The homily ending

So I went along to the Faithful Writer master class on Friday and Saturday and had a splendid time. Partway through Friday I was wishing that I could spend every Friday like this: sitting and talking about writing, with all the many aspects of life which invariably enter into the discussion, practicing it and exploring it.

We had some very useful general input from Mark, who drips small insights here and there as he talks, went through some "luminous" (luminous has become the new cliché for writing, unfortunately) pieces of writing from various authors (eg Mary Oliver, Leonard Cohen, James Galvin, Cormac McCarthy, Hemmingway) and then spent a good part of the two days work-shopping each others' contributions. I felt like the gut-spiller amongst us, as my pieces were more personal than most (even with the edits!), but I received some genuinely encouraging feedback and have a new project to expand the memoir-like prose piece I had written.

During the first morning tea one of the attendees approached me and said they had really appreciated one poem I submitted and particularly one line within it, and so began a discussion along the lines of how, as Christians, we can skip too fast over the human on the way to God. One of my questions about the concept of faithful writing in general is that of whether everything needs to contain the hope or end with some kind of homily. I didn't make the New College lectures this year, by Trevor Hart, which I believe discussed this, so my next mission is to listen to those (and unfortunately I think I may have missed some informal discussion along these lines on the Friday evening at the master class, because I skipped out of the dinner to go to a friend's party, which was a lovely).

As with all such events, it was refreshing to spend time in the company of others interested in the things I am interested in, to talk about those things and encourage one another in our efforts.

(The one downside of the two days was sleeping in New College. Argghhh! More often than not I am one of those people who can "sleep anywhere", but not that night, during which I doubt I slept at all. The light stayed on outside my window and people scuffed past at all hours. At 4 am five boys - I know, because I stood on the balcony and glowered down at them - sat in the court yard and talked a laughed, loudly. I opened and closed the window several times depending on whether I thought the noise or the stuffiness was worst in that moment. Besides all that, I had a head full of stuff to think about and had eaten mud cake before I left the party that would keep a person awake for days - I know that, too, because I made it, with a kilogram of sugar. I am still recovering.)