Angela At-Large

Tag: writing

  • Some Words about HopeWords

    Some Words about HopeWords

    This is my second HopeWords conference. It’s significance in my life didn’t sink in right away, but over the past year as I put myself out there more and with the anticipation of this year’s conference, I have found that this annual gathering has become deeply meaningful to me.

    I first heard about HopeWords last year when Esau MacCaulley posted about being a speaker. He was one of my seminary professors before he landed his position at Wheaton. I got the chance to reconnect with him, and as usual he gave me a hard time about not being traditionally published 🙃(All in good time, prof.)

    When I saw that Ann Voskamp was in the lineup, I knew I HAD to go. Her book “A Thousand Gifts” was instrumental in helping me walk through the culture shock of my first year living overseas. To hear her in person would mean the world. I dragged along my copy in hope of getting it signed; I was the last one in line and before I could even say hello, the conference organizer whisked her away so she wouldn’t miss Katherine Paterson’s session. I don’t blame him; who wouldn’t want to sit at the feet of the author of “Bridge to Terebithia”? Ann gave me an apologetic look and a quick hug, which I’m more than content with. Maybe in heaven I will find her sitting on a front porch somewhere, and we’ll share a glass of lemonade and talk for a thousand years about all the wonderful gifts God has given us.

    I met so many wonderful people, all at different places in their writing journeys and from all over the country. I got to sit and have lunch with Michelle van Loon, an author whose work I found through a mutual friend. I ran into a woman who went to seminary with the author of a book I referenced heavily in my master’s thesis on the Church and the #MeToo movement. Even the small conversations with a mother who brought her teenage daughter to encourage and inspire her writing gift encouraged and inspired me.

    I came into the conference feeling so uncertain of myself–even though writing has been the one thing in my life I have ever been confident about, I overflowed with imposter syndrome. “Everyone else here is a REAL author. I’ve only ever blogged and written academic papers. I shouldn’t self-publish, it won’t make me a REAL writer. I can’t pitch my ideas to the agents who came specifically to hear pitches; no one wants what I have to say. Why am I even here?”

    But what’s unique about this conference is that it’s not about the business of publishing. It’s about *being* a writer; about wearing that badge with honor and growing into this important and beautiful work that God has given us to do. It’s about being encouraged to not become weary in doing good.

    By the end of the conference on Saturday evening, that uncertainty and doubt had washed away. I knew I needed to keep moving forward with launching my book, self-published as it is. To keep looking for places to share about the work I had done in seminary. To buy the domain name and create the Instagram account and make the business cards. To go ahead and call myself an author.

    That same Saturday evening, the host announced the preliminary lineup of authors and speakers for the 2024 conference. I signed up right then and there, still in my seat. Now I’m back in the parking lot outside the Granada Theater, sitting in my camper van reflecting on last year’s conference and all that has happened since. It’s rainy and cold this afternoon and there’s no heat in my van, so the minute check-in opens I’m heading indoors, where it will be warm and full of life. And coffee. ❤

  • beans

    beans

      the field mice 
    came into the house this winter
          (as they do every winter)
     and they got into a bag of beans.

        mom said to spread them 
                                   in the garden
    so maybe they'll sprout
                   and put nutrients 
            in the soil.

    but the spring birds migrated early this year
          and based on the size of the flock,
      we have no more beans--

    but there are hundreds of birds somewhere
          who flew away 
    with laughter in their songs

       and full bellies.

  • in its own time

    It would seem I’m overdue for my “monthly” blog post. Like anyone else, I have grand intentions of Doing Things, but then get sidetracked or something else needs to take priority or my emotional bank account is overdrawn and I have nothing left to put into words. As such, I haven’t written as much as I would like to; as much as social media marketers and “hustle culture” tell me I’m supposed to in order to “build an audience” and “attract a following” so I can “sell to more people.”

    See the problem is, I don’t care. At least, not about the whole being-competitive-in-the-marketplace and getting-my-name-out-there stuff. I’m a writer, not a salesman. A storyteller, not a gimmick-hawker. An artist, not a capitalist. I don’t care about your wallet…I mean, of course I need to eat, and I would love for my words to be the means of supporting myself. But what matters more to me is that whoever does happen to read the things I write comes away with some sense of, “Oh, I never thought about it like that,” or “I needed to hear that today.”

    As a result, I end up writing for quality, not quantity. One of the main reasons I collected my old blog posts into a book is because I wanted to gather the best of my last 20 years into a small volume to be read away from ads and SEO and algorithms that require you to churn out content just to be seen. Social media is how our modern world works, but it is antithetical to how the artist, the wordsmith, the craftsman wants to be in the world. Scroll through any artisan’s Instagram and I would put money on there being a post somewhere lamenting about wanting to do what they love but feeling torn about having to sell themselves in order to do it.

    So whether you’ve found me as a stranger through Instagram or YouTube or Facebook or you’re an old friend whose hand I’ve pressed a QR coded-business card into, welcome. If you’re looking for someone who posts a lot, you’ll be disappointed and it’s probably best to move on to the next content creator. But if you want something a little deeper; if you don’t mind waiting for the tastier morsels, I invite you to stay. Bookmark this page, because I don’t even have a newsletter yet (another thing that makes me a “bad writer,” I guess). Make some tea or brew some coffee, ’cause it might be awhile. But I’d like to think it will be worth it. ❤

  • give us this day

    Spring comes a little earlier at my current Indiana latitude than the southern shores of Lake Ontario where I most recently lived. But, winter certainly wants to make sure we don’t forget about it too easily. The weather is positively gross today — cold, heavy raindrops slopping themselves onto the earth with no regard for how saturated the ground already is from last week’s rainstorms.

    Resting feels easier to justify on days like these, since it’s not like you can go outside and dig in the garden or chop up firewood, unless you like being cold and soaked to the bone. When the wind howls through the corners of the screen door and the temps dance erratically around the freezing point, your bones just know it’s a day for indoor chores and leisure. Wash the dishes, read a book. Pull freshly fluffed blankets out of the hot dryer and take a nap. This is the bread for today, and it is very good.

  • “Where are you?”

    It is the very first question God posed to Adam in the Garden as he walked there in the cool of the day. The question is explored in the second chapter of A Curious Faith by Lore Ferguson Wilbert, which was recommended to me several months ago by a dear friend. In the opening pages, Wilbert highlights how we are all born into a place, a culture, a time in history. We are born into a family, we live and work, we form and are being formed by the places in which we find ourselves. She poses the idea that before we can really know who we are, we first need to know where we are.

    So…where am I? Logistically, it’s quite simple: I’m in Indiana, house sitting for some friends. But like many things in life, the real answer, the deeper answer, is far more nuanced than what’s on the surface.

    Flip back through the calendar, and two months ago I was still living in upstate New York, transitioning out of an unfulfilling, unsuitable-for-me job and letting myself dream about who I might like to be in the world now. Flip forward in the planner, and in a few weeks my friends will return and I will shift into the next phase of the reasons I moved back to Indiana.

    Widen the scope even more, and the place and age I occupy on this planet becomes more complex. Complex, like flavor notes in a good coffee or wine – – not complicated like the knots of Christmas tree lights that must be untangled no matter how nicely you put them away the year before.

    I was born into two cultures, not one. And although the American part of me is the more dominant of the two, I cannot separate from or be who I am without the Filipino part of me. My last name only goes back one generation due to my dad being adopted; the bloodline may stretch back into parts of western Europe, but I belong to the family who gave us this new name. I also carry my mother’s maiden name, the sound of which echoes the era of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines–yet the DNA ancestry kit unveils the “99% Southeast Asian, Malay, Filipino” lineage that also courses through my veins.

    My childhood was tied to this Midwestern plain, but my entire adult life has been spent on planes, trains, and automobiles: Going to college in New York, moving overseas to teach English, traveling wherever my savings and time off would let me, returning to New York, hiking and cycling all over the Northeast…it is admittedly quite an adjustment to be back in the land that raised me. Even so, it is only a home base; a jumping off point for the places my van will take me as I develop the dreams I have had on my heart for so long.

    So where am I? I guess it comes back to being ever “at-large.” But for now, this is my where. This is me.

  • stroll

    the night is still on this midwestern road,
    heavy fog following the sun’s evening departure,
    obscuring the stars, but
    wrapping me in its stillness
    cool and quiet

    my footsteps are muffled by the weight
    of the night air
    I have no place to get to, only strolling until
    I feel like returning indoors.

    the road is straight, but my mind wanders
    and my heart runs circles around it
    as though walking two inquisitive dogs,
    sniffing this way and that.
    first one thought, then another
    a memory, an observation–
    all prayers up to the God Who Sees

    so I stroll awhile in the darkness,
    letting tomorrow be tomorrow
    and tonight, just letting myself be me.