Plain Speaking and Writing and Hymns and Water Coloring

Plain Speaking*

Guest Writer and Artist, Ken Fellows 

Stonington House

     Communication is the transmission of thought –and we should do what we can to reduce confusion and not introduce new barriers to understanding. We should all write the exact manner that we speak, and it isn’t all that hard once you get the hang of it. Gustave Flaubert, the French novelist, said: “Whenever you can shorten a sentence, do. And one always can. When we speak, we almost always avoid compound sentences. It is only when we write that we swell up and get pompous …. lawyers and doctors more so than most.”

     Many years ago, Stinnett came into possession of a book called The Art of Readable Writing, by Rudolf Flesch, and was captivated by two points it made. One was a list of “empty” words ---participles, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs –that had worked their way into language and made up more than 50% of all commonly used words. The list included “for the purpose of” (for), “for the reason that” (since, because), “in order to” (to), “in the neighborhood of (about), “with a view to” (to), “with the result that” (so that), and a few dozen more, all enemies of simplicity and clear speech.

     Flesch’s other thing was his vigorous defense of an author’s ending sentences with a preposition, which he said unfailingly turned stiff prose into idiomatic prose. Stinnett added that he personally likes a good prepositional ending and was delighted to read that the President of the National Council of Teachers of English had said that “a preposition is a good word to end a sentence with.”

     Stinnett’s own concern over abuse of the English language came at an early age when his mother took him each Sunday to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in a small Virginia town. A popular hymn at the time went, “And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own.”

Stinnett wrote he never cared for the hymn because he never knew who Andy was, although he thought about him a lot, searching for clues.

     Peter DeVries, the novelist, must have suffered a similar bewilderment as a child. In one of his books, he wrote that he first  heard a hymn called “Oh, What a Cross I Bear.” What was so unusual, he wondered, about a cross-eyed bear that a hymn should have been written about it?

*Excerpted from “Get Me a Translator” by Caskie Stinnett in his book: Slightly Off Shore

Ken Fellows

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.org

Reading Again and Groundhog Day

Reading Again and Groundhog Day

“In a course on contemplative prayer, I assigned just six books: Origen’s On Prayer, Teresa of Ávila’s Life, the anonymous The Way of a Pilgrim, Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, Howard Thurman’s Disciplines of the Spirit, and Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Prayer. We read these books once, then reread them.”—Stephanie Paulsell, “Faith Matters, Reread it Again, The inexhaustible spiritual practice of rereading,” Christian Century, January 17, 2018, p. 27.

I constantly see more old and new books I want to read. When friends tell me they are rereading a book, I roll my eyes away from them and wonder about the other books they will not have time to read. Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, tells us to roll our eyes back toward our friends and listen to what they have to teach us. 

Indeed, we all experience studying the Bible again, the most reread book, especially if we try to follow a systematic study of yearly lectionary readings. Nevertheless, we never fail to see things the second, third, or tenth time we have never seen or heard before, probably because our life experiences and concentration differ.

How could we have missed that word, that meaning, or what that person was doing?

For the past several years, I have been blogging about spiritual direction and reconnecting with authors and books that have been meaningful to me. I am rereading material I underlined a year ago, ten years ago, and sometimes fifty years ago.

As Paulsell suggests, I have become more intimate with the texts and am called to practice some teachings presented more intently, “continuing to see things I have not seen before. For some reason, the authors and their books now more deeply intersect with my life. Rereading and reconnecting with writers can help us recall truths we had forgotten or overlooked.

We might compare rereading books to Bill Murray’s experience in Groundhog Day. We eventually receive one more truth after each new attempt to digest a reading with new glasses.

It is also like spending time with a favorite painting. Something new, something we’ve never seen before, illuminates our souls. As my friend, Donna Kay Yeargan, reminds me, “The artist has not retouched the painting; we have a new depth of understanding.” 

The same is true for this blog. Year after year, I often repeat the message. Each year, I learn something new I missed or find another picture that better speaks the truth I am trying to say. My prayer is that this may also be your experience.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Greensboro, February 1, 1960: Reaching Out of Ourselves

 Greensboro, February 1, 1960: Reaching Out of Ourselves

Greensboro sit in at Woolworth lunch counter 1960

 “Love is stronger than fear. No matter how many walls fear may build around us, warning us to be afraid of the person standing next to us, urging us to withdraw into deeper and deeper bunkers of conformity, claiming our only strength is in power, love will subvert it, to remind us that beneath the uniforms we all look the same, feel the same, cry and laugh the same.

Love calls us to find a way to listen, learn, and live. Every faith has its share of fanatics, but they are only as influential as we allow them to be. Love is our common ground. Love is the will of the many to overcome the fear of the few.”—Steven Charleston’s Facebook Page.

 February 2020 seems so long ago. It was a time of naivety, when most could not believe or imagine that this pandemic was coming to our country. How bewildering that we would think we could keep an infection so contagious away from this land. Did we not realize that we are a global society?

  I also remember seeing a Google image that month, reminding us that over 60 years ago, on February 1, 1960, four African American students from a local college in Greensboro, North Carolina, began a nonviolent sit-in at the “whites only” Woolworth’s Department Store lunch counter. Before long, students from local colleges joined them, including those from the university I would soon attend. The sit-ins spread all over the country. Finally, in July, Woolworths allowed blacks to eat at its counters after suffering substantial financial losses across all its stores during the student boycott. The Woolworths Store in Greensboro is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

I write about this momentous civil rights movement because it began just before I enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, considered one of the best public colleges for women. I vaguely remember reading about the sit-in in our local paper, but I was oblivious to the civil rights movement at the time.

My only concern was going to college. Is this disturbance going to keep me from going to college? During that time, I never participated in any movement for others’ rights. The four thousand women at my college only rioted when the drink machines were removed from the dorms on campus, but I did not even participate in that.

This morning, I wonder how aware I am today of the suffering and loss of fundamental rights for others, even in my state, much less the world. I think I am more aware, but this event in my life sixty years ago reminds me how easy it is to be so wrapped up in my world and not see, be aware, or do something about the loss of rights and suffering of others who are different: African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants in our country and at our borders.

So, I will keep this in my prayers today and pray for awareness to look outside my life and reach out to the suffering of others in my city, my country, and the world.

Students 60 years later

God never gives up, calling us out of our tiny world to the world outside of us through the voices of the world’s greatest needs. Even if we did not hear this call when they first reached out to us, voices from the past continue to call us to speak up, stand up, or even sit down with our brothers and sisters.

 Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/