Writing Faithfully Course on Exhale

 

Here’s what a few fantastic Reverends are saying about it:

Callie Feyen is generative inventor of engaging stories, essays and performance art.  Her wit, wisdom and essential humanity invite her audience/readers to take notice of her broadminded worldview and to listen for her distinctive voice.  Callie’s style is fun-loving, incisive and energizing and chocked full of a sparkling intelligence.  – Reverend Jay Sanderford, First Presbyterian of Ann Arbor

Rabbi Sperber writes, “The question is a great religious act; it helps you live great religious truth.” While many writers have take up questions that propel them to distill the truths of their faith, fewer offer others specific guides for engaging sacred texts and practices in ways that lead them to articulate their own faithful truths with courage and honesty. Callie Feyen’s course gives participants a path to do just that — to grapple with familiar stories anew and emerge with more insightful and incisive questions, as well as a deeper appropriation of their own faith tradition and a greater familiarity with their own voice. – Reverend Dorothy Parks- Piatt
The powerful art of storytelling, specifically our own stories, allows us to make sense of our faith journey in new ways. Through this course, Callie Feyen creates a safe and exciting space for participants to engage in the process of putting their faith into words. The combination of Feyen’s humor, faithfulness and writing prowess make her the perfect guide for this journey. –Xan Morgan, Director of Children’s Ministries; First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor

Class start this Monday! Here’s a peek inside one of the lessons:

I cannot stand statements of faith. The easy explanation is this: I find them dull. The language used is trite, and consequently, meaningless. The more difficult – honest – explanation is this: They make me nervous. The word “statement” alone gives me the shivers. It sounds so confident. And final. What if what I believe, or how I believe changes? What if I see things differently? What if I understand things differently? How do I write doubt into a statement of faith?

Nevertheless, because of the work I do, and the work I hope to do, statements of faith are part of the game plan. I’ve written them to get into college. I write them when I apply for teaching jobs and writing gigs. I write them for church memberships and again in Sunday school classes. If Statements of Faith were real live people, they’d be that goody two shoes, perfectly dressed, straight A student who never forgets to remind the teacher she forgot to hand out the homework when the rest of us were hoping she’d forget.

Once though, when I was applying to an MFA program, I had to discuss my thoughts on God and writing (a S.O.F. in disguise). I wrote about a “Friday Night Lights” episode when, in one of the last scenes of the show, at a point when viewers are unsure it’ll end well, Sufjan Stevens’ version of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” began to play.

I don’t know any other way to explain it except to write that I felt this hymn before my brain understood what it was.

I jumped up from the couch and pointed to the TV. “What song is this? What song is this?” I asked my husband, Jesse.

Jesse leaned forward to listen.

“Oh,” he said, sort of amused, like he was saying hello to a friend he hadn’t seen in a while. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

“How do I know this?” I demanded, and at this point I was crying. I knew I’d sung this hymn in church growing up, but it wasn’t a favorite. I probably mumbled most of it. How had it seeped its way into my soul?

Something about the storyline of the episode, and this song paired together woke something deep inside me that felt almost ferocious now that it was awake.

And now that this thing was awake, what was I going to do about it? What would I do with it?

I went back and watched the episode. Again and again I watched Coach Taylor and his Panthers and I looked for clues that might solve this mystery. What I found were pieces of the hymn come to life throughout the episode. However, nobody ever said, “witness” or “faith” or made mention of any facet of Christian theology. I understood this hymn through story.

That was the kind of writing I wanted to do: share God’s presence through a messy, gritty story. I wanted to wake up something ferocious and full of grace within the people who read my writing, and I wanted them to say, “How do I know this?” And, “How did I forget it?” And then from there, look for this ferocious, graceful thing everywhere – on the football field, at the grocery store, during the late nights of work or getting a baby to sleep, folding laundry – so that it’s never lost again.

Sign up here.

In this eight week course, participants will explore matters of faith as it pertains to both writing and storytelling. This course is designed to both think about what we believe and why we believe it, but also articulate, through story first, these beliefs (and doubts) as we understand and grapple with them. By the end of the course, participants will have written:

*one statement of faith
*five “found” poems based on Psalms
*two essays
*a vocabulary of faith
*one story of faith

This course focuses more on writing as exploration. While Callie believes the more we write, the better we write, this will not be so much a course on craft as it is a course on seeing what it is we believe and figuring what we believe into stories. Callie will respond to all writing assignments, but will not give full edits. Course is open to six participants.

Schedule:

Week One: Statement of Faith
Weeks Two and Three: Found Poetry in Psalms
Week Four: A Vocabulary of Faith
Week Five: I Wonder Reading
Weeks Six through Eight: Can I Get A Witness? Faithful Stories

Dates: February 4, 2019-March 29, 2019