Category Archives: faith

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teaching as an act of care

I just reread my post from February in which I promised to post more often, beginning with a version of a conference presentation I gave in January. I’m embarrassed that it’s July and I haven’t shared that post. Instead of rewriting the presentation into an essay, I’ve decided to share an outline of my talking points. I hope you find something relevant in it, regardless of your calling.

The title of the presentation was Love in Action, and its purpose was to remind us (myself and fellow Christian university faculty) of the value of caring work and to identify ways in which teaching is caring work. I began with the following reasons why the topic is important:

1. AI has made “am I talking to a real person?” a crucial question.

    2. Students are intimidated by their professors.

    3. Students who feel safe are more willing to take intellectual risks.

    4. Most importantly, if we take our calling as Christian faculty seriously, our work is a ministry.

    These claims were based mainly on the following sources:

    •Anecdotal evidence based on ten years of teaching online “full-time” (and a lot of course evaluations to back me up!)

    •Books on Christian love in action: Real Love for Real Life by Andi Ashworth and Making Room by Christine Pohl

    •Findings from a doctoral research project by Nat Mercer (my colleague at Grace Christian University)

    This quote from Ashworth was foundational to my thinking on this topic: “Hospitality can also mean sitting with another person over coffee, showing an interest in who they are” (p. 71, emphasis mine). I asked my audience, “Can this happen in a virtual setting as well?”

    The remainder of my presentation was set up as a series of real or perceived contrasts.

    Contrast 1: Important work vs. recognized work: Crucial work can be done in secret, as we see in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. While it is valuable for faculty members to be able to articulate the work we do, not all tasks are easily trackable.

    • Principle: Work doesn’t have to be financially compensated to be important, and there is value in doing work that isn’t formally rewarded.
    • Caveat: This shouldn’t be used as excuse not to fairly compensate people for their work.
    • For example, as an adjunct working on a contract basis, I get paid for teaching my courses. At a bare minimum, that means giving feedback on assignments and recording grades. But is meeting with students who want to talk about their career future also teaching? What about writing recommendation letters? What about reading a book I’ll later recommend to a student? (I think the answer to these questions is “yes”!)

    Contrast 2: Creative work vs. busy work: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” –David Allen, Getting Things Done

    Allowing space for creativity is related to allowing space for serving others.

    Overcommitted faculty have less capacity to notice others’ needs and create ways to serve them.

    Principle: Caring takes creativity.

    Contrast 3: Students: problems or people?

    I know I need a “heart check” when I start thinking of my students as problems, annoyances, or tasks to deal with.

    Practical ways to remind myself that my students are people: praying for them by name, offering/saying yes to phone/Teams conversations

    Principle: If we want our students to think of us as real people and not just machines that grade their work, we also owe it to them to view them as people.

    Contrast 4: Rigorous vs. relational (which turns out not to be a contrast after all)

    Attachment theory posits that people with “a secure base from which to explore the world” are more willing to take healthy risks.

    Nat’s research on academic rigor and faith integration: “the impact of the expression of grace and mercy by professors and the way students persist as a result of these values”—Nat Mercer, email communication, 1/6/2026

    Principle: Being kind and caring toward our students does not mean compromising academic rigor.

    Contrast 5: Transactional vs. self-giving

    I read the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, which gives a concrete picture of self-giving love. I also cited the research on servant leadership by Robert Greenleaf.

    Biblical servanthood is not reciprocal—Jesus didn’t sit down and ask his followers to wash his feet, nor did he resent them for not doing so. But he did tell them to do the same for each other!

    Principle: Teaching can be incredibly rewarding, but even when it isn’t, God calls us to keep giving.

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    Sunrise over the Sea of Tiberias

    Dear readers,

    I was honored to receive first place in the Fiction Short Story category of this year’s Cascade Writing Contest, sponsored by the Cascade Christian Writers organization. Since the piece is not published anywhere and I entered the contest simply for the fun of participating, I am sharing the story below. For my fellow writers who may be interested in entering next year’s contest or learning more about CCW, here’s their website: https://cascadechristianwriters.org/

    And here’s the story:

    I don’t regret what I said the day Jesus decided to go to Bethany and see about Lazarus. None of us thought he should be going so near Jerusalem. Some of us whispered of conspiracies and the jealousy of the powerful; others outright confronted Jesus and said he was being reckless. But Jesus had made up his mind. We could see it in the set of his jaw, in the determined gleam in his eyes. And I wasn’t going to let him go by himself.

    It was like Peter had said that one time— “Where else would we go?”

    So I figured I was speaking for the whole group when I said, as we set out on the road, “Let’s go then, and die with him.”

    And for some reason, everyone burst out laughing when I said that. I knew they agreed with me, but apparently, I had a tone in my voice. They quoted me in an exaggeratedly morose voice: “Let’s go diieee with him.” I think we were all scared, so the others were compensating by laughing about something that wasn’t funny. I glared at them and marched ahead, and that just made them laugh more.

    Jesus jogged up to me and smiled. “Thanks, Thomas.” He gripped my arm. “I appreciate you.”

    I scowled—there was no point in hiding how I felt. “We don’t think you should be going anywhere near Jerusalem.”

    “I know,” he said.

    “But—” I sighed. “If you’re going, then I’m going with you. We all are, as you can see.” I turned around and gestured at the rest of the disciples, who were still laughing and cutting up.

    Jesus waved at them, then turned back to me and grinned. “I’m very thankful,” he said. “For all of you.”

    Jesus was always saying things like that.

    He turned out to be right about everything, of course. It turned out that Lazarus had already been dead for days when we got to Bethany. You could smell the body through the stone covering the grave. But Jesus just walked up to the tomb and told the man to come out. And he did.

    This offended some powerful people among the religious elite, since only God is supposed to be able to do that sort of thing, and they started plotting to kill Jesus. (So we were also not wrong about the whole Jerusalem thing, I just want to point out.) Jesus slipped off to this little middle-of-nowhere town called Ephraim—with us tagging along, as usual—and evaded his enemies. At least for a while.

    ***

    Trying to stop Jesus from going to Jerusalem was like trying to stop the flow of the Jordan River with your own hands. So we found ourselves back in Jerusalem for Passover. The twelve of us celebrated the feast in an upper room of a stranger’s house, which gave us a bit of privacy even though Jesus was the most famous man in town at this point. That was the night he washed our feet, which is probably the strangest and most meaningful thing that has ever happened to me, including everything that happened afterward.

    Jesus talked a lot that night. For hours after the meal, he talked to us about his Father, about the Helper (a shadowy figure to us at that point), about love, joy, peace, death—everything, it felt like. He kept talking about how he was going to go away. He said he was coming back for us, but I didn’t want to let him out of my sight.

    At one point he said, “You know the way to where I am going.”

    But I just didn’t see how that could be true. So I blurted out, “How can we know the way if we don’t even know where you’re going?”

    Then Jesus looked at me, and there was a smile on his lips but sadness in his eyes. This is what he said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

    It’s a philosophical marvel, that statement, a brilliant and succinct summary of Jesus’ identity. John showed me later that he’d written it down immediately, word for word, on a little piece of pottery he was carrying around in his pocket.

    But this is what I heard—what I felt Jesus saying to me: “Thomas, I know you want to know all the details. I know you want a map. But I just want you to follow me.”

    And there was nothing I could say to that. Because, of course, Jesus is the map—and the road, and the companion who walks beside you along the road. But I’m getting ahead of my story.

    ***

    Jesus died the next day. And even though he had warned us, done everything he could to prepare us, we were devastated. We all just ran away. What were we supposed to do, without him there to show us?

    I went and stayed with my twin brother for a few days. He thought I was crazy for following Jesus, but he didn’t say that, this time; he just let me be quiet and think.

    Then I went back and found the other disciples. They were all in an uproar, claiming they’d seen Jesus alive. And I don’t know why, if it was my brother’s influence or just because it hurt too much to hope. But I convinced myself that they were making it up. They kept arguing with me, but I wasn’t having it.

    “Fine,” I said. I was mad. “You show him to me. I want to see where they hammered the nails in his hands. I want to stick my finger in the holes. I want to see where they drove the sword in his side.”

    “But Thomas,” Andrew said, “we don’t know where he went.”

    And that struck me right in the chest. Jesus had promised we would know where he was going. He’d said he was going to show us the way. But the map was gone, and I was utterly lost.

    I breathed out and shook my head. “Then I don’t believe you.” And I walked out of the room and slammed the door.

    ***

    I came back, of course. These were my friends. But I didn’t have to participate in their nonsense. I sat in the corner, and I tried to harden my heart.

    We stayed in that house for days, afraid the Sanhedrin were out to get us after what happened with Jesus. People kept trickling in and telling us stories of encounters with Jesus. Cleopas and his wife said they’d walked with Jesus for three hours on the road to their house in Emmaus, sat down and started having dinner with him—all before they realized who it was. Then right after he revealed himself to them, he disappeared.

    I was still angry, but I missed Jesus. I tried to picture him walking into the room, but it was always very clearly just my imagination.

    Until he actually walked into the room. Straight through a locked door, as a matter of fact. But he wasn’t a ghost; he was Jesus, with the scruffy beard and the calloused hands and everything. “Peace be with you,” he said. And then he said my name.

    I stood up, and everybody turned around and stared at me. I felt the way I had on the road to Bethany, like I was the odd one out. Jesus held up his hands. “You said you wanted to see the scars.”

    I didn’t move. “Thomas,” Jesus said. “Stop trying to make yourself doubt.” Then he looked at me the same way he had when he’d said that thing about the map.

    And I couldn’t help it. I believed him. And then I did everything at once—I grabbed his hands. I touched the scars. I cried. I hugged him. I shouted, “My Lord and my God!” I saw him and believed. And although Jesus went off on his own again that night, I would see him one more time before he went back to his Father.

    ***

    The sun was just starting to rise over the Sea of Tiberias. An orange glow crossed by thin dark clouds. The air was still chilly.

    Some of us had gone fishing overnight. It had been Peter’s idea; he’d said he wanted to do something with his hands.

    “But we’re not fishermen anymore,” Andrew had pointed out.

    “What are we, then?” Peter had argued. That had silenced Andrew. “Besides, we’re not going to sell them,” Peter had said. “I just want to do something.”

    Not all of us were trained as fishermen, but those who were gave us things to do, to keep us busy. We sat in the boat all night, quiet in the dark, as if the past week had drained all the stories out of us.

    As the sun began to rise, we headed back to shore. A silhouette of a man was standing there. I shivered. He called out: “I guess you guys didn’t catch any fish?”

    I thought I recognized the man’s voice, but I didn’t want to say it. I glanced at the others.

    “No,” Peter called out. He didn’t sound irritated, just tired.

    The man called back: “Let down your net on the right side of the boat. I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

    Someone gasped. I saw John smile and nod. “Do it,” said Peter. And of course, we did. I hadn’t been there three years ago, the first time this had happened, but I’d heard the story dozens of times.

    Immediately, the net was full of fish. This was not a surprise—again we all knew what to expect—but it still took my breath away. I paused to gasp some air into my lungs. “Grab the net!” James hollered. I did. But even with all of us pulling, we couldn’t get the net into the boat.

    “Drag it in,” said Peter. “I’m going to talk to Jesus.” He took off his coat and jumped into the chilly water.

    The orange glow was spreading up from the horizon. James and John got us into the little boat so we could pull the net into shore without having to weigh anchor. My job was to hold onto the net for dear life.

    When we got to shore, there was a small coal fire with bread toasting over it. Just when I realized I was hungry, the man raised his head from the deep consultation he had been in with Peter and smiled. It was unmistakably Jesus. There was a moment when I forgot he had been dead a week before. I remembered when he pushed his hair off his forehead and I saw the ugly scar in his hand. “I’m making breakfast for us,” he said. “Hand me a couple of those fish.”

    I grabbed two of the fish from the teeming pile. They were cold, and a ray of sun shone off their silver scales. I placed them in Jesus’ hands, which were warm from the fire. “Thank you,” he said, looking in my eyes, and it sounded like a blessing. I didn’t know what to say, and Peter looked eager to continue their talk, so I turned back toward the net.

    “We should count these,” I said.

    “Why?” Nathanael frowned. “We’re not going to sell them.”

    “Someone will want to record the number.” I gestured toward the others. At least two of them had been writing down their experiences with Jesus. I was just trying to make sense of it all in my head.

    “Is the number important?” Nathanael looked at the net. It was just a small one, not a big commercial net like I’d seen some of the fancier-looking fleets have. But it was bursting, a multitude of fish now glowing with the fire of the mostly risen sun.

    I shrugged, already spreading out a canvas for them to dry. “Anything might be important.”

    So we counted them. As Peter remained in hushed conversation with Jesus, who listened carefully as he turned the fish over the fire, as James and John mended a net just on the edge of their discussion, as Andrew walked the beach alone, picking up driftwood for the fire, Nathanael helped me count the fish. There were 153.

    The sun had fully risen when Jesus said, “Breakfast is ready.” He broke the bread and passed it around. He winced when he burned his fingers on the fish as he divided it up. The skin of the fish was salty and crispy and the flesh flaky. And I didn’t know if it was because God had cooked this fish or because Jesus of Nazareth just had a lot of practice preparing food in the open air, but it was perhaps the best fish I had ever eaten. The bread, too, was perfect—soft on the inside with a faint char on the outside—and this surprised me not at all.

    Jesus looked out to sea, toward the sun in its strength. Then he looked back to us, casting his gaze around the circle, where we all sat licking our fingers. “Remember,” he said. “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. You are the fishers of men.” He smiled. “But you are shepherds now, too. As I just told Peter, I am sending you to feed my sheep.”

    Peter ducked his head and gave a grin that looked uncharacteristically shy. I thought about how Jesus had called himself the good shepherd. Now he was asking us to be the same.

    And then Jesus looked at me. “I’m going to prepare a place for you,” he said.

    I smiled. “I won’t lose the map.”

    “You won’t,” he agreed.

    ***

    Those are just a few examples of the things Jesus said and did—the ones that stuck with me the most. John said that if you tried to write down everything Jesus did, the whole world wouldn’t be able to hold the books, and while I’m not sure how to picture that, practically speaking, I think I understand what he’s getting at.        

    Jesus went back to be with his Father shortly after that morning on the beach, but he’s never left me or forsaken me. And I’m still following the map.

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    coming soon–more posts

    Hi everyone,

    If you’re still here, thanks for being a loyal supporter of my blog. I started it in 2011 (as penelopeclearwater.wordpress.com) as a place to post a couple of book reviews so I could get free copies of the books. Over the years, I’ve written about all manner of topics–most recently, focusing on online teaching and learning–but recently (as you may have noticed) my posting frequency has fizzled out, with 2025 having the dubious distinction of being the blog’s least active year ever.

    There are good reasons why I haven’t been posting as much–life events have led to a great desire for privacy and less time for writing. Simultaneously, though, I’ve been sensing an invitation to get back into some creative activities I’ve enjoyed in past years, as well as trying some new ones. These have included activities from cross-stitch (an old hobby) to crocheting (a new and challenging one) to making Christmas cards (a new and delightful one) to making origami birds (a fun one-off project I enjoyed on one winter evening). I’m also slowly getting back into writing more than just emails and grading feedback. I’ve been writing a haiku prayer every Wednesday for almost a year now, and just this past month I finished and polished up a short story to enter into a contest. And this leads me back to my blog. I want to start posting regularly again, even if “regularly” at first means just quarterly.

    Right now, I’m working on turning a conference presentation I made last month into a post, so you can expect that soon. But for now, I just wanted to say thank you and let you know that I’m still here!

    Sincerely,

    Tess

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    book recommendation: Mariner

    I’ve just finished what will probably turn out to be my favorite book read in 2024. (I think it’s safe to make that prediction in mid-November.) I chose Malcolm Guite’s Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a possible book club option for the arts-focused life group we’re starting at church. I was excited about both the author and the subject matter. Malcolm Guite is a poet, scholar, rock band member, and Anglican priest. I’ve heard him read his own poetry in person and speak on some podcasts, and I like what he has to say (and his gravelly British voice) a lot. And of course, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the leaders of the English Romantic movement, both a brilliant Christian philosopher and a renowned poet, known especially for the haunting ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

    Guite’s book is both literary criticism and biography–an insightful analysis of the Rime and its famous gloss (explanatory notes Coleridge added later in his life), and a careful demonstration of how the text interweaves with the narrative of Coleridge’s own life, especially his tragic descent into opium addiction and eventual recovery. Even if you aren’t a poetry fan or don’t know anything about the English Romantics, you will enjoy this book if you believe nature speaks to us about God, if you like ghost stories and/or seafaring tales, or if you appreciate a great redemption story. You will be captivated both by Guite’s clear, beautiful prose and by Coleridge’s scintillating verse (quoted amply throughout the book–you don’t need to know it ahead of time) and fascinating letters and journals. It’s rare that I read a nonfiction book that I wished wouldn’t end, but this was one of them.

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    a poem to share

    Last week I received a beautiful, thick volume of Victorian poetry, published as a textbook in the 1960s, with excellent editorial notes and a fantastic breadth of coverage. My only complaint about the book is that it inexplicably omits one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins. I’ve always been under the impression that this was one of his best-known poems, so all I can guess is that either its omission was a mistake or the editor was tired of hearing it. I’m not tired of hearing it, so I’m going to share it with you here. This poem is in the public domain, and I obtained this text from the ever-helpful poets.org. (The accented syllables are meant to receive emphasis. Try reading this poem aloud; it’s even better that way!)

    As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame

    As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;	
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells	
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's	
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;	
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:	        
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;	
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,	
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.	
 
Í say móre: the just man justices;	
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;	        
Acts in God's eye what in God’s eye he is—	
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,	
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his	
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
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    Sunrise over the Sea of Tiberias

    In my last post (which was longer ago than I realized!), I mentioned that I’m working on a couple of short stories based on the life of Jesus. I want to share the latest draft of one of those stories with you. This is based on chapter 21 of the gospel of John. I feel like it needs one more paragraph to bring it to a close at the end, so if you have any suggestions, I’m open!

    The sun was just starting to rise over the Sea of Tiberias. An orange glow crossed by thin dark clouds. The air was still chilly.

    Some of us had gone fishing overnight. It had been Peter’s idea; he’d said he wanted to do something with his hands.

    “But we’re not fishermen anymore,” Andrew had pointed out.

    “What are we, then?” Peter had argued. That had silenced Andrew. “Besides, we’re not going to sell them,” Peter had said. “I just want to do something.”

    Not all of us were trained as fishermen, but those who were gave us things to do, to keep us busy. We sat in the boat all night, quiet in the dark, drained of stories from the past week.

    As the sun began to rise, we headed back to shore. A silhouette of a man was standing there. I shivered. He called out: “I guess you guys didn’t catch any fish?”

    I thought I recognized the man’s voice, but I didn’t want to say it. I glanced at the others.

    “No,” Peter called out. He didn’t sound irritated, just tired.

    The man called back: “Let down your net on the right side of the boat. I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

    Someone gasped. I saw John smile and nod. “Do it,” said Peter. Of course we did. I wasn’t there three years ago, but I’d heard the story dozens of times.

    Immediately, the net was full of fish. This was not a surprise—again we all knew what to expect—but it still took my breath away. I paused to gasp some air into my lungs. “Grab the net!” James hollered. I did. But even with all of us pulling, we couldn’t get the net into the boat.

    “Drag it in,” said Peter. “I’m going to talk to Jesus.” He took off his coat and jumped into the chilly water.

    The orange glow was spreading up from the horizon. James and John got us into the little boat, not the main boat, so we could pull the net into shore without having to weigh anchor. My job was to hold onto the net for dear life.

    When we got to shore, there was a small coal fire with bread toasting over it. Just when I realized I was hungry, the man raised his head from the deep consultation he had been in with Peter and smiled. It was unmistakably Jesus. There was a moment when I forgot he had been dead a week before. I remembered when he pushed his hair off his forehead and when I saw the ugly scar in his hand. “I’m making breakfast for us,” he said. “Hand me a couple of those fish.”

    I grabbed two of the fish from the teeming pile. They were cold, and a ray of sun shone off their silver scales. I placed them in Jesus’ hands, which were warm from the fire. “Thank you,” he said, looking in my eyes, and it sounded like a blessing. I didn’t know what to say, and Peter looked eager to continue their talk, so I turned back toward the net. “We should count these,” Thomas said.

    “Why?” I frowned. “We’re not going to sell them.”

    “Someone will want to record the number.” He gestured toward the others. At least two of them were writing down their experiences with Jesus. I was just trying to make sense of it all in my head.

    “Is the number important?” I looked at the net. It was just a small one, not a big commercial net like I’d seen some of the fancier-looking fleets have. But it was bursting, a multitude of fish now glowing with the fire of the mostly risen sun.

    Thomas shrugged, already spreading out a canvas for them to dry. “Anything might be important.”

    So, I helped. As Peter remained in hushed conversation with Jesus, who listened carefully as he turned the fish over the fire, as James and John mended a net just on the edge of their discussion, as Nathanael walked the beach alone, picking up driftwood for the fire, I helped Thomas count the fish. There were 153.

    The sun had fully risen when Jesus said, “Breakfast is ready.” He broke the bread and passed it around. He burned his fingers on the fish as he divided it up. The skin was salty and crispy and the flesh flaky, and I didn’t know if it was because God had cooked this fish or because Jesus of Nazareth just had a lot of practice preparing food in the open air. But it was perhaps the best fish I had ever eaten. The bread, too, was soft on the inside with a faint char on the outside, and this surprised me not at all.

    Jesus looked out to sea, toward the sun in its strength. Then he looked back to us, casting his gaze around the circle, where we all sat licking our fingers. “Remember,” he said. “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. You are the fishers of men.” He smiled. “But you are shepherds now, too. As I just told Peter, I am sending you to feed my sheep.”

    Peter ducked his head and gave a grin that looked uncharacteristically shy. I thought about how Jesus had called himself the good shepherd. Now he was asking us to be the same.

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    writing goals for 2024

    As I think about my goals for the new year, I’m considering how I want writing to fit into my life in 2024. I have always seen myself as a writer, but after a few highly productive years leading up to the completion of a novel in 2019, I’ve been in a dry spell, at least by comparison. I do a lot of writing for my work–mainly emails and grading feedback–but in this post, I’m thinking about writing that is both more enjoyable and less ephemeral than those, important as they may be. So here are some writing goals I’d like to focus on in the new year.

    1. Get back into the habit of writing in my notebook for 15 minutes a day. I started doing this in September after I read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and wanted to rediscover the joy of writing, especially in longhand (a practice Goldberg speaks highly of). Throughout that month, I wrote for 15 minutes every morning. Most of what I wrote will never be shown to the world (though this post was a result of one particularly productive day), but it was a good practice, and I’d like to get back into it consistently in 2024.
    2. Research and revise two short stories based on incidents in the life of Christ that I drafted in 2023. These stories resulted from my daily writing practice. They are quick sketches that need research give them accuracy and authenticity. I may use my research and revision process to help me develop some resources for my students (I wrote about this idea here), but even if I don’t end up doing that, I would like to get these stories into a state that I’m happy with.
    3. Reread Sam’s Town to help me decide whether I want to work on the sequel. Sam’s Town is the novel I self-published in 2019. Soon after I completed it, while still riding a writing high, I started the sequel, Sam’s Home. But then I got married, moved, and lived through the pandemic, and the few brief attempts I’ve made to pick the manuscript back up haven’t really gone anywhere. So in 2024, I’d like to reread Sam’s Town in hopes of recapturing some of that excitement. Even if I ultimately decide not to make writing the sequel one of my goals for this year, I think I’ll enjoy revisiting those characters who played such an important role in my life for several years.

    Three is a magic number when it comes to goal-setting, so I’ll stop there. What are some of your goals for 2024, writing-related or otherwise?

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    a prayer for humility

    I wrote this prayer in my journal a few weeks ago. For clarity, Jordan is my husband, and BSF stands for Bible Study Fellowship.

    When I think I know how Jordan is feeling and I really don’t

    When I think I have the most insightful comment that could be made at that moment in my BSF group

    When I assume a student’s tone in an email

    Lord, help me to pause.

    Help me to remember how little I know, and how good that is.

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    Creative writing tip: Find your Inklings

    There’s a lot of talk these days about finding one’s “tribe” or one’s “people.” If taken to extremes or left unexamined, this attitude can worsen the polarization that plagues our society by excusing us from spending time with and listening to people who are different from us. But underlying this idea is a good impulse: the desire to connect with people who share our interests and joys.

    Earlier this summer, I read Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings, which is a collective biography of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, but even more than that, a fascinating account of an unusual group of men who “found their people.” The Inklings, as many of my readers will probably know, were an informal club of friends–mostly Oxford and Cambridge academics, mostly Christians–who met for years, twice a week, to eat, drink, have intellectually rich discussions, and–most famously–read aloud from their works in progress, some of which turned out to be genre-defining sagas like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. The atmosphere of the group, as well as some weird ideas that floated around during their intense discussions (Carpenter doesn’t shy away from these), was shaped by the group’s demographics (almost exclusively middle-aged white Englishmen) and the times in which they lived. But within their similarity, they were a remarkably diverse group in their marital status, politics, religious expressions, and philosophies on all sorts of things (e.g., how a fantasy world should be constructed). And, by all accounts, their strongly-held, often opposing opinions made the group exciting, not threatening. They were fans of each other’s work (even when they criticized it), and most importantly, they were friends.

    In the decades since the Inklings met, aspiring writers (especially fantasy nerds) have been trying to recapture the heady atmosphere of their meetings. I was once part of a creative writing group called, unabashedly, the Inklings, which held long, food-fueled sessions in which we read aloud from our works in progress and received gracious yet detailed feedback from our peers. Like the original Inklings, we were brought together not only by our love of stories but also (for most of us) by our Christian faith, which deeply informed our group’s philosophy even though hardly any of us were writing explicitly Christian literature. And like the original Inklings, many of us developed close, trusting friendships.

    If you are a writer–or if you don’t write yourself, but you enjoy a good story and know how to give helpful feedback (or are willing to learn how)*–I encourage you to join a creative writing group. Don’t try too hard to recapture the atmosphere of the original Inklings; you’re not them. You don’t have to wear tweed or meet every week or even meet in person. (My old group moved to Zoom during the pandemic.) Not all creative writing groups even involve critique of works in progress; some focus on support, encouragement, learning new techniques, or even writing silently in each other’s presence. The greatest gift of a creative writing group is not the activities that happen during the meeting or even the works of literature that its members produce, but that feeling of belonging, of being understood by other people who also have stories in their heads. Or, as C.S. Lewis put it, “the moment when one man says to another ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .'”

    Subscribe to get notified of upcoming posts: an ode to my grandparents’ cabin in the western Maryland mountains and an explanation of how adjunct faculty get paid (much more interesting than it sounds!). Also, if you’re a fan of the Inklings, subscribe to my podcast, It’s Lit Time!, for an upcoming series on rereading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth saga.

    *Several of the original Inklings weren’t writers; they just enjoyed hanging out with their friends and hearing their stories.

    by

    monthly goals

    Hello, blog readers! It’s been over a month since I’ve posted, and I miss you. I’ve had a couple of students tell me they’ve started following my blog, so I thought I should get on the ball with some new content. Before I do, though, I want to remind you about my podcast, It’s Lit Time! with Dr. Tess. While this blog focuses on teaching and learning, the podcast is about literature in a broad sense, including film and other forms of storytelling. I have some exciting conversations with guests coming up later this month, including discussions of The Godfather, superheroes, and mistakes writers should avoid. For now, check out my first two episodes:

    Episode 1: What Is a Story? https://asynchronous.podbean.com/e/its-lit-time-episode-1-what-is-a-story/

    Episode 2: What Is a Novel? https://asynchronous.podbean.com/e/its-lit-time-episode-2-what-is-a-novel/

    And now that the commercial is over, today’s post.

    I was reading last week about someone who shares her goals each month with her blog readers as an accountability method. I thought I would try doing this, with hopes that it will be useful not only for me but also for you–perhaps as an inspiration for a framework for your own goals. (The goals themselves, of course, will be highly individual.)

    All year, I’ve been using a formula for my goals that involves the concept of loving others well. I started with three and have added one each quarter, so I’m up to five. Here they are:

    1. Love and serve God well.
    2. Love and serve Jordan well. (Jordan is my husband.)
    3. Love and serve my students well.
    4. Love and maintain my body.
    5. Love and maintain our home.

    The first thing some of you might notice about these goals is that they are not the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based) goals that many of us have been taught to make in organizational settings. (Teachers, you know these would not fare well as lesson objectives, as in “After this lesson, the student will be able to…”) This shortcoming is addressed partly by the fact that these goals deal with relationships in which I’m attuned enough to the other person or entity that I can usually tell intuitively whether things are going well or poorly. But also, as facilitated by my Cultivate What Matters Powersheets Goal Planner, I’ve broken down each of these large-scale goals into quarterly mini-goals, which are further broken down into action steps. My mini-goals for this summer range from the near-universal “Clean more regularly” to ones that are specific to my situation right now, like the one about helping Jordan transition back to the office three days a week after having worked almost entirely from home since March 2020. My action steps are even more varied, from setting my alarm earlier on Sunday morning to training for a race (I just signed up for a local zombie-themed 5K trail race) to making strategic use of apps like Forest and Love Nudge.

    Once again, this post is meant to be inspirational, not prescriptive. And I realize that for some of you, the idea of making quarterly mini-goals and action steps sounds cheesy or restrictive. But for those of you who enjoy this kind of stuff–or are open to trying it–I hope this post gets you excited. Please feel free to keep me accountable–and to share your goals with me. Let’s help each other out!