Being Seen: Divine Edition

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Allowing Yourself to be Seen, and before that it was The Moment of Being Seen. Those posts were about “seeing” between people, but this week I remembered a great story in the Bible about being seen.

I am amazed at how little the stories in the Old Testament are whitewashed. The people are people, with all their petty and not so petty cruelties and insecurities and fears. It must’ve been tempting to make the heroes of the faith purely heroic, but most (if not all) of them are complex and real. Whatever other issues we may (or may not) have with what the writers/editors chose to include in the Scriptures, I’m grateful they kept the people pretty real.

Hagar was a servant of Sarai while she and Abram were nomads. Most people who’ve grown up Jewish or Christian know about God’s promise that Abram’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, yet, year after year, Sarai didn’t bear him any children. Well past menopause, Sarai gave up hope, and jump started the whole thing by forcing Hagar to have sex with Abram.

So when Hagar became pregnant, is anyone surprised that she didn’t bow with humble gratitude to Sarai for putting her in that situation? The Bible says she treated her mistress with contempt. I can imagine it:

“I’m sorry, since I got pregnant, the smell of your morning leban [mixture of yoghurt and wheat] makes me throw up. I wouldn’t want to put you through that. You’ll have to get your own breakfast.”

“Of course it’s easy for you to walk half the day without a break, you’re not pregnant.”

And is anyone surprised that Sarai doesn’t just accept this constant snarking as her just desserts for ordering her servant to submit to unwanted sex? Abram won’t intervene, so the Bible says Sarai treated Hagar harshly — given that their lives were already harsh, we can guess that she beat Hagar and withheld food and water.

Hagar ran away to the wilderness and an angel approached her at a spring with a crazy mixed message. It’s one of the few stories involving an angel in which the angel doesn’t first tell the person not to be afraid, so it makes me wonder how he appeared. I bet not in a blaze of glory, shining wings unfurled. I bet he appeared as another weary traveler and slumped beside her on a flat rock near the spring. And Hagar wasn’t afraid of him because she’d already been raped and beaten. What could he do to her that was worse than that?

The angel knows her name, knows that she’s pregnant, tells her that she’ll have a son who’ll be “as untamed as a wild donkey! He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives” (Gen 16:12). He gives her the name of the boy: “You are to name him Ishmael (which means ‘God hears’), for the Lord has heard your cry of distress” (Gen 16:11).

And he tells her she has to go back and submit to Sarai’s authority.

I don’t know that I would’ve seen this as good news, yet she changes the name she called God to El-roi, which means “the God who sees me.” This is a personal name, more intimate than a general title. She says, I imagine with wonder in her voice, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?” (Gen 16:13).

Nobody else saw her for her. Sarai saw her as the means to an end, as an insurance policy/just in case/last-ditch effort to fulfill God’s promise. Abram probably barely acknowledged her outside the deed itself, and he certainly didn’t care to do anything about her situation once she’d gotten pregnant. She was a servant. Servants aren’t seen.

So despite the mixed message of blessing and struggle, because God saw her for her, and heard her cries and sent someone to her to clue her into the bigger picture, she goes back to Sarai and has Ishmael.

Amazing, the power of being seen.

 

 

Diaries: Should They Stay or Should They Go?

~ Natalie Hart ~ 7 Comments

You know how it is when you’re not thinking about a particular thing, but then it keeps coming up from different groups of people and from different media outlets and then you can’t stop thinking about it? My husband and I had that recently with a movie, and now feel like we have to see The French Connection.

That’s also how it is with diaries lately. Not the writing in them, but the keeping. Which of your old diaries/journals do you keep? Do you keep them all for your loved ones to read after you’re dead? After all, you’re no longer able to be embarrassed by anything in there. Will the people who read them after you’re gone get to know the real you or the you at your most unpleasant (since that’s when we’re most likely to pour our hearts out)?

I have friends who’ve dealt with it differently. One person gave all her journals to her best friend to look through and glean anything that her daughter might want to read. Another tossed all her journals from before she met her now-husband and felt a glorious freedom and recommitment to her marriage after getting rid of all evidence of boyfriend angst.

I’m a keeper. Not of general crap — on the contrary, that I love to throw away. But if something has emotional value or resonance, I keep it. I have every letter ever sent to me, letters I wrote but never sent (I am the queen of good intentions and lack of follow-through), every diary I ever purchased, every poem written to me by a boy. I haven’t decided what to do with it all.

So I’m going to sift through it here, with an audience. To protect the unsuspecting, I’ll type all names as initials. If you wish to out yourself in the comments, feel free. Let’s start with my earliest entries, age 9:

10/1/1977: That afternoon there was a bazzar to raise money for my school. There were cartoons pie’s cookie’s & juice. I bought a couple of plants. That night after supper my father gave me my punishment. It was to stay in my room after our talk. I think now it was a good one, because while I was reading Higher Than the Arrow, when Francie thought about her bad feelings, I thought about mine. Showery all day miserable and dull.

10/2 had a drawing of a horse. My horse-drawing abilities have not improved in 35 years.

10/15/1977: Today day we had quite a nice day. N and R came over unexpectedly. N left at lunch time and didn’t come back in the afternoon. R stayed and we played Little House on the Prairie. We did watch some television. When R was just about ready to go we talked about the unfairness of grown ups to kids. R told me that one day she would run away to her own house that is near ours now. I said I might do some thing like that. But I knew R wouldn’t do such a thing. I started Anne Frank and like it. Even though I never read sombodys diary, I think it is the most exciting I would ever read.

10/16/1977: Dear A: R. came over today. So far she has told at least 2 or 3 lies. At church we spoke into the microphone. M was at church but she has to go back tonight. R and I are now playing house & school.

I’m sure I wasn’t as accepting or conscientious about all my punishments as I was about that one (for what, I have no idea). It’s so earnest. And dear. But, of course, also unfair, as are all grownups. There’s a lot of foot stomping in these diaries, all out of proportion to my actual treatment by the grownups in my life.

 

Rubber, Meet Road

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

Today, I did something I’ve never done before: I gave my writing to a kid to read. Not just a kid, but one of my own kids and a bunch of others, all of whom I know. These are some opinionated kids who read a lot, so I’m thinking that they won’t be shy about telling me they were bored (fingers crossed that they won’t be).

Now is when I discover whether what I’ve worked on so hard for the last 14 months does what I set out to do: novelize the story of David and Saul so a kid can experience it with a level of excitement that approaches Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. Note that I said “approaches.” I may be confident in my writing, but I’m not delusional.

This is where the rubber meets the road, the s#*! hits the fan, and any other cliche you can think of. I’ll put my plastic shield up and wait for their responses.

Travel By Map

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

I was watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade night on TV. At one point, they document a long plane ride by showing the red line of their journey across a map. They did this in the most recent Muppet Movie, too. When faced with a long trip and not much time to do it in, they decide to “travel by map” so it’ll go faster.

I find myself wishing I could travel by map — not location, but time. My church is in a tough spot. People are drifting away. Those who already worked hard, are working even harder. We’ve gone through this before, and we rallied. Twice. But it’s not clear that we’ll be able to rally this time. I want to travel by map so I can just find out the endpoint.

But there’s no such thing.

In my head, I know that the journey is important. My faithfulness, my trust in the Lord, my patience will be exercised and built up. (And between you and me, my patience can do with some building up.) I have the chance to be obedient, to continue to serve the Lord in the ministries I’m passionate about. Those things can only be good for me.

The unanswered/unanswerable questions still nag me, though. Will we close? If so, when? If not, how will we continue? Who will remain to continue? Will I remain to continue? What will we tell the kids? Where would we go?

I know it’s silly to be made so sad by that speedy line of travel in those movies. But I really want to travel by map.

Anyone else in a situation they want to rush to the end of?

Wonderful: Holy Laughter

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

I don’t always appreciate puns, but I love this book title: Between Heaven and Mirth. Appropriately, given the title, it’s about Why Joy, Humor and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. I requested this book after seeing the author on the Colbert Report. It’s wonderful: full of jokes, but also discussion of why Christians have often thought they needed to be dour, and analysis of Scripture to restore what would’ve been funny to the people at the time.

It also reminds me of one of the best prayers I’ve been part of. When we lived in New York City, we belonged to All Angel’s Episcopal Church and were part of a great small group that met once a week for talk, Bible study and prayer. This night, we’d broken up into smaller groups for prayer. I was with two friends in a little hallway by the washing machine. One friend was praising God for His sweetness, which was lovely, but when she went on, “for your sweetness, your gooeyness, your frothy goodness,” we cracked up. Our friend was trying to give up sugar and, momentarily related all goodness to desserts. We couldn’t stop giggling and ended up thanking God for laughter and calling it a night. That prayer makes me happy every time I think of it.

Several years ago, on a tough Sunday of children’s church, unstoppable laughter during prayer was exactly what I needed. It was the first Sunday for a new three-year-old. A sweet little girl who didn’t care at all about what we were doing. She just wanted to do her own thing and explore the room and talk constantly about what she was experiencing. Which would have been fine, except that I also had to deal with 9-year-olds in the same group, and try to tell the story and keep order. I also believe no teenagers were in church that Sunday, so I didn’t have a helper. By the end of the service, I was frazzled. And then, during our intercessory prayer time, that same little girl burped. It was such an adorable little noise that I laughed. And, of course, the kids laughed. It was a cleansing laugh. I thanked God for it at the time, and I still do.

More recently (and before I read Between Heaven and Mirth), I went against type in my portrayal of the prophets in the David and Saul book. The usual image of an Old Testament prophet is of an angry man yelling at people to repent. My prophets are lighthearted and quick to laugh, not out of frivolity, but out of security.

David has escaped out his back window in the middle of the night and run away from King Saul, straight to the prophet Samuel. Saul figures out where David is and sends soldiers to capture him, but things take a surprising turn:

Samuel and Caleb strode towards the well, gathering other men along the way. There were fourteen of them by the time they reached Ramah’s outskirts. As the soldiers got closer, all the prophets did was stand arm-in-arm in a circle and sing. David couldn’t tell what they were singing, but snatches of melody made their way back to him and raised the hair on his forearms.

The army commander gave the signal, and the soldiers spread out in formation and unsheathed their weapons. The bronze and iron glinted like lightning in the sunshine, but the prophets didn’t acknowledge the soldiers in any way. When Saul’s men were mere steps away, the prophets broke apart and formed a line, but it was like no defensive line David knew of. Some of them stood with their arms raised to the heavens, others fell on the ground, pounding the earth with their fists, and still others whirled in wild circles, the hems of their robes flashing above their knees.

David watched, slack-jawed, as, one by one, the soldiers dropped their weapons and joined the men of God in their worship. Tears fell unchecked as he watched these rough soldiers be overcome by the Spirit of the Lord.

And then he laughed – not because the soldiers were making fools of themselves, but out of utter security in the Lord’s protection.

Anyone got any funny church stories to share?

 

 

Stealing from Life

~ Natalie Hart ~ 4 Comments

I’m a thief.

I’ve stolen one line from a famous family story and used it in the novel I’m working on. Here’s the story in its more accurate version (to be followed by the pithier version that’s usually told).

In the last year of World War II, my father’s family fled the city of Utrecht (in the Netherlands) to his Tante Nell’s house, where they were also joined by his Tante Uut’s family. There were 25 people living/being hidden in this country house and Nell ran the place with military precision. One night, it was one of the kid’s jobs to do the dishes. He preferred not to. When Nell found the dishes undone, she went all over the house looking for the culprit. When it was determined that he was hiding in the little bathroom under the stairs, she stood in front of the door and made a speech about how it was important for everyone to do their job when it was required of them, and if they had to use the bathroom, they should do that on their own time.

The version my uncles always told was more dramatic. In that one, Tante Nell pounded on the door of the bathroom, yelling [language cleaned up a bit], “Poop on your own time!”

I stole just the last bit for a scene between Saul and David. They’ve both just returned from the battle after David killed Goliath. Saul was unable to sleep that night, obsessing about the song the women of every village they passed sang: “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten thousands,” which was literally impossible at that time, so it really burned.

Near dawn, Saul demands David be fetched to see whether the boy’s music will calm him down like it always used to:

The sky was still mostly dark when David finally arrived.

“You’re across the courtyard. What took so long?”

David cleared his throat. “My morning, um, attentions, my lord.”

“Piss on your own time,” Saul said. “Now that you’re a great hero and the new hope of all Israel, are you too important to play the harp for your king?”

It’s such a tiny thing, just five words, but I love slipping family lore into my works in progress. There’ll be more of these in the future, some funny, some more dramatic.

Feel free to tell me some of your family lore in return.

 

Wonderful: Funny Message Books and Gummy Vitamins

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

Vitamins are good for you. I accept this. I used to buy vitamins, but they always sat in their plastic bottles making me feel guilty because I spent the money but hated swallowing those giant pills. And then last year, I looked to the left of the gummy vitamins I bought for the kids: adult gummy vitamins. Not weird like those chocolate calcium chews I tried once. Real gummy candy. Real vitamins.

Similarly, I tend to shy away from entertainment that’s Good For Me, but the novel I just finished, The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex, is the gummy vitamin of message books. I’d call it a Comic Allegory.

Gratuity (“Tip”) Tucci is an 11-year-old African-American-Italian girl. Her mother is abducted by the aliens who’d been sending her messages through a glowing purple mole on her neck. Shortly after this, the alien Boov “discover” Earth and rename it Smekland, because, if you discover something, you get to rename it and kick people out of their homes so you have somewhere to live. They herd all the Noble Savages of Smekland into one state, and expect the Noble Savages to be grateful.

Sound familiar?

So Tip and her cat Pig head off in the family car to find her mother. In an abandoned convenience store, she runs across a fugitive Boov named J.Lo (male) who winds up modifying her car so it can hover. From here, it becomes a road trip book. They hover across the country, first to Florida, through Roswell, NM, and then Arizona, getting into trouble, learning about each other’s cultures, and growing to appreciate each other.

Other, even worse aliens invade, and Tip and J.Lo team up to rid the world of them.

There were tons of silly touches, like multiple groups of boys who form organizations called B.O.O.B., despite the fact that the acronym doesn’t quite fit the actual group name. Lots of alternate names for familiar things, mangled English from J.Lo, bickering, disguises, funky alien technology. Tip’s personality is vivid and real. Here’s a little taste from the beginning:

I’d drained our bank account, and there was less than I’d expected in the rainy-day fund that Mom kept at the bottom of an underwear drawer in a panty hose egg labeled “DEAD SPIDERS.” As if I hadn’t always known it was there. As if I wouldn’t have wanted to look at dead spiders.

I’ve never read a book that functions so successfully as a comic novel and an allegory. It’s a wonderful middle grade novel. I loved  it. If you’re an adult and enjoy middle grade stuff, you might enjoy it, too. Or just get it for your kids.

 

 

 

Voice: Other Artist

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

I haven’t done a voice exercise in way too long, so here we go:

If you weren’t a writer, but could be any other kind of artist/musician, what would you choose? What would be your tools? why?

I’m pretty sure anyone who’s known me since college could tell you: dancer.

Before college, I circled around dancing, doing figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics. At Calvin, I made a beeline for the Dance Guild. I loved it. I reveled in it. By my junior year, I was dancing 20 hours a week. I was in fully half the dances in the programs. I joined the liturgical dance group at the church I went to. I took every official dance class Calvin offered. I even got to be in a Glenn Bulthuis video (an alumni weekend thing). I eventually led both the Dance Guild and the church program.

In New York, I didn’t dance, except for boogying down at parties. It was too intimidating. There were professional dancers everywhere and they’d surely know I was an amateur. When we moved back to Michigan, I started up again.

So I’d rather be a medium fish in a small pond, than a minnow in the ocean. I’m fine with it.

We went back to the same church, where I danced again. I got to dance twice as Mary while I was pregnant. Grateful doesn’t begin to express how I felt about that. In fact, I danced until my due date with both kids — dancing felt more natural to my body than walking (ahem, waddling), at that point.

And then came the true making of me as a dancer: we joined a multiracial/multicultural church that had a very different history of dance. Dances weren’t just something nice to do that might move people. Dances could change lives, they could lead the viewers to deeper faith, to faith to begin with. There was also a tradition of “flowing” — dancing as the Spirit moves you, without planned choreography.

Most of my favorite dance experiences are from City Hope. I’m both a more powerful dancer and a freer one. I only managed to “flow” once, but I have motions for a third of the songs we sing that I do in the pews. If the praise team sings a song I have a dance to, I’ll go up front (after making sure that my outfit doesn’t show skin if I bend over or raise my arms) and just do it, unplanned, no uniform. Lately, I’ve taken to waving my big ribbon (thank you, rhythmic gymnastics training) during praise and worship, mostly as an encouragement to the congregation during the tough time we’re having.

I’d always loved the storytelling aspect of dance, the ability to embody emotion, especially the angsty ones. The peppy numbers were fun, but the first dance I choreographed was called, “Gaelic Mourning,” and I went on to specialize in numbers for Lent and Good Friday. The Bible verse that best explains my approach to dancing is about something else entirely: Romans 26:8 (NLT), “the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”

Is this the place to mention the dance others (not me!) called my “sex on a chair” dance? It was in good taste. I know this because nobody wrote a letter to school paper complaining about it. It was to Maria McKee’s, “Breathe” — “I will let you breathe through me, I will let you be through me.” If one is trying to embody those lyrics….

It’s funny, but as a dancer, I’m mostly word focused. I explicate the lyrics with my body. This is especially true in my church dancing, but it was before, too. Lately, I’ve been using a lot of enhanced American Sign Language, especially in the kids’ church dance numbers. It provides a wonderful framework. Someday, I’d like to put together a seminar for the Calvin Institutes of Worship conference on that topic. I think it would help a lot of churches who want to have dance, but may not have “pros” already in their pews.

I’d say it’s pretty clear that, if I weren’t a (wannabe) writer, I’d be a dancer, because I am one. But that doesn’t answer the “Why?”

Because I was made to move. Just like that character in “Chariots of Fire,” I feel God’s pleasure when I move and when I teach others to move. And I’m not giving that up.

 

 

 

Wonderful: Saul’s Fortress

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

One of the best things about writing this novelization of the story of David and Saul is the research.

The world was very different 3,000 years ago (duh). To try to accurately portray what life was like, physically as well as culturally, I’ve gotten to do a lot of reading, a lot of Googling various obscure issues, like where is the nearest spring to Bethlehem, how far could a person walk in a day, what was Philistine armor like. I’ve even managed to use the Calvin College library without incurring any late fees (unlike when I was a student there).

There isn’t a ton of archeological information for that location and time period (approx. 1,000 BCE), so I get to make stuff up. But I’m always alert to new snippets of data.

Here’s how Saul’s fortress changed over the various drafts of the novel.

Early in my research, I found an online photo of a ruin said to be Saul’s fortress. The author said it was probably plain, nothing fancy or very large — not at all like the medieval castle we might imagine. All commentators agree that Saul, as Israel’s first king, was more like the top tribal chief than what we think of as a king. So my first imaginings of the fortress had it as one large building, a first floor and a second floor. First floor for public functions, including his receiving room/throne room, and second floor for private.

But then I read The Great Armies of Antiquity, by Richard A Gabriel. It described a building with casemate walls (inner and outer wall with stone filler in between) and a tower on each corner. So the fortress got a little larger and gained fortifications. In my imagination, the towers weren’t just tall, but they had low walls and crenellations on top so archers could fire at the enemy and then take cover. This is not in either the biblical or archeological record for that location, although there were fortresses at the time that had them.

I also imagined the fortress as being built up over time, my thinking being that the job evolved over the 40 or so years of his reign. When Saul first became king, he had the plain broad house, larger than a regular person’s house, but not out of the ordinary for a wealthy person. Then, as time went on, and the Philistines were a continuing threat, coming to within ten miles of Gibeah, Saul would’ve had the place built up. So I imagined a compound in a U shape: original house, a connecting long hall in the back to a new building the same size as the original. The king kept the throne room and private family quarters in the original house, used the hall for storage of taxes and tributes, and put servants next to the food storage on the first floor of the new building, armor bearers and some soldiers on the second floor. The cooking courtyard leads off this secondary building. A wall built at the front of these two structures contains a gate, much like a city gate, so visitors go through the gate, and through the interior courtyard before getting to Saul’s receiving room.

But then, today, while Googling water supplies near Gibeah, I found a link to a book that claims that there is only sufficient archeological evidence to support the existence of a single tower during the time period I need. Which I find more interesting. So now the fortress is the same as above except for one lone tower at the rear corner of the newer building (so the soldiers can get up there quickly and easily) that rises way above the city walls. There are stairs that lead around it on the inside, but once you get above the second floor, there are stones that jut out like ladder rungs, and the lookouts have to climb up the rest of the way.

Yes, I find this fun. But it also serves a purpose: to provide the reader with a richly detailed, plausible world. Soon, it’ll be in the hands of my beta readers and I’ll find out whether I succeeded. (Fingers crossed.)

Wondering: Realism and Faith

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

In my second year of college, I went on a January term off-campus study program to the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto to take a course in Ontology from my uncle, Hendrik Hart. This was heavy-duty philosophy that  left me thinking so hard I’d be sweaty at the end of class.

As part of the course, we watched the movie, Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance — an often whirling sequence of images without dialogue, accompanied by the repetitive music of Philip Glass. (I’d thought we’d seen the sequel, Powaqquatsi: Life in Transition, but research tells me it came out that same year, and we saw the movie in class, not in a theater, so it must’ve been the earlier one.)

In our discussion afterwards, the teacher asked a question and then a follow-up question that provided one of those moments in which my perspective shifted in a heartbeat.

(I remember the person who led this discussion as Bob Sweetman, who was still, I think a student/Junior Member at the ICS, although he’d later come to teach at Calvin and then return to the ICS. I don’t think it was our Calvin professor, Lambert Zuidervaart, although it may have been; in a funny note, he’s also now teaching at the ICS.)

Anyway, the adult male who led the discussion asked us about optimism. The movie was pessimistic in tone, and so he asked us to raise our hands if we considered ourselves to be optimistic. Very few people raised their hands. Why would we? We were budding intellectuals, and feeling positive about things was not considered an impressive point of view. I may even have sneered a little inside at those who raised their hands, smug in my knowledge that everything was going to pieces.

And then he asked us whether we considered ourselves Christians. We nodded.

He made a half “hmm”/half sniffing noise that said, “interesting.” Because part of being a Christian is believing that God can act in the world and make a difference there — Christianity was an optimistic faith. Did we really think that things were impossible for God?

And bam. Self-righteous negativity took a fatal blow.

I could still take a hard look at how things were, but I could have hope because of God. I didn’t have to default to the negative.

That doesn’t mean I’m all Suzy Sunshine now. There have definitely been times when that promise of hope has felt like a whisper delivered upwind from five miles away — but there, nonetheless.

The real question

So all of this leads me to ask: is realism, at some level, incompatible with faith?

I know churches deal with that question at budget time. Do we commit to a course of action although we’re not sure whether we have the funds, trusting that, if it’s a faithful action, God will provide the funds? Or do we cut programs because we can’t guarantee the money will come?

If things are not going well in a relationship, where is the point at which the hard facts of history trump the hope that things will change?

Does faith always trump realism? Or does realism have to “win” sometimes?

I consider myself a realist who cries out to God for help, hoping for change, even a change of heart. Sometimes the situation changes, sometimes things get unstuck, sometimes I change. Sometimes not. I’m not so much a “God has a very specific and clearly itemized plan for my life” kind of person. I rely on the promises recorded in the Bible: God will always be with me, all things will work together for my good (not for my pleasant, but for my good), and God desires to give me hope and a future. I can make good decisions, and I can make bad decisions, but God will work with me to bring me around.

One of my best decisions was to join a multiracial church. But we’re in a situation with our church now that is tough and we’re feeling the sting of too much reality. We’re having some “listening meetings” this month, wherein we talk about what’s been great and what’s been not so great. These are good and important meetings to have. But the real question is what we do once those are over. What do we go with: realism or faith?

Not looking for an answer yet. Just raising the question.