desire
Never ever let it go
Let nobody fool you into giving it up too soon
Tend your own fire
Lay low and be strong
Wait awhile
Wait it out
Wait it on out
Wait it out
It'll come along

That time in Missouri turned out to be one of the best times in my life with some of the best best people I have ever known. But at first, I was just miserable. It was so hard to hang in there, holding tight, waiting it out. If I could share a word with my students, that's what I would tell them. "Hold tight to your heart's desire. Never ever let it go. Let nobody fool you into giving it up too soon. Wait it out. It'll come along."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xTWWN7iPrc

From the news page of The Marion E. Wade Center

Talk by Dr. Diana Glyer at the Wade Center:
"C.S. Lewis’s Fingerprints on the Map of Middle-earth”
Wednesday, October 20, 4:00 p.m.

Diana Pavlac Glyer, Ph.D. will present a talk based on her investigation of collaboration among the Inklings at the Marion E. Wade Center. The lecture, "C.S.Lewis’s Fingerprints on the Map of Middle-earth," will be held at the Wade Center (351 E. Lincoln Avenue in Wheaton) on Wednesday, October 20 at 4:00 p.m. Copies of Dr. Glyer’s book, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community will be available for sale at the event at a 20% discount. This event is free and open to the public. Parking will be available in the Edman Chapel lot, east of the Wade Center.

http://www.wheaton.edu/wadecenter/news/news.html

Blog: Jeri's Organizing & Decluttering News
Post: The Little Things: Colorful Staples
Link: http://jdorganizer.blogspot.com/2010/09/little-things-colorful-staples.html

]]> http://www.dianaglyer.com/2010/09/colored-staples/feed/ 0 http://www.dianaglyer.com/2010/09/meditation-on-genesis-one/ http://www.dianaglyer.com/2010/09/meditation-on-genesis-one/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:53:05 +0000 Diana http://www.dianaglyer.com/?p=574 My church asked me to write and record a short video giving some thoughts on Genesis One. Here is the text of my talk:

Genesis 1 for Glenkirk Church   August 2010

When I look at the first few chapters of Genesis, I like to pretend that I am Steven Spielberg, I like to think about how I would make a movie about something as great as the very beginning of ALL creation. It’s so epic, so dramatic, so huge in scope, and there’s so much spectacle. It’s like something George Lucas would do, or Peter Jackson. It’s all larger than life, like Cecil B. DeMille or something. I don’t know: maybe it’s a job for Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay and James Cameron all put together.

Think like a director:  the earth is formless and empty, and darkness is over the surface of the deep.  The Spirit of God is hovering. There is a swell of music, and the air trembles. You hear a voice say, “Let there be light!” And the light separates out from the darkness.

Planets emerge, big ones, small ones, and stars are kindled in the dark night sky. Sweep your camera in closer to one small round planet: And there’s that voice again, and it calls forth the land, and puts limits on the shores of the sea.

That voice. It’s the majesty of command, it’s a mighty warrior King who calls the shots, who calls creation into being and then orders it around. It’s a great big God a great big scene. You can almost hear the background music: you need something huge like that crazy sound track from the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So in the beginning, in Genesis, all creation gets called by name and sorted into its proper place. Then things really get moving. Plants. Fish. Animals. Living, breathing, squirming things all over the place. It’s all fruitful and it’s all multiplying, and God is loving it all and declaring it good.

So in my movie, in my movie in my head, right here in the story is where there comes this big dramatic pause. We’ve been watching all this creation bursting forth across the canvas of the universe, and then, without warning, the volume comes down, all the activity does a slow fade, the camera slowly swings up through the clouds into the sky, and there’s a little group of angels, white robes, big ol’ wings, looking around amazed and awed and sorta expectant: it’s as if they are all thinking, “Wow. Now THAT was really cool. What could possibly be next? “

There’s this pause. In my movie, it’s a really l-o-n-g pause. It’s almost a little awkward, that big old pause, and these angel guys are getting a little impatient, because all this has been so spectacular, so big so loud so extravagant. Things have just kept getting more interesting and more complicated and more and more beautiful, and now all of them are holding their breath because they know the finale is coming and they know that this is going to be something good.

In my movie, God smiles, and then he says something utterly astounding: LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE.

What ?

The Hebrew word for make that is used here is a-sah. It is the most ordinary average everyday word there is for making things:  it’s like make a cup of coffee or make a sandwich or make a paper airplane or make a campfire or make a snowball.

A-sah a very ordinary word. But here—in Genesis One--it’s used to describe a really extraordinary project. God makes something that he says is really spectacular: he makes people, male and female, men and women, and God says that people are somehow a whole lot like him.

Created in the image of God. In the opening sentences of Genesis we’ve seen mountains and seas and planets and stars and whales and lady bugs and redwood trees all coming into being at the word of the Lord. They are all amazing, and God calls them good—but he doesn’t say anything about any of them being created in God’s image. God’s image isn’t like his reflection in a mirror or his shadow on the ground. It means “according the same pattern.” People are patterned or modeled after God in some way that is unique, unique among all created things.

This idea—that people, all people,  are created in the image of God—is so important that it is repeated four times in two verses.

In Gen 1: 26, you have the plan, “God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.”

Gen 1: 27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Bearing the image of God isn’t something based on my behavior, it’s not me on a good day: God’s image is woven right in to the fabric of my soul. It might get hidden, it might be obscured, but it’s there underneath all the time. It’s not some special status that I accumulate by good deeds or good behavior. And it’s not something I can lose if I happen to have a bad day. It’s there from the beginning, in the way I was made.

But I get stuck when I think too much about my own ability to be a living reflection of the image of God. C.S. Lewis helps me out a little here. In a famous sermon called “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis said that it is overwhelming for us to think too much about our own nature. So he encourages us to practice thinking constantly about the worth and value of each other. To practice it.  All day, every day, I come across people—in my neighborhood or grocery store, at the gas station and at work, in my living room and in my church. And every single one was made in God’s image and bears something of God’s likeness in a way that is different from any other big huge amazing things that God has made, different somehow, and more spectacular than the mountains and the seas and the stars in the sky.

I’m sure I don’t know all that is wrapped up in this big idea of being created in the image of God. But I do know that for God, it’s very personal. And God is very hands-on in the process. And when God looks at what He has made, he declares that the result is very, very, very, very good.

This November, Jim Miller and I will be working together to present a series of talks about C. S. Lewis and Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Save the dates: 11/2, 11/9, 11/16, and 11/23. Details will follow.

Afterwards, I received an email from one of the attendees. Brian had a great observation:

I enjoyed your presentation at Mythcon about writers groups and thought you might be interested in a point someone brought up related to ours. One of our member's parents are music publishers in Nashville, and they pointed out that in today's litigious culture, groups like ours should probably consider having members sign agreements on what is considered fair game for use in publications and what is not. If you don't you always run the risk of someone suing a successful author claiming that he/she used an idea from the group discussion that the plaintiff originated.

The father mentioned the example of a famous song by Bill Gaither (I can't remember which) that he wrote after being inspired by a sermon. When the song made millions, they had to go back and sort out which lines were primarily the preacher's and which were Gaither's when the preacher sued for a portion of the royalties.

I hate to say it, but it makes good sense, to me at least. We're planning on working up an agreement where any specific works shared with the group are each author's property and can only be used with written permission, but any oral critiques offered to the group as a whole become free for use.

What do you think? Have you had any experiences with members of a writers group quarreling over who owned an idea? Has your group created any kind of written agreement? Or do you wish they had?