Lent, "Staying In Your Lane," and the Work of Your Heart
And poetry news!
On Ash Wednesday at the church I serve, we have four different services: 8 a.m, 12:10 p.m., 5 p.m., and 7 p.m. Sometimes on these significant liturgical days, I can be so swept up in preaching, leading, facilitating, etc., that the personal spiritual significance slips through my fingers. My hope, though, is always to have at least one moment, among everything else, that speaks to my heart – not as a priest or as a leader, but just as a person of faith trying to live her life.
This year, I had one of those moments during our 5 p.m. service. A change of pace from the other services, we gather in our Chapel, a smaller space downstairs; sing Taizé chants; and spend time in silence reflecting on the Gospel reading instead of hearing a sermon. This was my chance to breathe in the story for how it was speaking to me.
I was surprised by the direction in which I ended up reflecting, though in retrospect I shouldn’t have been. Since my freshman year of college, this passage has had significance for me in how I view the vocation of writing! (That story I’ll save for another post, but it involves a Christian conference on campus, forgetting that I was up that week for workshop in my Creative Nonfiction class, and “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”!) If you’re interested in reading the Gospel yourself, you can do so here, but I’ll give you a quick summary: Jesus basically tells everyone to stop making such a show out of everything. Stop calling attention to all your wonderful acts, stop praying on street corners for accolades, stop trying to look like you’re intently suffering for God. In short, stop centering your piety or your religious practice on getting others’ attention.
This year, I began to think about contentment. Those Jesus criticizes are desperately trying to grab onto attention they don’t have. I couldn’t help but view that in terms of my life as a writer. At times, it is easy to get envious and fall in the trap of comparison, whether that’s spurred by seeing someone else’s hefty book deal (a hefty book deal….is this even a thing in poetry?) or a viral poem that feels only so-so. In moments of comparison, you can find yourself wanting to change course in order to grab the attention, or accolade, or financial reward that others seem to have.
Sitting in that silent chapel, I was hearing a message about this part of my life and a challenge for Lent: to stay content in “my lane” rather than stoking envy or resentment about what my writing life could be like if I perhaps tried to be more “commercial” or “marketable” or what-have-you. A part of staying content is remembering that I write what I do for a reason: it’s what I find exciting! As Lent has gone on, I have become drawn to another way of phrasing this: “the work of my heart.”
Of course, to talk about contentment in “my lane” or with the work of my heart requires defining what those things are. With the caveat that a writer’s lane should be able to change at a moment’s notice, here are some things that come to mind as I sketch out a sense of “my lane”:
*Poetry! I have some interest in other forms (here I am writing prose!), but for about the past 10 years, poetry has been my passion and the genre that feels most amenable to the types of exploration that get me writing. Poetry also has great spiritual significance to me. While other genres can do this also, I think poetry is especially
suited to entering imaginatively into complexity and holding tension; that feels really fruitful to me as a religious person and leader who tries to engage faith amidst the unfolding complexities of human life.
*Not playing it safe/not writing easily definable “priest’s” poetry. I could imagine a version of my writing career where I focused on what could easily be incorporated into congregational life or lend itself to popularity among churchgoers. (To be clear, I think all sorts of poetry can be incorporated into congregational life, and I bring in a range of contemporary poets, including plenty who wouldn’t define themselves as churchy or Christian, into poetry meditations I lead for my parish! However, that incorporation isn’t always obvious or easy.) Please don’t mishear me: there is poetry aimed specifically at the church that is valuable! But it’s not where my heart lies.
Even if I didn’t want to aim for that type of popularity within church circles, I could at least aim to write poetry that wouldn’t feel risky for my career as a minister. I have been extremely blessed to land in a parish that is so supportive of who I am as a poet (I even held my book launch for Jesus Merch at church!), but I am well aware not every church will feel the same way. As I’ve said before in conversations about poetry and priesthood, it’s not poetry itself that I think anyone will find objectionable (at least within my own denomination, the Episcopal Church); it’s whether that poetry matches up with their views on appropriateness for a priest.
At least for myself, I would find it very stifling in my writing process to filter everything through, Is it OK if I, as a priest, write this? rather than more interesting questions like, Is this engaging? Is this beautiful? Is this worth writing about? Does this feel like it’s getting at something true? Poetry is meant to capture the full range of human experience, so while I do need to weigh in all my publishing decisions my commitments as a priest, my best poetry can’t emerge through sanitization or self-censorship.
*Exploring themes that are important to me. Related to the point above, many of the themes that are most important to me are those that could make my writing challenging the church or for ministry. For instance, much of my poetry is interested in claiming desire, pushing back against purity culture, and honestly capturing the complexity of relationships and intimacy. This theme is perhaps most clear in my chapbook through Ethel, Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating, but keeps popping up in my newer poems as well, especially the new full-length manuscript I’ve been editing and hope to begin submitting to publishers later this year.
I also like for my poetry to model honesty with God, with Scripture, etc. Sometimes that means a poem won’t resolve a discomfort or disagreement with a biblical text. Here’s an example from a prose poem I had published in UCity Review a while ago, “That Week in 2014 When I Was Told I Had to Approve of God's Actions in Genesis Chapter 16 During Bible Camp.” In the poem, I share my trouble with a particular biblical text: “I couldn’t read Genesis the way that they wanted me to. Couldn’t see God’s side.” I do not come around by the end – offering up a palatable interpretation and encouraging the reader to land there with me – but instead maintain my position: “Having failed at impacting the Hagar in my own life, the least I could do was stay stubborn about this….My theology, my hermeneutic, my way of being, all a witness to a story that I couldn’t reverse.”
As a poet, I am open to my themes shifting, growing, changing, etc., in the future, but for now, these kinds of themes resonate me both in terms of sparking creativity AND matching what I hope I could offer to the church and the world, speaking to things that I think need addressed.
*Poetry shaped by engagement with the literary community, peers, and predecessors! If my top priority was only to engage the themes listed above, perhaps with as much accessibility, clarity, readership, etc. as possible, potentially my output could be very different. Instead, I think I hold onto the themes while also just wanting to write poems that are, to me, (for lack of a better phrase….and acknowledging the immense subjectivity in this) good poems.
There are many different approaches to poetry and different communities where one’s poetry can be nurtured. For many writers, it can be fraught to find out what or where your place is within the literary landscape. When I was a Creative Writing major in college, I often felt out-of-step with the other poetry students and questioned whether there were possibilities for my work in the literary world.
Since college, though, I’ve been moved to find so many spaces that embrace the type of work I’ve been doing (for instance, shout out to Psaltery & Lyre, where I serve as a poetry reader and book review editor!), and so many writers, past and present, whose work speaks to my own. I want to write poetry that comes out of a deep appreciation for the genre and the craft – poetry nourished by the reading of, and love of, other poems and poets.
Which is all to say, I guess, that the literary elements of my poems matter to me. I could be writing honest poems about important themes, and if I didn’t feel myself working towards a poetry that sings, it would also not be the the work of my heart.
Recently I read the beautiful book Selected Books of the Beloved by Gregory Orr. So many of the poems are, essentially, love poems to poetry. At one point he writes this about poets:
“All those poets for
All those
Centuries–
Each
Pitting his faith
Against fate
Setting her passion
Against
The beloved’s
Vanishing
Giving all they had
And leaving
What?
Sometimes
A whole
Poem
Often only
An image or
A single phrase
Dense
With longing and praise.”
Perhaps that is the work of the heart to which I am called, at least at this time: to keep on writing in hopes to offer up some “phrase / Dense / With longing and praise” that might live on outside me, if not beyond my time at least in the heart of someone else.
So those are a few of my initial thoughts as I sketch out what “my lane” is, as a writer! Creativity has to be open to change, so of course this may not be the lane forever. But for now, I am trying to live into the kind of writing that excites me and accept that choosing this lane might look different than other possible pathways in writing would. To choose contentment with my lane doesn’t mean I give up on ideas of promotion, readership, etc., but it does mean that those things aren’t my motivation, or the primary factors that would change up my writing and its factors.
I wonder, in the creative pursuits and passions of your own life (or any other area of your life you hold dear, whether or not you consider it creative!), do you have a vision of what your lane is? How do you distinguish between what’s your lane and what isn’t? I’d love to hear in the comments!
Poetry Updates
*A few weeks ago, I had a new poem, “If all our sexts are a group chat with God,” come out in Rogue Agent Journal. Please read & enjoy – though, fair warning depending on how you might know me, this is probably one of my spicier published poems to date!
I’m so appreciative of Rogue Agent! This is my third poem published there over the years. Previously, they’ve published a poem from Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (my chapbook with Ethel Zine and Micro-Press) and from my full-length book Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems.
*A podcast episode I recorded last year with
*I was recently the featured reader at an open mic in Holyoke, MA run by the fabulous Attack Bear Press. The reading is held in a studio, so it gets professionally recorded! If you’ve ever wanted to hear me read but haven’t had the chance, please feel free to check out this video. I begin about 38 minutes in. I read primarily from Jesus Merch, but at the end there are a few new/unpublished poems as well!
*Save the date! I tentatively have a reading scheduled for June 9th in Providence, Rhode Island. I don’t have more details than that at the moment, but if you’re in the area, I’d love if you could pencil me into your calendar!
*As always, there are lots of ways to support my work if you’re interested! Jesus Merch is available for purchase directly from my publisher Fernwood Press or through any major book retailer, including Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Your local bookstore or library should also be able to order it! My chapbook Woman as Communion is also available directly from Game Over Books or through any major book retailer, including Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.
If you’ve read and enjoyed either, please consider reviewing at Amazon, Goodreads, Storygraph, etc., or sharing your thoughts on your social media of choice. It means a lot!
Until next time,
Megan