Slow Looking

I’d like to remind readers, both of you, about my seminar at Calvin University (Grand Rapids) coming up in April. If the schedule for the Festival of Faith and Writing wasn’t already jam-packed, attendees have the option to sign up for Lunch Circles where they pay for lunch and sit with others and discuss their writing in a casual, relaxed environment. It’s a nice way to 1. Have a lunch plan and not have to worry about what to eat or how to source it on the busy campus 2. Network with a group of others who have an interest in writing and literature, and finally 3. Not be the kid holding a lunch tray wondering where to sit or with whom. Festival Lunch Circles solves a number of “problems.”

My seminar—I use that word because it will be a discussion—revolves around Sister Corita and her unique way of viewing the world and helping her students to see things from another perspective. We can all get bogged down in editing something over and over and not seeing the meat through the sauce. By narrowing the picture, we can make inroads into finding a center, a place to rest our eyes. Something new. A new facet can unleash our writing, get us unstuck, move us in another direction.

Sister Corita came to prominence during the turbulent 1960s, when the Vietnam War was heating up and along with her fellow comrade in ministry, the radical poet Father Berrigan, were using their talents to give voice to a generation of seekers, In today’s divisive and war-weary world we’ll try to leave the distractions to the side and lean in on minutia, the ordinary, the everything everywhere to find a new focus—if even for one hour. Come join me!

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