Speaking of Faith in Lit at AWP 18

Amy Frykholm, Shadab Hashim, Amy Gottlieb, Rick Chess

I had the opportunity to moderate a panel at AWP 18 on the challenges and opportunities of talking about and exploring matters of faith in the literary community as well as in our own work. The four of us who presented are now working on an essay in four voices. We'll see how (and if!) this turns out! For now, I want to share with you a small sample of observations offered by my wonderful co-presenters.

"I am always preoccupied by questions of faith and doubt, tradition and innovation, and above all, how we engage with the mystery of human existence," Amy Gottlieb, author of The Beautiful Possible. 

Amy also shared this rich insight from the late Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld:

"In his memoir, Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld writes: 'Literature, if it is genuine, is the religious melody that has been lost to us. Literature gathers within it all the elements of faith: the seriousness, the internality, the melody, and the connection with the hidden aspects of the soul.'” 

*

"As a writer whose sensibility is tethered to Muslim heritage— visual art, architecture, garden-design, calligraphy, poetry and music-- I recognize beauty to be the lever, the primary language of devotional love in Islamic arts," Shadab Hashmi, author, most recently, of Ghazal Cosmopolitan: The Culture and Craft of the Ghazal.

Shadab went on to share the following,

"As Rumi says:
 
I can't stop pointing
to the beauty.
Every moment and place says,
'Put this design in your carpet'
 
Beauty as a language for contemplating the divine comes directly from the Qura’an."

*
"I would prefer that faith perspective be considered something more like a location than an identity, said Amy Frykolm, author of Rapture Culture, Julian of Norwich, and See Me Naked and associate editor of The Christian Century. "As an identity, it seems potentially static and perhaps too confining for the open process that, as writers, we are engaged in. As a location, it seems that it  is something that we are invited to explore. From a location, within a location, there is the potential for movement."

*

Finally, from my remarks:

In Man's Quest for God, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “The self gains when absorbed in the contemplation of the non-self, in the contemplation of God, for example. Our supreme goal is self-attachment to what is greater than the self rather than self-expression.” Is it possible that some of us also hope that through our process of writing we will move from an attachment to a small sense of self to something greater than self-expression? And that we hope the reader, too, will be moved, by our work, both more deeply into her self and toward something greater than and beyond that self?
 

We had a rich and wide-ranging conversation. I look forward to continuing the conversation in writing and in person.

Thank You, Hollins; See You Soon, Tampa

I have been fortunate to have been invited to a number of universities this year to lead contemplative practice workshops for faculty, staff, and students. In Oct. 2017 I was hosted by my dear friend, colleague, and teacher LeeRay Costa at Hollins University. We did some meaningful work during my visit which culminated in a lively conversation, in the final hours of the visit, among Hollins faculty and staff about ways they already are incorporating contemplative practices in their work--in the classroom, in the library, elsewhere--and ways they could expand their use of contemplative practices. If my visit offered the Hollins faculty and staff nothing other than an opportunity to get together, do a few exercises, and then have a lively, passionate conversation with each other, then, I think, it was worth it. Create conditions for folks to connect meaningfully and deeply, then get out of the way. That's how I like to work.

Next week, I'll be at the University of Tampa to lead workshops for faculty, staff, and honors students. I'll also be doing a reading while I'm there.  The faculty workshop will focus on practices of setting intentions, directing attention, and reflecting on our experiences. With the honors students, I'll be leading a session called "How the Light Gets In: Making Room for Bodies, Hearts, Minds, and Spirits in the Honors Classroom and Beyond." And with the staff, we'll work on experiences of scattering and gathering. Thanks to my dear friend and teacher Don Morrill for inviting me back, yet again, to the University of Tampa. Don's new book, Beaut, a novel, recently won the Lee Smith Novel Prize sponsored by Carolina Wren Press. Don and his wife, Lisa Birnbaum, author of the fabulous novel Worthy, will be in Asheville to read from their work on April 3, 2018.

Since beginning my career as an educator, I've always been interested in creating transformative experiences for my students and myself in the classroom. That, at least, has been my intention. Sometimes it has happened. Sometimes it hasn't. Sometimes I've been aware that it's happened. Sometimes it's happened without my being aware that it had. The approaches I took in the classroom were never informed by a methodical study of pedagogy. I worked intuitively. I still work intuitively. But now I have more to draw on in developing approaches to teaching. For one, I can draw on my own experiences with 10 years of formal meditation practice. For another, I can draw on the inspiration of colleagues around the country who have invited their experiences and knowledge of contemplative practices to point them toward ways of teaching that can create conditions in which deep learning can happen.

I'm grateful for opportunities to work with colleagues and students in ways that I hope will help open minds and hearts, lead to new insights, to greater compassion, and to action, doing the outer work that our world so badly needs at this time.

Jews Without Jerusalem?

Jews without Jerusalem? You can't forget Jerusalem. It's in the news, it goes away, it's back in the news. It's in the prayers, and it's in some of my favorite poems, especially the poems of one of my favorite poets, Yehuda Amichai. In my latest piece for "Good Letters," I imagine what it's like to be a Jew without Jerusalem. What's posted on Good Letters today, it turns out, may be just the beginning of a more extended exploration of the various ways Jerusalem has moved into and lives in me, even when I'm living far away from it.

Poetry and Jewish Mindfulness: A Reshet Webinar for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Last week, I led a webinar on Poetry and Jewish Mindfulness for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. The webinar was recorded and is now available online. Enjoy!

"I Lied" on Verse Daily, 7/23/17

I was happy to see that Verse Daily posted my piece "I Lied" from my new book on their website today. You can find it here: http://versedaily.com/.  Well,  by the time you see this, you may have to search for it in the archives.

Grateful to the folks at Verse Daily,!

Do the titles of my books identify stages of a spiritual journey?

In my most recent piece for Good Letters, I reflect on my method for choosing the titles of my four books of poetry. My reflections left me wondering if the titles themselves identify stages of a spiritual journey.

Here's an excerpt from the post:

Seeing it this way now has me wondering if the titles of all four books might suggest something about a spiritual (if not artistic) journey I’ve been on for at least four decades now:

Tekiah: the blast from the shofar is a wakeup call, a call to wakeup to the higher purpose of one’s life, morally, spiritually.

Chair in the Desert: it’s time to take one’s seat in the wilderness, the emptiness, to sit with whatever arises there.

Third Temple: with the first and second temples in Jerusalem destroyed, this is the temple without walls, without priests. The third temple is made of words. It arises whenever and wherever we speak with one another truthfully and lovingly.

Love Nailed to the Doorpost: love—romantic, ecstatic—isn’t limited, sought and found only with some people and places rather than others, rather it’s to be cultivated, intentionally, actively, until it becomes boundless, open to receive and include all of life. We must remember to practice love when we cross every threshold, literal and figurative.

You can read the piece in its entirety on Good Letters.

Upcoming Reading at Elliott Bay Book Company and Short Review by Peggy Rosenthal

Hi friends,

Here's a short review of Love Nailed written by dear Peggy Rosenthal. It appeared in Image's weekly newsletter just in time to help promote my upcoming reading on Monday, June 19, 7 p.m. at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. Thank you, Peggy!

The short review:

If you want to be submerged in the depths of Jewish spirituality, this is the book to read: Love Nailed to the Doorpost by Richard Chess. No, not “read:” at least not “read” in the way you would read an email or a newspaper or a novel. The poems and prose-poems collected in this book draw you beneath “reading:” to a meditation, a pause, a reflection, another pause. And not really “Jewish spirituality:” for Chess’s spirituality, while deeply Jewish, is more deeply his own particular living of Judaism. Conflation, paradox, and puzzle are characteristic of these poems. In “His Murderer and His Keeper,” Chess tests out ways that his own identity is Abel’s or Cain’s—or a merging of both. The poem ends with a conflation of these two brothers and of other apparent opposites, and with the paradox that life is both punishment and gift. Richard Chess is always alert to the manifold meanings inherent in each moment of his life, each instant of his written lines. For me, reading Chess’s work is like simultaneously meditating and doing strenuous mental exercises. I love the unusual conflation.

Editors’ Note: Richard Chess, who is one of our regular Good Letters contributors, will be reading at Elliott Bay Book Company here in Seattle on Monday, June 19. Join us!

—Peggy Rosenthal, Glen Online Mentor and Good LettersWriter

Interview with Tampa Press Director Richard Mathews about LOVE NAILED TO THE DOORPOST

POET RICHARD CHESS DISCUSSES HIS FOURTH COLLECTION

TROnline | March 17, 2017 | Blog, Conversations, Poetry | No Comments

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Poet Richard Chess and the University of Tampa Press have had a long relationship: a few of Rick’s poems were published in Tampa Review 1, the first issue under our new name, back in 1988, and now it’s 2017 already and we’re about to release Tampa Review 54. We published Rick’s second book, Chair in the Desert, in 2000; Tekiah followed in 2002 (a new edition of his first collection, originally published by the University of Georgia Press), and then Third Temple in 2007. Now we’re happy to be publishing his newest collection, Love Nailed to the Doorpost, about which Judith Baumel has said: “Read this book. Now. If you are reading my words, stop. Enter the room of this book, kiss the mezuzah on its doorposts and prepare to be dazzled.”

As the official publication date approaches, Rick sat down with Tampa Press Director Richard Mathews to talk about the new book, what he’s been up to, and what 2017 will bring.

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Mathews:  First of all, can you say a little about the upcoming event that will also mark the official book launch of Love Nailed to the Doorpost?

Chess: On March 23, The Center for Jewish Studies at UNC Asheville will celebrate its thirty-fifth anniversary. I’ll also be celebrating my twenty-fifth year as the Center’s director. I’ll be speaking at the event, discussing a few poems by poets we’ve hosted at the Center over the years: Yehuda Amichai, Jacqueline Osherow, Peter Cole, Taha Muhammad Ali. I will also show some video clips from readings and talks going back to 1992 and include a poem or two from my new book in my talk. The title of the talk is “On the Border: Defining, Defending, Protecting, Crossing, Erasing, Transcending,” and I’ll be looking at literal and figurative borders—political, geographic, cultural, religious, and linguistic—and how they alienate us from one another and connect us to one another. We’re expecting a big crowd. It should be a wonderful evening, and I’m hoping folks will be inspired to buy the new book!

Mathews: The variety and focus of work in the new book is surprising and impressive, even to those of us who have known your work well over the years. Can you talk a little about how it came to be?

Chess: Since publishing Third Temple, I’ve become a regular contributor to “Good Letters,” the blog published by the folks at Image journal. I contribute a thousand-word (or a little less) piece to “Good Letters” about every eighteen days or so. I’ve been writing for them for six years now.

Writing for “Good Letters” has enabled me to discover a new voice and style of writing. It has been one of the most exciting developments for me as a writer at this stage of my life. A good number of the pieces are lyrical prose, more like longish prose poems. Some (but very few) are straightforward narrative, analytical, or argumentative pieces of prose. I’ve also written some about my experiences as an educator, looking in particular at ways I’ve been integrating contemplative practices into my teaching.

I am also very active in two other networks that have some bearing on the directions in which my writing and teaching have moved in recent years. First, I’m involved in a national movement exploring the use of contemplative practices in higher education. The organization is called “The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.” It is the umbrella organization for the “Association for the Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.” I have been on the faculty of ACMHE’s summer seminar in contemplative curriculum development, and I have presented regularly at their annual academic conference. This organization has really become my professional home.

My work with this organization grows out of my own commitment to a personal contemplative practice discipline. I began my daily meditation and related contemplative practices in a Jewish context, participating in two cohorts of the sixteen-month-long Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Program, a national program. My engagement with contemplative life—in Jewish contexts and academic contexts—has been a transformative experience for me over the last 8 years or so—since the publication of Third Temple.

I am a leader on my own campus of an initiative to integrate contemplative practice throughout university life. I’ve also been developing courses that I teach, mostly in the honors program, on topics connected to contemplative practices, including spiritual autobiography and poetry as a spiritual practice.

I have no doubt that my writing has been deeply informed by these new developments in my personal and professional life.

Mathews: Are we seeing all of these strands brought together in Love Nailed to the Doorpost?

Chess: Yes, directly and indirectly. These strands, I think, inform the way I move and think through a number of the poems and pieces of lyrical prose. These experiences have also opened my eyes to certain subjects that I don’t think I would have explored if it had not been for the practices in which I’ve been engaged as an educator, a Jew, and a writer.

Mathews: How did you settle on the title?

Chess: Choosing titles is not my strong suit! Not long after the publication of Third Temple, I published the poem “Mezuzah.” As I was putting together the work for this new book, I began to see how love was a recurring theme throughout. The whole idea of love being nailed to the doorpost resonated with me. The title refers literally to the mezuzah that Jews hang on the doorposts of their houses. A mezuzah is a little case that contains a piece of parchment on which is written some passages from Torah, including the commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your might, and all your soul.  The mezuzah is hung at an angle on the doorpost. The orientation represents a compromise between two rabbinic opinions: one that says the mezuzah should be hung vertically, the other that says it should be hung horizontally. Support for both can be found in the sacred texts. So, the rabbis compromise and hang it on an angle. Compromise seems to me to be a necessary move if one hopes to remain married for a long time. Compromising can be a way that two people “meet” each other and form something new out of that “meeting.” I’m not talking about literally meeting. Not even exactly meeting halfway. Love is something that moves, that grows, that changes. It isn’t something that we think we can command or force ourselves to feel. And yet, there it is, commanded, and fixed in place on our doorposts, a reminder that that’s how we should act at home and in the world: in a loving way. It’s a challenge. The most important challenge. There’s no escaping it. It’s nailed to the doorpost.

Mathews: Can you think of any memorable personal anecdotes involved with the writing of the book that might be of interest to readers?

Chess: Well, one of the first prose pieces I wrote that led to the lyrical prose pieces in the book was for the Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Program. There were about fifty of us participating in the program, and as a part of it, each of us had to write an interpretation of a passage from the Torah. The interpretation was supposed to be written through the lens of mindfulness meditation practice. And it was supposed to include instructions for a meditation practice suggested by the particular passage from Torah on which we were writing. Of the fifty-plus participants, I was one of the only people who wasn’t a rabbi. Needless to say, I was quite intimidated about interpreting Torah for a group of rabbis, most of whom I had hardly spoken to because every time we were together in person during the sixteen-month program, we were together for a silent retreat! The participants didn’t have opportunities to talk to each other! But, this exercise helped me work through some of my insecurities about my limited knowledge of rabbinic literature and commentary. More importantly, it helped me gain some trust in my intuitive and personal responses to Torah. While the most lyrical pieces of prose I have wound up writing sound way more like poems than they do like the prose I wrote during the JMTT program, the one piece of writing I did in that program cleared the way for me to begin the journey during which I discovered this new way (for me) of writing.

Mathews: What readings or signings are coming up that you’d like us to mention?

Chess: I’m working on scheduling some readings and workshops out West for this summer. I’ll be doing an event in early June at the commencement ceremony for the Judaic Studies Program at Portland State University. At the end of June, I’m doing an event with my friend Danny Maseng at his community, Makom LA. I’m also in talks with friends in Seattle about setting up readings and workshops there. Basically, I’m hoping to fill June with readings and workshops from Seattle to San Diego. And, I think I’ll be coming to the University of Tampa to do some things with the Center for Faith and Values and the Honors Program and the Writers Series, probably in February. I’ll be scheduling readings in North Carolina and closer to home for the fall. I’m happy to go anywhere to do a reading and/or lead a workshop or two. Check out my website for a more complete sense of what I can offer. ( www.RichardChess.com )

Mathews: Congratulations again, Rick. The pre-publication praise has been tremendous, and we are very proud to be publishing such a rich, honest, and transformative fourth book.

Chess: Thank you!

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Love Nailed to the Doorpost is available from the University of Tampa Press
in both hardback and paperback editions.

Dancing With Words During National Poetry Month

My latest piece for "Good Letters." It describes and reflects on some work I'm doing with my students at UNC Asheville in an honors class on poetry as a spiritual practice.

Here's an excerpt from the piece:

My writing exercise was intended to challenge the students to read our alphabet as a visual language, and then to write a poem based on the translation of the letters of our alphabet into a visual (other senses, too) language. When we discussed their experiences of working on this exercise, many students reported that they couldn’t find any sensible connection between and among the words into which they had translated the letters in their original poems. They faced chaos.

But, as many reported, over time, they were able to create some order out of chaos. Bingo, I said! That’s Genesis! That’s the human experience represented by the story of the creation of the material world as told in the book of Genesis. Before the creation of light, according to Genesis, the world was in a state of tohu va vohu: chaos and desolation. In completing this assignment, the students became creators of an ordered world out of chaos! To get there, the students had to activate these capacities: attention, effort, openness to change, patience, humility, discipline, trust.

Find out more details about the exercise and read one of the student's poems here:

https://imagejournal.org/2017/04/10/dancing-words-national-poetry-month/