Nancy Nordenson

649. Happy birthday, dear blog: #11

Yesterday was this blog's 11th birthday. I made my first post on October 6, 2004. You can read it here: Day one. Rereading that post now, I think that while some things here have changed quite a bit, other things haven't. I'm pleased to see that the trajectory of the initial vision has stayed fairly true. Thank you so much to the readers who have been here for many years, for those who are more recent, and for those who dip in and out, come and go. Cheers to readers! I wish I could pass you all a piece of birthday cake.

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(As an experiment, going forward in this next year, I'm going to number the blog posts. This is number 649.)

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[Photo: taken of an amazing blue door in the courtyard of one of my favorite little cafe and ice cream spots. A door means welcome; fitting for this post and this blog's initial beginning and now its start of another year.]

Blogging under the unlikely mentorship of Fanny Howe and Dag Hammarskjöld

You may have noticed that I’m now using “Markings” as part of this blog’s URL and the tagline under my name. This blog used to be called "Just Thinking," named after my first book, and some of you reading now read it then - and I thank you for that. After my blog break in 2013 I removed that title and instead have been using only my name with the tagline: blog • notes • markings. I like this more open approach.

In Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation, Fanny Howe wrote, “The prose notebook is something else entirely, without repetition or revision included. It is antimemoir, a response to a day, and all the day produces by chance. It is in many ways the most radical form: a chronicle without a rhythm or a beat. Pure reflection, transparency. ... It is inherently anarchist." I think of this blog that way, as a prose notebook. I hope to be increasingly "anarchist" in respect to the prevailing wisdom of platform-oriented blogging. Unlike so many bloggers now, I don’t want to write about only one thing, or have a strict editorial calendar perfectly designed to execute main messages, or choose what I write or how many words I write per post to satisfy search engines. Google Analytics is not the reason I write on this page.

I also aspire for this blog to be in the spirit of (although it falls far far short of, particularly when I bring up my book news) the book Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish statesman who served as the secretary-general of the United Nations from 1953 to 1961, when we was killed in a plane crash. Markings was Hammarskjöld’s diary, which he described “as a sort of white book concerning my negotiations with myself – and with God.” The entries are short and unplanned, sometimes factual or narrative, sometimes pondering and abstract. Exactly the prose notebook described by Howe. Look in the side margin of this blog or, if you’re on a small screen, the bottom of the page for an excerpt from Markings. My husband and I also had an entry from Markings on the cover of our wedding program (35 years ago).

And as “coincidence” would have it, in between my writing of that last paragraph and this sentence you’re now reading, my husband, having no idea I was at that moment writing about Dag Hammarskjöld, just read this to me from today’s reading in Celtic Prayer Book: “May everything in this my being be directed to Thy glory / and may I never despair. / For I am under Thy hand, / and in Thee is all power and goodness.” –Dag Hammarskjöld.

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[Photo: taken of a wall I passed while on a walk this spring; it looks like a fall image, though, doesn't it?]

About the new icon in the top left corner

If you look up to the top of this blog, you'll see something new. I took away the blue and yellow banner (which was an upside down filtered picture of a beach horizon that I really liked) and switched it out with a green icon on a white background. I suppose I could call the icon a "logo," but that triggers thoughts of branding, which triggers thoughts of platform building, which reminds me of how I nearly cried when I read Michael Hyatt's book, Platform, and the hairs rise up on the back of my neck in warning. Let's call it an icon. It matters to me how I think about these things, because the starting point, the intention behind, has everything to do with what emerges, and I don't mean what emerges in terms of Google Analytics but what emerges in terms of the integrity of the words.

The reason for the change is that I have four websites, and I wanted something consistent in appearance among them so if a reader moved from one to the other, the transition would be smooth. A visual clue would tell them they've just moved from one room to another in the same home to which they've been warmly invited and not to completely different households of strangers. If I were more savvy and had more time to devote to this, I may have figured out a way to a build a brand new website and gather all four up into one, but then there are reasons beyond time and tech savvy that I don't want all these things together. There's a rationale for my blog, my medical writing page, my book page and so on being in separate rooms.

Back to the icon. I found it on Shutterstock and like it very much. It speaks to me. The green and the leaves in the four corners speak of life and livelihood, and this in itself makes it a good replacement of the small leaf icon I originally had on my Finding Livelihood site. The cross of white space in the middle is rich with meaning in multiple ways: the meaning inherent in a cross, any cross; the center space, centering; the empty white space inside; the horizontal and vertical arms of equal size (a Greek cross), which suggests the meeting of divine and the world. The cross also suggests an intersection, and ever since I started this blog in 2004, I said I was aiming at intersections (see sidebar), and then there's the common association between cross and healing/healthcare/medicine. The arrow shape going up and the arrow shape going down remind me that I try to go high and deep in my writing. The arrow up also looks like a spear piercing a curved canopy or dome, which resonates with what I write about in Finding Livelihood (ala Josef Pieper, see chapter "Still in French Airspace") and what I am often trying to do. And finally, God's grace is swirling around it all in the movement of the leaves around the border.

So that's that. Click from here to here to here to here, and I hope you'll find the visual clue that your invitation to join me on the page extends to each of these spaces. That life and livelihood are in each room.

~~~

[Photo: taken of rocks and greenery on a walk.]

Thoughts on pilgrimage from a friend: On learning quiet strength

Good friends of ours are on a 200-mile pilgrimage on the Cammino di Assisi in Italy. They are walking from Florence to Assisi, following the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi. In the hot summer sun. With their packs on their backs. Up mountains and down.

I started just now to write who they were - husband/father, wife/mother, 16-year-old daughter - but then caught myself because they are not journeying as roles but as individual persons, each a human being. B~ and N~ and E~, traveling together as companions with one another and others they’ve been meeting on the trial, but each a self, Imago Dei.

Me too - wife, mother, daughter, writer - journeying here at this desk, in this family and in this neighborhood and community spiralling out, not as a role but as a person, Imago Dei.

You too.

I was going to write more, but I think I’ll leave it at that. For today, that’s enough from me.

I’ll let the final word be one written by the-wise-beyond-her-years E~ on day nine of their journey:

The things I didn’t know I was learning through the everyday occurrences back home have thrust themselves to the forefront of my mind on this trip, claiming their prominent place by sheer necessity. We have learned to keep putting one foot in front of the other. We have learned to rise early, and to greet the sunrise with a cappuccino in hand if at all possible. We have learned that the top of the hill does not mean the end, does not mean that you can quit. We have learned Endurance. We have learned Quiet Strength. We have learned that, if you put your mind to if, you can go on for a bit longer.

You can follow their pilgrimage on their blog here.

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[Photo: taken of a mosaic tile cross I keep on top of a bookcase. A fitting location for a cross, yes?]

A review of Finding Livelihood out of Gainesville (Christian Study Center; Reconsiderations, July 2015)

Tuesday brought word of a new review for Finding Livelihood. Betsy Clover, program administrator, of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, Florida, wrote a review in the center's publication: Reconsiderations: Exploring Christian Thought in the University Community.

Here's part of what Clover wrote:

"Part of the Study Center’s philosophy that serves as an anchor to me in my own thinking is the insight that good questions frame meaningful comprehension. Along this same line of thinking comes a bit of wisdom my friend recently shared with me: the opposite of arrogance is curiosity. These principles encourage me to a posture of humility and challenge me to look deeper than surface issues to find the question that will answer other questions. Nancy Nordenson does this through her writing. By approaching the subject of work with lyric style, she invites us all to embrace curiosity, and allow seemingly contradictory realities to shape understanding….[H]er her writing invites people to identify with her in shared experience. From this starting point she continually keeps her reflections in context of a transcendent reality by running creation alongside Creator, temporal together with eternal, and finite next to infinite." 

Oh, this makes me happy. That she felt the invitation to curiosity and shared experience, that she saw the reflections within the context of a transcendent reality. That she wrote the words: "creation alongside Creator, temporal together with eternal, and finite next to infinite."

I love that she saw hope and empathy coming through.

She continued:

"Because her writing is not from an authoritative, prescriptive stance, she invites readers to think about work without reactionary over-correcting – she holds thoughts about how it is and ideas of how it should be in balance, allowing empathy and hope to come through. The entire book comes from an understanding that there is no textbook formula applicable to individuals grappling with livelihood."

You can read the review in full here. (Scroll to page 6.)

Of course I'm so pleased with this review, but I'm also pleased that this review came out of Gainesville. I came close to going to college at University of Florida in Gainesville alongside a number of my high school friends. I was actually enrolled but changed my mind at nearly the last minute, heading to Chicago instead, yet I always think of Gainesville and U of F with great fondness.

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While you're at the link for the review, I hope you also read the piece starting on page 1, written by James Lynch, MD, an oncologist. He writes about approaching work – in his case, medicine, but he expands the view to whatever your work is – from a mode of incarnation and hospitality. As a medical writer and an occasional patient myself, I applaud this.

Here is some of what Lynch writes about his own work:

"I often start my medical conversation by asking my patients to tell me their stories leading up to and through their diagnosis. It is not infrequent that I hear, “Really? You want me to tell you the story?” They can’t imagine a busy physician actually wanting to hear the “back story.” But after we have a conversation and exchange thoughts and ideas for 15-20 minutes, something wonderful begins to happen. We become human to one another. I cannot help but see them as real, unique persons struggling with a disease and they see me as human too—offering to help and hopefully bringing some expertise."

"We become human to one another." Excellent!

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[Photo: taken from my window seat about 10 minutes after leaving the gate at Tampa International Airport last week following my HS reunion. Given the distance from Tampa to Gainesville, my guess is that the plane is somewhat in the vicinity of Gainesville at this point in the flight, although likely further west. A fitting photograph, also, for a post about Finding Livelihood, given the plane motif in the book.]

An essay on hope – with borrowed imagery from Denise Levertov – at Art House America Blog

Several weeks ago I had an essay published at Art House America Blog; between the new book release and a couple of intense work projects, I've been remiss at sharing about it here.

In case you don't know about Art House America, it's an organization committed to "Cultivating Creative Community for the Common Good." With a physical presence in Dallas, Texas, and also St. Paul, Minnesota, Art House America also has a robust online presence at www.arthouseamerica.com. The website is powered by the editorial team of Andi Ashworth, Jenni Simmons, and Jennifer Strange.

At least weekly, they post an essay from a contributing writer in the categories of: Truth, Justice, Creation Care, Hospitality, Feast, Place, Vocation, Music, Bookish, Visual Art, Stage & Screen, Artful Kids, and Crafty. Last year I pointed to a couple essays on the Art House America Blog in a post of mine here about women essayists.

My essay, "Knotted Gossamer," is about hope, specifically hope exchanged between people, even and maybe particularly so, between strangers. It borrows the imagery of a gossamer hammock from a poem by Denise Levertov called "Psalm Fragments."

Here's the first paragraph of the essay. I hope you'll want to click through and read the rest as well as explore the website's rich archives.

"A poem by Denise Levertov speaks of the “grey gossamer hammock” that is the Lord’s and in it, the narrator curls and swings. A hammock of flimsy web that should rip apart, but doesn’t. A hammock anchored to thin twigs that should break, but don’t. You climb in and hope it holds. I like to wonder about the nature of all this unseen support that offers not only the safety of the curl but the strength of the swing. I imagine the catch of angels; God’s infinite palm; the unknowable, immeasurable, yet nevertheless concrete woof and warp of divine will and presence."

Keep reading...

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Related posts on hope:

• Hope as foothold
• Subliminal hope

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More info about my new book here.

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(Photo: taken by my husband, Dave Nordenson, on a corner in Chelsea, NYC)

Blog tour 2014 update: baton fully passed

Baton is not quite the right word to use within the context of a tour, but I'll use it anyway because it does the job. You may recall my blog tour post a couple weeks ago (here it is) in which I was tagged by friend Cathy Warner and so answered four questions about writing and tagged two friends who write and blog to then answer the same set of four questions who then would tag two more friends and so on and so forth. This is a quick post to say that both of the writers I tagged have now posted their responses. You can read Adele Konyndyk Gallogly's post here. You can read Margie Haack's post here.

Here's a sampling from Adele's responses:

"I write what I do because it is an honest way for me to wrestle with the world and the many mysteries, pains, and subtle miracles of being human. When I can sit with these tensions and capture what is true about them by creating something from them, it is deeply satisfying."

Here's a sampling from Margie's responses:

"I want to write to give people hope that we are not alone, that there are potentially other ways of looking at things. I want people to know there may not be answers, but there is Someone who is not surprised by any of our scheisse and loves us still."

I hope you'll click the links and get to know these two writers!

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Related posts:

2014 Blog Tour

 

(Photo: a green waterfall of ground cover seen on a walk.)

 

2014 Blog tour

Thank you to my friend Cathy Warner who invited me to participate in this "blog tour." What that means, in case you’re unfamiliar with the term, is that a blogger answers some questions (determined, I suppose, by whomever first launched the current blog tour) and then tags two additional bloggers who then answer the same questions and tag two additional bloggers each and so on, allowing for the tour to expand exponentially until everyone in the blog-o-sphere has been tagged or enough new invitees eventually call it quits. I met Cathy through the Seattle Pacific MFA program. She is a poet, an essayist, and an editor of the "Good Letters" blog in addition to being the writer of her own blog, “This or Something Better.” Her first book of poetry, Burnt Offerings, was recently published. You can find Cathy's responses to the blog tour questions here.

The questions in this blog tour are:

• What am I working on?
• How does my work differ from others in its genre?
• Why do I write what I do?
• How does my writing process work?

What am I working on?
The most exciting thing on my writing plate right now is bringing my next book, Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure, to completion. I’m thrilled that Kalos Press is publishing it, with a release date sometime in 2015. Although the manuscript is written, there is editing and revising to do and lots of other getting-ready sorts of things. I’m also starting to think about the next book project and have been making some notes and doing some reading. It’s too soon to say what that is yet, however; I’m still figuring it out myself. Another thing I’m working on is this blog. After calling it quits in April 2013 I recently started it up again and so am allocating a good portion of my writing time to posting at least a couple times a week.


How does my work differ from others in its genre?
I write in a genre that goes by many names – creative nonfiction, literary nonfiction, lyric nonfiction, personal essay, lyric essay. People who write in this loose genre have a personal slant to what they write, so their work, in terms of approach, content, tone, and structure, is largely a function of who they are. At a basic level, therefore, my work is unique because I bring my own experiences, interests, processing style, and voice to a project. One of my interests is faith and I often bring those kinds of inquiries to the page, which isn’t the case with much of mainstream creative nonfiction; similarly, mainstream spiritual writing does not commonly take the form of creative nonfiction. Regarding approach, my work tends to be idea-driven. While I draw on personal experience, I am more interested in following an idea or a question than in following my own narrative. In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit wrote that "In essays, ideas are the protagonists, and they often develop much like characters down to the surprise denouement.” Yes to that.


Why do I write what I do?
Usually I write because I’m trying to figure out something, trying to answer one or more questions. When I wrote Just Think, the questions were how do you serve and love God with your mind and how do you keep your mind strong and steady when life seems increasingly unsteady and complicated. When writing Finding Livelihood, the triggering question was along the lines of how do you make peace with work (or lack thereof) when it's not all passion and bliss, although that question evolved and expanded throughout the writing. 


How does my writing process work?
My process is very slow! Let me say I’m in awe of writers who can put out a book a year or write long weekly essays for blogs or other websites. I’m on the seven-year plan. It takes me a long time to write anything. Books for sure but even an essay is likely to have sections in it that I first wrote down or started playing with years before the essay was written. Partly that’s because I work full time and write creatively in the after hours and there’s only so much time to go around, but it’s also to no small degree because I find it takes a long time for questions to be answered or for thoughts to mature to the point of sending them out into the world. I write by hand much of the time and then archive lots of random writing in one long Word document that spans months and even years. I go through it and pull things out when it seems to be the right time to work on them. I print things out and cut them up and arrange them on my floor or tape them onto index cards to shuffle around. I am trying to find ways to better use electronic archival, retrieval, and writing systems but can’t seem to fully let go of the hands-on physical approach.


Next up!
Thanks for reading. Now let me introduce you to the two writers I’ve tagged to pick up the baton for this blog tour.

Adele Konyndyk Gallogly is another writer I know through the Seattle Pacific MFA program. She writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, with a focus on justice issues. She also writes a robust blog, "The Greater More, The Smaller Less.”  You can read Adele's blog tour post here.

Margie Haack writes a print newsletter called “Notes from Toad Hall" and a blog called "Toads Drink Coffee." Her memoir The Exact Place was published by Kalos Press in 2012. She and her husband founded Ransom Fellowship, which publishes Critique, a thought-provoking print magazine that my husband and I have been reading for years. Read her blog tour post here.

Adele and Margie will be posting their answers to these questions on their blogs. I’ll let you know when their posts are up, but in the meantime I hope you take some time to peruse their other posts and publications.

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[Photo taken a number of years ago in Chicago on Michigan Avenue in front of Fourth Presbyterian Church and the John Hancock tower. It was the Sunday after Easter. Blue ribbons had been tied all over this tree that was still dormant from the winter. I used to have this as the banner of my blog.]