Author Nancy J. Nordenson on Faith, Writing and Art
The clear and thoughtful writing of Nancy J. Nordenson, author of, Just Think: Nourish Your Mind to Feed Your Soul, first caught my attention on her blog. She was kind enough to agree to an interview and will respond on this discussion thread to questions or comments that readers may wish to direct her way.
Paul Martin: Nancy, thanks for stopping by. Please tell us a little about your faith perspective.
Nancy Nordenson: My faith perspective aligns with the ancient Trinitarian Christian creeds, such as the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed. These creeds with their statements of belief seem at once to be so concrete yet at the same time so mysterious that one's intellect and imagination could work forever on the possibilities of what is really going on in terms of reality, the flow of grace, and the nature of love. But they aren't just academic or philosophic exercises. They require something of their confessors, they require something of me. What difference does it make to have these words drip down into my life? How do I open myself up to their full meaning? How do I let the import of these words work in me and through me out into the world? These aren't questions with easy one-size-fits-all answers. It sounds cliché to say but it seems the older I get, the more I realize how immense this whole undertaking of belief really is because its consequence, just as its object, is apparently without end.
PM: In your book Just Think, you present thinking as “spiritual practice.” How is thinking a spiritual practice?
NN: The book begins with what Jesus called the greatest commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." Loving with one's heart or soul or strength seem reasonable and familiar. But loving with one's mind? We don't think so commonly about this kind of love. Just Think explores what this might mean. Once you disconnect the concept of thinking, or activity of the mind, from academics or get-ahead strategies for success, you see that thinking is really integrally involved in every longing, every spiritual pursuit. When the mind joins the soul, a holistic spirituality is possible. I wrote a blurb about Just Think on my blog and I think it does a fairly good job of summarizing the connection between mind and soul: Questions and searches deepen the soul. Knowledge invites the soul to join the mind in actions of service and belief. In prayer, mind and soul unite to participate in mystery. Through attentiveness, study, and contemplation, God is recognized and known, swelling both mind and soul with life.
Not every use of our mind has to have an overtly spiritual objective, however. Simply to use our minds well, as they were designed to be used, whether it is to learn a language or to record our thoughts can be an act of loving God and certainly makes our lives richer, as well as quite possibly increasing our contribution to the good of the world.
I think this is exciting stuff, but I realize some people--not necessarily your readers--hear the word "thinking" and are immediately turned off. Before the book came out, I had a couple sessions over the telephone with a media trainer who was going to help me prepare for interviews and talking about the book. Near the end of a session she said to me with a sigh, "This is so boring." We said our good-byes a few minutes later and I hung up the phone and was stricken by severe self-doubt. My skin is thicker now, but whether I or my topic are any less boring, however, I can't be sure.
PM: Hmm . . . Maybe somebody will come out with, Seized by Civility: Manners Training for Media Trainers. How did you come to write Just Think and what was your writing process like?
NN: This book started as a personal journaling project. One night, about a decade ago, I sat at my kitchen table with my head in my hands overwhelmed with how complicated everything was, how hard life seemed. No extraordinary story of hardship here, just the stuff of everyday life that keeps adding up and up and up until it seems like just too much to handle. It occurred to me in that moment of near despair that if I wanted to stay steady when things around me seemed unsteady, if I wanted to navigate life with a bit more satisfaction than just checking off my to-do list, if I wanted to dream and learn and do all kinds of other good things, then I had better make sure my mind was in optimal condition. So the question I determined at that moment to answer was: How can I make sure my mind was as strong and deep and clear as it could be? To answer that question I started reading like crazy. I read books on thinking and passages in the Bible on thinking. I started paying attention to how characters in novels thought. I took copious notes and wrote my thoughts and observations in my journal. One day some months later, also while sitting at my kitchen table, it occurred to me that I wasn't the only one who might need some help navigating life or a reminder of what a magnificent resource the mind was, and so I decided to try to make all of this into a book. It really hadn't occurred to me when I started that it would be a book.
It was a long process--from initial question to published book, about 7 years--partly because I'd never written a book before and so the learning curve was steep, partly because I had two children and a job to also give time to, and partly because it just simply was a lot of work. The writing of it was a wonderful experience, however, no matter how arduous the process. For me, there is a great joy in having a private puzzle in my brain that I can carry with me and keep working out.
At the start of the quest, I didn't fully appreciate how intertwined the practical and the spiritual would become by its end. As I said in response to your first question, the consequences to belief are far-reaching and here is an example. To use one's mind well became for me, impossible apart from a spiritual dimension, even when that spiritual dimension was not immediately apparent.
PM: Congratulations on having completed your MFA in creative writing. Please tell us about the experience and your future plans.
NN: After I finished Just Think I had a longing to become a better writer and thinker and to fulfill a long-standing desire to go back to school. Through reading Image journal and attending the Glen Workshop, I'd heard that Seattle Pacific University was starting a Masters of Fine Arts graduate program in creative writing. It was going to be unique in that it would be the only MFA program in the country that had an emphasis on art and faith. When I heard about it, I wanted in badly and so applied and was accepted to its first cohort. Two years and hundreds of manuscript pages later I graduated this past August. It was an incredible experience. Let me first say it was hard hard work. Between paid work (I'm a freelance medical writer) and school work, I led a nearly monastic life at either my keyboard or in front of a book for those two years. I learned so much, about writing, about faith and art. I learned, not through head knowledge, but by doing, that writing is a spiritual discipline, a spiritual vocation. I started the program thinking I would learn to write, but I realized I was learning to live also. I was blown away by how life-changing those two years were for me. Now, since graduating, the challenge is how to live with this heightened awareness of and longing for beauty and a greater hunger for solitude at the writing desk outside the direct circle of that community.
Right now I'm working on another book, a collection of essays exploring issues of work and leisure. By leisure I don't mean the leisure of Caribbean cruises—although I wouldn’t mind a dose of that kind of leisure--but the leisure of contemplation. I've been influenced in the last several years by the writing of Josef Pieper on these issues and would recommend to your readers Leisure: The Basis of Culture. I have enough written that I'd like to soon start circulating a proposal. I'm also submitting some individual essays to literary journals. One essay was recently accepted at North Dakota Quarterly. Another essay was published about a year ago in Relief journal, and is included in their recently published first anthology (and available on Amazon). I'm also considering a new edition of Just Think: adding some new material, including questions for reflection after each section, and changing its look somewhat. When it was published, it was marketed as a book for women, when actually the content is quite gender neutral. I'd like to see it come out in a new edition without the female marketing spin. This revision project, if it happens, would likely be a couple years down the road. My blog is also in need of some attention, after being demoted to low priority while I was in school. And since I still need to buy groceries and pay my electric bills--oh, and pay back that student loan--I won't be giving up my paid writing gigs--that is, the medical writing--anytime soon.
PM: Do you have any books to recommend to the readers of Original Faith on the topic of art and faith?
NN: For starters, I’d suggest Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor; Art and Scholasticism, by Jacques Maritain; The Christian Imagination, edited by Leland Ryken; and Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Buechner. I'd also suggest reading the journal Image, a quarterly, edited by Gregory Wolfe, which publishes poetry, fiction, essays, and visual art that address art, faith, and mystery.
PM: Thank you, Nancy, for such an informative interview. I look forward to your next book – vocation and spiritual leisure or re-creation, so to speak, are both key topics in my view too.
For more information on Nancy J. Nordenson’s books, essays, and current activities, see:
NJN Author’s Guild web site
Just Thinking - blog
Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in creative writing program
Paul Martin: Nancy, thanks for stopping by. Please tell us a little about your faith perspective.
Nancy Nordenson: My faith perspective aligns with the ancient Trinitarian Christian creeds, such as the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed. These creeds with their statements of belief seem at once to be so concrete yet at the same time so mysterious that one's intellect and imagination could work forever on the possibilities of what is really going on in terms of reality, the flow of grace, and the nature of love. But they aren't just academic or philosophic exercises. They require something of their confessors, they require something of me. What difference does it make to have these words drip down into my life? How do I open myself up to their full meaning? How do I let the import of these words work in me and through me out into the world? These aren't questions with easy one-size-fits-all answers. It sounds cliché to say but it seems the older I get, the more I realize how immense this whole undertaking of belief really is because its consequence, just as its object, is apparently without end.
PM: In your book Just Think, you present thinking as “spiritual practice.” How is thinking a spiritual practice?
NN: The book begins with what Jesus called the greatest commandment: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." Loving with one's heart or soul or strength seem reasonable and familiar. But loving with one's mind? We don't think so commonly about this kind of love. Just Think explores what this might mean. Once you disconnect the concept of thinking, or activity of the mind, from academics or get-ahead strategies for success, you see that thinking is really integrally involved in every longing, every spiritual pursuit. When the mind joins the soul, a holistic spirituality is possible. I wrote a blurb about Just Think on my blog and I think it does a fairly good job of summarizing the connection between mind and soul: Questions and searches deepen the soul. Knowledge invites the soul to join the mind in actions of service and belief. In prayer, mind and soul unite to participate in mystery. Through attentiveness, study, and contemplation, God is recognized and known, swelling both mind and soul with life.
Not every use of our mind has to have an overtly spiritual objective, however. Simply to use our minds well, as they were designed to be used, whether it is to learn a language or to record our thoughts can be an act of loving God and certainly makes our lives richer, as well as quite possibly increasing our contribution to the good of the world.
I think this is exciting stuff, but I realize some people--not necessarily your readers--hear the word "thinking" and are immediately turned off. Before the book came out, I had a couple sessions over the telephone with a media trainer who was going to help me prepare for interviews and talking about the book. Near the end of a session she said to me with a sigh, "This is so boring." We said our good-byes a few minutes later and I hung up the phone and was stricken by severe self-doubt. My skin is thicker now, but whether I or my topic are any less boring, however, I can't be sure.
PM: Hmm . . . Maybe somebody will come out with, Seized by Civility: Manners Training for Media Trainers. How did you come to write Just Think and what was your writing process like?
NN: This book started as a personal journaling project. One night, about a decade ago, I sat at my kitchen table with my head in my hands overwhelmed with how complicated everything was, how hard life seemed. No extraordinary story of hardship here, just the stuff of everyday life that keeps adding up and up and up until it seems like just too much to handle. It occurred to me in that moment of near despair that if I wanted to stay steady when things around me seemed unsteady, if I wanted to navigate life with a bit more satisfaction than just checking off my to-do list, if I wanted to dream and learn and do all kinds of other good things, then I had better make sure my mind was in optimal condition. So the question I determined at that moment to answer was: How can I make sure my mind was as strong and deep and clear as it could be? To answer that question I started reading like crazy. I read books on thinking and passages in the Bible on thinking. I started paying attention to how characters in novels thought. I took copious notes and wrote my thoughts and observations in my journal. One day some months later, also while sitting at my kitchen table, it occurred to me that I wasn't the only one who might need some help navigating life or a reminder of what a magnificent resource the mind was, and so I decided to try to make all of this into a book. It really hadn't occurred to me when I started that it would be a book.
It was a long process--from initial question to published book, about 7 years--partly because I'd never written a book before and so the learning curve was steep, partly because I had two children and a job to also give time to, and partly because it just simply was a lot of work. The writing of it was a wonderful experience, however, no matter how arduous the process. For me, there is a great joy in having a private puzzle in my brain that I can carry with me and keep working out.
At the start of the quest, I didn't fully appreciate how intertwined the practical and the spiritual would become by its end. As I said in response to your first question, the consequences to belief are far-reaching and here is an example. To use one's mind well became for me, impossible apart from a spiritual dimension, even when that spiritual dimension was not immediately apparent.
PM: Congratulations on having completed your MFA in creative writing. Please tell us about the experience and your future plans.
NN: After I finished Just Think I had a longing to become a better writer and thinker and to fulfill a long-standing desire to go back to school. Through reading Image journal and attending the Glen Workshop, I'd heard that Seattle Pacific University was starting a Masters of Fine Arts graduate program in creative writing. It was going to be unique in that it would be the only MFA program in the country that had an emphasis on art and faith. When I heard about it, I wanted in badly and so applied and was accepted to its first cohort. Two years and hundreds of manuscript pages later I graduated this past August. It was an incredible experience. Let me first say it was hard hard work. Between paid work (I'm a freelance medical writer) and school work, I led a nearly monastic life at either my keyboard or in front of a book for those two years. I learned so much, about writing, about faith and art. I learned, not through head knowledge, but by doing, that writing is a spiritual discipline, a spiritual vocation. I started the program thinking I would learn to write, but I realized I was learning to live also. I was blown away by how life-changing those two years were for me. Now, since graduating, the challenge is how to live with this heightened awareness of and longing for beauty and a greater hunger for solitude at the writing desk outside the direct circle of that community.
Right now I'm working on another book, a collection of essays exploring issues of work and leisure. By leisure I don't mean the leisure of Caribbean cruises—although I wouldn’t mind a dose of that kind of leisure--but the leisure of contemplation. I've been influenced in the last several years by the writing of Josef Pieper on these issues and would recommend to your readers Leisure: The Basis of Culture. I have enough written that I'd like to soon start circulating a proposal. I'm also submitting some individual essays to literary journals. One essay was recently accepted at North Dakota Quarterly. Another essay was published about a year ago in Relief journal, and is included in their recently published first anthology (and available on Amazon). I'm also considering a new edition of Just Think: adding some new material, including questions for reflection after each section, and changing its look somewhat. When it was published, it was marketed as a book for women, when actually the content is quite gender neutral. I'd like to see it come out in a new edition without the female marketing spin. This revision project, if it happens, would likely be a couple years down the road. My blog is also in need of some attention, after being demoted to low priority while I was in school. And since I still need to buy groceries and pay my electric bills--oh, and pay back that student loan--I won't be giving up my paid writing gigs--that is, the medical writing--anytime soon.
PM: Do you have any books to recommend to the readers of Original Faith on the topic of art and faith?
NN: For starters, I’d suggest Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor; Art and Scholasticism, by Jacques Maritain; The Christian Imagination, edited by Leland Ryken; and Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Buechner. I'd also suggest reading the journal Image, a quarterly, edited by Gregory Wolfe, which publishes poetry, fiction, essays, and visual art that address art, faith, and mystery.
PM: Thank you, Nancy, for such an informative interview. I look forward to your next book – vocation and spiritual leisure or re-creation, so to speak, are both key topics in my view too.
For more information on Nancy J. Nordenson’s books, essays, and current activities, see:
NJN Author’s Guild web site
Just Thinking - blog
Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in creative writing program
Posted by Paul at 12:56 AM Permalink
29 Comments:
This is fantastic. I never knew my venture into the blogging world would lead me to such wise and learned folks! I'm happily surprised.
Nancy, after all your pondering and consideration and contemplation and action toward your relationship with God... do you feel any closer to the source from which we all are born, or do you find yourself, like me, with only more questions?
Thanks again to both Paul and Nancy for taking the time to share!
Sincerely,
Tim
TIMJAMZ, great question, and I appreciate the compliment.
VIOLET, glad you stopped by.
Tim: I can relate to what you say about having more questions than ever. I think it's true that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. I'm quite sure that the amount I don't know is even beyond my knowing. I certainly have more questions now than five or ten or fifteen years ago. But I don't feel lost in a sea of questions. They seem to be questions that arise from a foundation of knowledge, as small as that may be in the grand scheme of things. As that foundation grows, more questions arise. It's like when you take an introductory class to a subject of interest, questions develop organically from the material, not in a random whirlwind.
More importantly, perhaps, is the realization that it's okay to have unanswered questions or to admit that the answers I think I have are inherently incomplete. There's a quote of T. S. Eliot's that I like and think is true: "You are not here to verify, / Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity / Or carry report. / You are here to kneel..." I don't think Eliot is saying here that we shouldn't try to understand, learn, or know, but that the ultimate endpoint of seeking God is not mastery of divine knowledge, but kneeling. Thanks for the good question, Tim.
Violet: How nice to see a familiar face here amidst the new friends!
To me, spirituality, seeking God, becoming more religious - however it's put - is a process. An aspect of that process, for many people, is asking questions and even going through some discomfort around that.
As much continuity as there is in our lives, there's also change - biological, psychological and also spiritual. For myself, if things stayed exactly the same for me spiritually, I know I'd be stagnating.
"More importantly, perhaps, is the realization that it's okay to have unanswered questions or to admit that the answers I think I have are inherently incomplete."
On another blog recently, I read someone wondering why it is that some people are able to dialog constructively with people of differing viewpoints while others can't. It seems to me, Nancy, that the attitude you point to here is the difference. Maybe, in a word, the presence or absence of humility.
Keshi.
Interesting interview. I like the title of Nancy's book. I had never heard of "...ancient Trinitarian Christian." It sounds provocative.
Good job.
Also want to invite you to my new blog, www.soulmeetsworld.com
You'll need to change your link.
Hope to see you there soon.
Take care.
ALEXYS: I noticed that phrase too; I think I understand, but will see if Nancy has a chance to respond.
Thanks for the link, I've updated -
Alexys and Paul: About the term "ancient Trinitarian Christian": I was referring here to the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. Both creeds were written in the first handful of centuries AD and are statements of Christian faith. Hence, they are "ancient" and "Christian." They are "Trinitarian" because they espouse Trinitarian theology: God, the father; God, the son (ie, Jesus Christ); God, the Holy Spirit.
Great interview. THanks for turning me on to Nancy's writing.
"Just overthinking..."
MARK and HAZZBUZZ, thanks for looking in -
Paul: I'm sure there are quite a few "newfangled Trinitarianisms" circulating out there. It's always wise to clarify. :)
Keshi.
I try to think of myself more as a post poster, or "poster of posts."
KESHI, I'll have a look -
Mind is where this form is held. And this is where the original form was lost owing to the original sin. So where else can we search for the original faith!!!
Faith that coincides with God is like a multidimensional vector that originates from the commitment to truth and travels with infinite agility towards perfect consummation of all passions.
Great indeed are the minds that can inspire faith in others.
Keshi.
KESHI, thanks and you too –
Thanks for the insightful thoughts. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one finding that: the more I know, the less I know. :)
I agree that the journey toward enlightenment is just that: a journey (aka, a 'process'). I like the description of the whirlwind. I often find my thoughts and understanding of this higher power coming 'organically', yet the resulting state I find my mind in about the matter... much like a whirlwind sometimes.
I also believe, as you mentioned Paul, that if we aren't growing, we become stagnant. For folks uneasy with change, it's simple to see why they cluster around 'cut and dried' religions vice venturing out to gain a personal understanding of God.
Great stuff, all! Thanks again!
Tim
How do we set boundaries and finally 'give up' so that we can relax and enjoy the Basis of Culture?
By that I mean Nancy has obviously decided to accept the tenets of the Christian Faith. Such a decision, after an exhaustive study of the actual circumstances that led to it's invention, still requires a gigantic 'leap of faith'.
Given what we have only recently discovered about History and the biological and physiological governors that bind us, how does one draw a line in the sand and say that's it. I'm not taking one more step or I'll end up driving myself crazy.
Great interview..your calm demeanor serves you well and you should make a point of exploring this avenue.
What’s the basis for faith – seems to me you’re asking that. And I would want to add, What IS faith? I address both in chapter three of Original Faith, which should be out this spring.
I think Kierkegaard coined that “leap of faith” phrase. I guess if I kept with his metaphor mine would be “Just stand there.” Fortunately for readers I reject such non-dynamic “stance of faith” phraseology throughout the book and take my stand on different metaphors.
No, really, I mean it...
Seriously, I think you raise a major question. People hardly ever really discuss faith. It's either presumed or presumed rejected depending on what group of similar-thinking people are talking to each other. Imo, you're not overthinking - or underthinking.
Coincidentally (or not), I "organically" touched on other things mentioned in this thread, such as: the search of varying philophies in order to mine the truth from them, creativity being intertwined with spirituality, and the fact that people in general don't truly seek to understand what faith really is. You can read the post here.
The fact that good, thinking people (aka the posters and responders here and elsewhere) also see these things reinforces my belief that humanity is experiencing a spiritual awakening, post-industrialization.
Tim
timjamz: To become stagnant seems to me one of the most wasteful endpoints of a life, given all that there is to grow towards and become. But it's so easy for many of us to relax into the posture of giving up or remaining status quo intellectually. I think that using our minds well, even in the course of everyday life, is a preventative to stagnation.
Paul: Creativity and spirituality are very much tied together. When people think of faith they often forget that imagination is a big part of faith. What I mean by that is that is takes some imagination to wonder about and embrace the mystery of what is really going on beyond what I can determine with my five senses or my limited reasoning skills. And of course, you can't have creativity without imagination. In Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Connor wrote: "I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery."
Homo Escapeons: You raise a good question and it links back to my comment to timjamz and Paul about not stagnating intellectually and the imaginative component of faith. I think no matter where we are on the belief spectrum there are an infinite number of things to think and wonder about, and learn. Thanks so much for reading the interview and for your comment.
Paul: When you say people don't really discuss faith I think that part of the reason about being shy to discuss faith is that people "of faith" may be leery or afraid about revealing, or facing, their doubts. Look at what happened when the media got hold of some personal expressions of doubt from Mother Theresa's journal. How much more helpful would it be if we thought of doubt as recognition of mystery and reveled in it instead of being afraid of it. A lovely aspect of the more literary writing coming from faith perspectives, which we are starting to see more and more of, is a willingness to wrestle with mystery.
timjamz: I agree that there is a spiritual awakening going on and I find that very exciting. I'm convinced that part of that awakening is fueled by the meeting of the minds--yours included!--in venues such as this.
Paul: You have a great group of readers here at Original Faith!
Nancy, wow... your response really kindles motivation for me. Ever since I was a kid starting to really catch hold of what "God" is (maybe 12 or so), I've wanted to help people understand it the way I do... it just makes sense, and doesn't apply to religious or any other kind of doctrine. It excites me that I'm starting to find an entire "subculture" via blogs like Paul's, yours and others (btw, I added you to my blogroll, i hope you don't mind) which are small, quiet voices in the 60-cycle-hum (as audio folks refer to it).
Wow... what made me refer to it that way? As I think about the physics of it, it has the potential to be a profound analogy.
I'm off to my own blog now! :-)
Thanks, all!!!!
Again, thanks to Paul and Nancy.
Thanks, it is a good group. I value the fact that commentators here represent a wide range of perspectives on spirituality from people who know how to communicate.
TIM, thank you, I’ll take a look –
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