I'm Back!
I cannot begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to
this writer’s conference after what seemed like a forever winter (ongoing?).
I kept checking the website at least once a week to see if
new writers had been added as speakers. I signed up for the Festival newsletter
and got updates. I read the recommended books—not all of them, but enough to
tell you I loved Chris Beha’s Whatever Happened to Sophie Wilder. Please read
this book—it is a mystery, not really, in a style that reminded me somewhat of
Oscar Wilde (Pic of Dorian Grey). The mystery it turns out has to do more with
incarnation and transmutation, about grace in the face of struggle.
I also needed this conference. I needed a piece of warmth in
the midst of what felt like human coldness. It was a spark. A rekindling. What
I hoped would be the start of spring.
Well . . . .
I’d been attending the FFW since 1994, twenty years. So I’ve
gotten used to what to expect. The first person I ran into—and this is the kind
of conference where it is possible to run into authors and actually say hi and
have a quick conversation, in fact speakers often show up at other speakers
sessions, oh the warmth, the new life springing!!—was poet Luci Shaw, who, and I
don’t think I'm exaggerating, holds the cornerstone to this event. She is a
stalwart presence. Yet I was still surprised that she was the first person I
might run into. This was a very good sign of fresh air, what I’d been craving.
Later Luci would hit it out of the ballpark. At her
session almost every seat was filled at the C-FAC. At the end of the hour I had
to knock about a dozen people all over age 70 out of my way to get to the
bookstore. We were ALL racing to buy her books. Within minutes, no joke, after
picking up a copy of Adventure into Ascent (IVP) all her books were sold. I could
have re-sold the copy in my hand, flipped it for more than I’d paid. The line
for book signing stretched into next Sunday. Way to go, girl.
I sat in on Exclusion and Embrace Miroslav Volf, Scott
Cairns, Marilyn Nelson (loved your necklace, girl!), Anne Lamott with her
self-depreciating wit that empathizes with me, me in the upper deck, struggling
to feel spring and sparks or a creative edge. Plus dozens more I’d never heard
of, but was so glad I was finally finding out about. Right now my request queue
at the Chicago Public Library is out of control.
There was the general conversation about: Are people still
reading today? Huh, yeah. This is a conference, a particular group of attendees
that have no qualms about reading, writing, and buying books. They find
themselves in words. From words spring new life. Words made flesh. Words of
bone and blood. Words that filled me up and pushed winter aside.
And mortality. And the all too frequent news that someone I know has
died. It’s been that kind of winter—that tries the soul and makes us doubt. Am
I still here?
I’ll be blogging more this week—because I’m BACK!
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