Writing Toward God: The Sacred for the Perplexed

Feeling stuck, perplexed, timid, or fearful about writing about God/The Sacred directly? You’re not alone. While 19th-century theologians challenged the view of God as a supernatural Person, that view still dominates popular Western imaginations (fundamentalist, atheist, and liberal). To re-envision God/The Sacred for our time, we need to follow visionary poets and storytellers. Inspired by modern and contemporary writers who approach God/The Sacred in unexpected ways, we’ll explore writing not about but toward God/The Sacred.

The goal is not to refresh our images for God/The Sacred or integrate new theologies into our writing. Instead, this is an opportunity to discover a new language for God/The Sacred by uncovering the no-longer-life-giving remnants of God/The Sacred in our work and writing our way into the Unknown. Weekly reading and writing prompts highlight six approaches: confession, mourning, slant imaginings, absence, mystical threads, and joy. A few of our guides: Kafka, Rilke, Joy Harjo, Mary Szybist, Yehuda Amichai, Cesar Vallejo, Lucille Clifton, Clarice Lispector, Jericho Brown.

You don’t need to be a poet or a poetry expert to join this experimental, generative writing workshop, but you should be familiar with the struggle to articulate changing experiences of God/The Sacred in today’s world.

Mary Lane Potter’s books include Strangers and Sojourners: Stories from the Lowcountry, the novel A Woman of Salt, and the memoir Seeking God and Losing the Way. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in Parabola, Witness, River Teeth, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Minerva Rising, Tiferet, Spiritus, SUFI Journal, Leaping Clear, Rogue Agent, Bearings Online, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Formerly a professor of Christian theology, she now writes fiction and creative nonfiction and teaches writing workshops. One of the constants in her spiritual and vocational life has been embracing and wrestling with the Lover Who Is Beloved, the Seeker Who Is Sought. Author website: http://members.authorsguild.net/marylapotter/.

Workshop Details

There will be some preparation (reading and/or writing) for this workshop series. Readings for the first session will be available two weeks before the series begins.

You will have an opportunity to meet individually with Mary Potter once during the series to discuss in-depth your writing and/or writing life.

Maximum number of participants: 10

SCHEDULE

Week 1, Tuesday, January 30, 2024, 5:00pm-7:30pm CT: Introduction and Drawing near via confessing our perplexity

Week 2, Tuesday, February 6, 2024, 5:00pm-7:30pm CT:  Drawing near via mourning

Week 3, Tuesday, February 13, 2024, 5:00pm-7:30pm CT: Drawing near via redirecting or slant imagination

Week 4, Tuesday, February 20, 2024, 5:00pm-7:30pm CT: Drawing near by creating and wrestling with a character/an absence

Week 5, Tuesday, February 27, 2024, 5:00pm-7:30pm CT: Drawing near via tugging on mystic threads

Week 6, Tuesday, March 5, 2024, 5:00pm-7:30pm CT: Drawing near via joy

Application Process:

The application deadline for this workshop has passed.