Shawna R. B. Atteberry

I’m reading Cathleen Falsani’s The God Factor, and there is one commonality that has run through most of the profiles I have read (I’m about halfway through the book). This one commonality is love and forgiveness. Regardless of belief or religion (or “spirituality”) most of the people Falsani interviewed says that God or their view/perception of God is love and forgiveness. Out of the the ones I’ve read so far, I like what John Mahoney has to say about love and forgiveness the best. Mahoney is one of my favorite actors, and few other shows have made me roll with laughter the way that Frasier did. It wasn’t what he said about God’s love and forgiveness that caught my eye. It was his response to that love and obedience in this prayer he says throughout the day: “Dear God, please help me to treat everybody—including myself—with love, respect, and dignity” (p. 134). What a wonderful way to pray “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

A little over a year ago my bedroom became my sanctuary. I let my whimsy take over and designed the room to be my getaway. I painted it to look like twilight right after the sun had went down–my favorite time of day. My doll collection which included fairies were there as well as my icons. I called the motif “spiritual whimsy.” And when I wanted to shut the door on the world and lose myself in writing or a good book, I went in there and lit all the candles. Aaah sanctuary.

I was wondering if the bedroom would feel the same way since my marriage and move. Now I share the bedroom, which means I can’t paint it like twilight. But I do have my dolls out and my icons up. I love the view from the windows, both night and day. The lake is right there, and at night all the lights twinkling in windows make a wonderful mosaic. I put my rocking chair by one of the bedroom windows. Where I can read then look up and see the lake.

I am now on our bed. I decided the bedroom was the only place to be tonight. I needed sanctuary. I am overwhelmed by the violence and barbarism of the world. I have wanted to write on Lebanon and the Middle East, but the truth is I simply cannot. It’s too overwhelming. And I watched far too much news today. I have been careful in the last week to limit how much news I watch. Today I didn’t. Tomorrow I will. So here I sit on the bed, writing, with Bobby Flay’s Throwdown on in the background. (I love The Food Network).The Food Network has sparked another one of my sanctuaries: the kitchen. I love to cook. I love creating dishes and feeding people; my husband loves to eat, so we are well-paired. It renews me, and I can feel the stress from the day slipping away as I rinse, cut, and stir. I have just realized that I have planned a couple of time-intensive meals to make this weekend and in the coming week: time to unwind, to leave the world behind, and to create in contrast to all the tearing down.

I am hoping as I am in my sactuary, building up instead of tearing down, that God will show me ways of buidling up instead of tearing down out in the world. I am praying that I will create peace and be a peacemaker in the world as I receive peace in my sanctuaries. There are four articles that I found that I believe will help me to begin to know how to build up in regards to the Middle East. The links are below. They are very well balanced, and I loved that these two men are listening to each other, and their readers, and responding in Christlike love instead of diatribe. They give me hope that the Church can make a difference in our world instead of being polarized by political crap all the time. They give me a glimpse of what it looks like to be the body of Christ in this world and to act as Christ would act.

The Middle East’s Death Wish and Ours” by David P. Gushee.
Another Point of View: Evangelical Blindness on Lebanon by Martin Accad.
We Risk Not Just Suffering, But Annihilation by David P. Gushee.
“Who Is My Neighobor” in the Lebanon-Isreali Conflict? by Martin Accad.

Though you won’t find it in some of the sanitized versions lining the shelves of the children’s section of the library, an unmistakable strain of sheer brutality runs through the traditional folk and fairy tales. It’s frank and unapologetic, this element of violence and cruelty—naked and unadorned. Anyone even moderately familiar with the work of the Brothers Grimm, for instance, knows how truly grim the Grimms can be. Perhaps this is one of the reasons J. R. R. Tolkein suggested that fairy tales were never really meant for the nursery. Their outlook in life is far too broad—and too realistic—for that. –Jim Ware, God of the Fairy Tale, pp. 49-50.

I really like this book, and it will probably wind up in my collection. In this chapter, “Savage World: The Cruelty of Fallen Creation,” Ware reminds us that the brutality and savageness of our world today is nothing new. This world has been a brutal place to live in since the Fall. We live in a fallen and corrupt world where evil lives, and there are no guarantees of safely making it through the forest, down the street, or across the parking lot. In “Hansel and Gretel” we see parental abadonment, child abuse, torture, and cannibalism. Themes with a familiar ring to them. Ware goes on to note brutality in other fairy and folk tales: the giant telling Jack that he will make bread out of Jack’s ground bones, the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, and the tales of Mr. Fox and Robber Bridgroom who lured young, beautiful women into their lavish homes only to murder them.

Ware says, “The point here is not to terrify or titllate. Nor is it to echo the all-to-familiar alarmist message that society today is somehow worse than it’s ever been. On the contrary, what ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and the rest of the fairy tales teach us is that terror, cruelty, and savagery are simply ‘business as usual’ in a tainted and fallen world. We shouldn’t be surprised” (p. 51).

Ware notes that Jesus knew this as well. He warned his disciples that his followers would have trouble in this world. John reminds that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). Christians should be the least surprised over how brutal and savage this world can be. Christians in other parts of the world aren’t surprised. The ones who are suffering persecution for their faith, and have to leave family when they become a Christian to survive, know the truth of Jesus’ words and of fairy tales.

Yet large sections of American Christianity always seem to be surprised by what happens in our fallen world. It makes me wonder if they pay attention to their own beliefs. This world is not a nice place to live, and it will not be until Christ returns and all people and creation are reconciled in him.

Now this is not to say that we do nothing. There is a section of American Christianity that just wants to cover its head, whine to God how horrible this world is, and beg God to take them out of this evil, evil place. But Jesus showed us a different way. He showed us how to live in this evil world: love our enemies, pray for those who despise us, feed the poor, visit the sick and those in prison, and show this evil world a different way to live. Today in church our senior pastor said, “It’s not enough to pray for peace and then go home and do nothing. You have to become a peacemaker.” Paul would call it redeeming the time.

I want to be a peacemaker, but I’m not sure how to do that, but I am praying for God to show me. I know it won’t be popular in a war-mongering society. The war-mongering part of the church really irritates me. Jesus commanded us to be peacemakers, to love our enemies, to care for our enemies if they need it. So when Christians agree with actions that kill people and encourage even more warring ways, it makes me mad. They always cite Old Testament holy war passages, and I want to say, “So the Old Testament trumps the Son of God?” May be I should say it.

I’m not naive—I know there will be times when nations and societies go to war. It does not mean that the Church encourages it. It may be seen as a necessary evil, but it is still wrong. It is still sin. One of the reason I admire Dietrich Bonhoeffer is he never white-washed his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. He admitted that it was a necessary evil, and that he had to do something to prevent Hitler from continuing his evil, but he always said it was still a sin. And he asked forgiveness.

There is evil in this world. It is a brutal and savage place to live. But Christians are not to be brutes and savages within it. We are the body of Christ in this world, which means we are Christ in this world. To me this means we should be saying and doing the things Jesus said and did: “Your sins are forgiven” to prostitutes, tax collectors and the worse kinds of sinners; “Father forgive them” to those who killed him. He loved his enemies, fed the poor, and alleviated suffering and the effects of sin. He told us to be peacemakers and reconcile the world to him and the Father.

This essay is also posted at Street Prophets.

In stories, the subconscious mind gives voice to some of its most deeply cherished longings. In myths and legends, men and women make desperate attempts to tell one another who they are, why they are here, where they are going, and what they are meant to do. —Jim Ware, God of the Fairy Tale: Finding Truth in the Land of Make-Believe.

I was frightened, and I tried to heal my fear with stories, stories which gave me courage, stories which affirmed that utlimately love is stronger than hate. If love is stronger than hate, then war is not all there is. I wrote, and I illustrated my stories. At bedtime, my mother told me more stories. And so story helped me to learn to live. Story was in no way an evasion of life, but a way of living life creatively instead of fearfully. —Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.

Stories have always been important to me, to who I am. I have read stories since I learned to read, and before that my mother told me stories. One of the first stories I remember writing was in the second grade. The only thing I remember is that it was set on Venus–we were studying the solar system in science.

I think the reason I prefer fiction to nonfiction is you can say things in a story that is harder to say in an article. You can challenge the status quo and confront issues from the side instead of head on. I think story carries more power and truth than an article based on fact. We have confused fact and truth—they are not the same thing, and they cannot always be equated. Facts and datum are just one part of truth—one facet. Not everything can be quantified and qualified by scientific method. I think that is the main reason that literalist Christians who have to prove the Bible as fact irritate me. God and his acts in this world cannot be reduced to mere facts and datum. And that does not make him or his action any less true.

Story has the power to make you admit you are not the person you want to be. In story we can admit to what we really want and what we’re really looking for. It’s a safe haven—sancturary. There we can admit what our wildest longings and passions are, and it’s okay. I have learned more about God and life through story than I ever have through facts thrown at me about how God exists, and here’s the timeline (or insert another chart) to prove it. I have learned more about who I am and who I want to be through story than through any 40 day program that claims to make you more “spiritual.” There is a reason why 60% of the Bible is narrative—story. That is where we live—in our stories. Life does not happen in one set of equations to another or from one set of facts to another set of definitions. Life happens in living with each other, our stories overlapping, and growing into new and different stories.

I will write nonfiction, but that is not where my heart lies. My heart lies in story, and when I can combine story with nonfiction as Margaret Becker has done in Coming Up for Air, wonderful. But I have a feeling that I will always be home in fiction, and fiction will always be my first choice when it comes to writing. Nothing beats a good story…except for writing a good story.

I am reading How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci, and I am realizing how important asking questions is:

Although we all started life with a Da Vinci-like insatiable curiosity, most of us learned, once we got to school, that answers were more important than questions. In most cases, schooling does not develop curiosity, delight in ambiguity, and question-asking skill. Rather, the thinking skill that’s rewarded is figuring out the “right answer”–that is, the answer held by the person in authority, the teacher. This pattern holds throughout university and postgraduate education. . . (p. 65).

Michael Gelb then goes on to explain that in order to hone our problem-solving skills, we need to ask questions, and we need to ask the right kind of questions. We have to move away from “Is this the right answer?” thinking to “Is this the right question?” thinking. We have to look at different ways of seeing the problem, which means we will be asking more than one question. We have to reframe our initial question in a variety ways to be able to find solutions.

This led me back to a chapter I read in The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing about ideas. One of the sections of the chapter was on asking questions of your reading. When you read a news article or magazine feature, or something in a book that caught your attention–got your curiosity–you were to ask questions. Not everything that could be said about that person, organization, or situation was in that piece. Ask questions–what wasn’t there? What aspect of the story was glossed over in a line that needs its own story? “Questions lie at the heart of many of the best story ideas. Your job is to select the questions that intrigue you the most and run with them” (p. 45).

It seems all I have right now are questions. That is okay. I will keep asking questions and reframing those questions until I have answers that I can write about. All of my questions will probably have more than one answer, and none of those answers will be “the right answer,” but that is okay. That is how life is supposed to be. It would be nice if there were a right answer for everything, but there is not. All I can do is ask the questions and follow where they take me then tell you about it. And that is what I will do.

Ideas are fluttering around in my head, but none of them are forming into anything close to a coherent article. I am still thinking on how to connect women being created in the image of God when both our society and church environment discount, belittle, and ridicule much of our bodies. I have been reading, writing, and thinking theology for over ten years, and I don’t know where to start. It doesn’t help that I haven’t figured out what to do with my own body. I’m gaining weight. I’m not happy. I have always had a love/hate relationship with my body. I have learned how to love more than hate, but it has taken a long time. And I still have long ways to go. I know this needs to be done, and it will probably be turned into a book. I just need to give the idea time for form and become something substantive. Of course, I’ll keep reading and researching. I’m always reading and researching.

I’ve also had two short story ideas flittering around. Neither of them have gelled enough to begin on either, as well as several ideas on clinical depression. I suffer from clinical depression, so I would like to help and inform other people who live with it. Many, many ideas, but nothing is taking real shape so far. So I will keep reading and researching.

We were given an object and told tell why this was the most important thing in the world to us. I was given the 1 birthday candle.

“My Last Birthday”

I kept it in a box in a very safe place. Everyone would laugh if they knew, but I didn’t care. It was from my last birthday. Not the last one I had–it was just my last birthday. It was the last cake my mom baked for me. From the last time she gave me a present. It was all I had left from that day, and it was silly, but I didn’t care. Mom had bought it, and Mom had put it on my cake. It was a candle–the one, and it was all I had left of my 14th birthday–a week later Mom died. That was my last birthday.

I would really like to develop this into a short story.