Writing – Darrow Woods: Writer of Things

Writing during this pandemic

Just over a year ago I experienced the rush of excitement that came with having my first novel, “The Book of Answers” included on the short list for the “Unhanged Arthur”. It’s a prize for unpublished crime novels, co-sponsored by Dundurn Press and Crime Writers of Canada.

Link to announcement of nominations

20190523_192551 I had a great time at the awards banquet. It was held in the banquet hall of Toronto’s historic Arts and Letters Club, which felt a lot like Hogwarts.

I was not at all shocked when another book, The Scarlet Cross, by Liv McFarlane won the award. For me, it was more than enough to make the move from the “long list” of ten, to the “short list” of five authors from across Canada whose work was considered for this honour.

It did come as a surprise that all five finalist’s works were to be read by the acquisitions team at Dundurn. They are a Canadian publishing house with an impressive list of books and authors.

I have had good, and useful feedback on my first serious effort, and I continue to learn the craft. My writing mentor said most first novels don’t end up being published. I am okay with that, and have moved on to work on a second story, tentatively called “The Book of Secrets”. It involves some of the characters from the first novel.

The editors at Dundurn might not be waiting with anticipation, but I look forward to sending them the new one to consider, when the time comes. (I just checked their website, and Dundurn is not currently inviting new submissions, so I guess there’s no great hurry!)

As one of my fellow nominees, Heather McLeod noted recently, fiction writers in this strange time have to contend creatively with the pandemic. Do they set their story before COVID-19, during, or after?

For me, it seems too soon to write about life after COVID-19. I have seen new micro-fiction set “during”, which captures some of the mood, and the questions of this time.

My first novel was set roughly in modern day. (Which was pre-COVID-19) That was the plan with my current effort, but I have found it hard to make the mental leap back into a world (even a fictional one) in which people are not worried about physical distancing and quarantines.

It’s the same problem I watching tv shows and movies, unless they are clearly historical pieces. What are they doing on that crowded street?

I do want to get back to the work (play) of writing about my protagonist, Tom Book, and his family and friends (and enemies). Whenever I do make the dive into the part of my brain where imaginary world lives, it’s still an interesting place to be.

A is for Advent

CreativeMarket-ABCProject-Letter-A1 December 1, 2019 First Week of Advent – Day One of the Advent Alphabet- Rev. Darrow Woods

A is for Advent. Advent is an old word. Not so old that you will find it anywhere in the Bible- but that is true of a surprising number of words and ideas that have become part of our Christian tradition.

Our English word Advent is derived from the latin word “Adventus”, which means coming, or arrival- so this is the season in which we await the arrival of Jesus. There is a connection between this word and the word “Adventure”, which is often defined as an enterprise that involves danger and risk. Can we think of this time of waiting for Christmas as an adventure?

How can it be an adventure without some element of danger?

The earliest known manuscripts of the “books” that make up the New Testament were written in Greek- which was the common language of much of the Roman Empire. When the Greek manuscripts were translated into Latin, “Adventus” was the word chosen to translate the Greek word “Parousia”. Parousia is a more nuanced word than arrival or coming. It was used to talk about official visits of royalty.

Parousia is the word the early Christian writers used when they were talking not about the birth of Jesus, but about the return of the Risen Christ, an event often called the Second Coming, or the Second Advent. From earliest times, the Christian tradition has included the expectation of Christ’s return, in an event that would mark the end of an age, and possibly the end of the world as we know it. On the Sunday before Advent began, many congregations celebrated “Reign of Christ”, or “Christ the King” Sunday, and listened to a reading from Matthew’s Gospel that described “the day of the Lord”:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” (Matthew 25:31-32)

As 21^st Century followers of Jesus, what do we make of the expectation of a Second Coming? If we do not take it literally- what other meaning does it have for us?

Personally, I take the stories about “the end of the age” as a reminder that we are not ultimately in charge of life on earth, or even of our own lives. I find the idea a cataclysmic age-ending event on a global scale hard to accept, but have come to recognize that we each face our own mortality, and the end of particular phases or stages of our lives, all the time.

What changes are you facing? What losses have you already endured? Christmas is often a time when we are more deeply aware of the absence of people, and the disappointment of unfulfilled dreams.

In the midst of these smaller scale “end of the age” events, do you have the sense that God is with you? In yesterday’s “letter” I suggested taking two minutes each day this week for silent prayer. If you allow yourself to silently wait on God, you may get a glimpse or a feeling of something new that God has for you- something that is waiting to be born.

The Advent Alphabet is a ministry offering from Rev. Darrow Woods, pastor at the United Church in Harrow, Ontario. Each day in Advent, a different letter of the English Alphabet will be a jumping off place for a reflection. These reflections will be sent out via email to those who have asked to be on the mailing list, and will also be posted to Rev. Darrow’s Facebook page.

A Night at Hogwarts: The Arthur Ellis Awards Gala

The dining room at St. George’s Hall, home since 1908 to Toronto’s Arts and Letters Society, has an ancient grandeur to it. Dark paneled walls, heavy wooden furniture, and leaded glass windows set high above us. It would make a great setting for an Agatha Christie novel, or a Sherlock Holmes story.

My wife Lexie (the one in the bottom corner of the photo, with the beautiful smile) joined me for the Crime Writers of Canada gala banquet, at which the winners of the 2019 Arthur Ellis Awards were announced. I was one of five authors whose unpublished crime novels made the short list for an award sponsored by Dundurn Press. The nominations in our category included:

Jim Bottomley, Hypnotizing Lions

Don Macdonald, Omand’s Creek

Liv McFarlane, The Scarlet Cross

Heather McLeod, One for the Raven

Darrow Woods, The Book of Answers

I had the opportunity to meet and to congratulate Jim, Liv and Heather. Don Macdonald was the sole nominee not present for the announcement of the winning manuscript, which was The Scarlet Cross, by Liv McFarlane. Liv went home with the trophy, and a cheque for $500.00. She made a great impromptu acceptance speech. I was impressed with her eloquence, and her passion for this work.

The photo next to this paragraph is of me with Heather McLeod, who travelled with her mother (a librarian!) all the way from B.C. for the awards banquet.

I was happy for Heather, and for all the nominees, to get this far! Each of our manuscripts will be read by the acquisitions department at Dundurn Press. They are distinguished from other submissions received by publishers, as “Finalists” for an Arthur Ellis Award.

I am eager to read each of works nominated in our category, as well as some of the other award winners announced at the ceremony.

My writing teacher and friend, Melodie Campbell, was the emcee for the evening’s

program. She also found time to introduce me to a number of her fellow authors, as well as other prominent people in the Canadian publishing scene.

Melodie is a former executive director of Crime Writers of Canada, an award winning novelist, and an inspiring teacher. You can learn more at her website:

https://funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com/

At Melodie’s urging, I entered this competition in the fall of 2018, with the submission of 5000 words from my first attempt at writing a mystery novel. I was thrilled when the judges asked for the rest of the manuscript, and it was added to the “long list” of 10 books to be given further consideration. It was so much more exciting, and affirming, to learn in April that I’d made the short list of 5 nominees.

I consider each of us who completed a manuscript, and have had our work read and critiqued by a panel of readers, to be winners! Our efforts are receiving positive attention, and we are being encouraged by family members, friends, and now people in the industry.

We were not really at Hogwarts, but it was an evening of mystery, and magic.

Mindfulness, and the secret lovely toad

During this week of study leave, my “serious” reading has been Richard Rohr’s “The Universal Christ”. Each day I employed the discipline of taking notes from the chapter I read, and distilling them into a blog post, with the hope of integrating Rohr’s ideas into my conscious thinking, and way of seeing the world.

My more personal “reading” has actually been listening to Natalie Goldberg read a commemorative edition of her book “Writing Down the Bones”, which is about a Zen approach to writing. I love that at the end of each chapter, she sets down the script, and talks about how it felt to read that section.

One of the themes running through Goldberg’s work seems to be “noticing” the small details of moments, and writing them down, to bring exactness, precision, and life to your writing. I think this gentle encouragement to notice grows organically out of her Zen practice. Be mindful. Pay attention. Be where you are, and see what there is to see, right where you happen to be.

Goldberg’s theme is not a great departure from what Rohr writes of in The Universal Christ. He sees, and loves, the presence of the divine imbued in all things, in every aspect of Creation.

I like to listen to audio books while I do chores. This may be something like the opposite of living in the moment. Even so, it fed my soul to have Natalie Goldberg’s voice in my ears this afternoon while I did yardwork.

One of my tasks was repairing the downspout fed by the eavestrough on the back of our house. It is the only one that does not feed into the town sewer, and when it rains, water pools next to our foundation, and finds its way into our basement laundry room.

When I lifted the vinyl splash block that guides the flow of water out of the downspout, I noticed a little brown toad. The toad’s colouring provided such camouflage, I wonder if this species has the chameleon-like capacity to shift its appearance. Because I was using my phone to listen to Natalie Goldberg’s book, I was able to take a photo before the toad scampered away, and disappeared under some brush.

God seduces us- notes from The Universal Christ

While compliling these notes from today’s reading of The Universal Christ, I heard an unusual song, that repeated the line “we are living in the absence of the sacred” several times. I was listening to one of my favourite internet radio stations, which is the live feed from WWOZ in New Orleans. https://www.wwoz.org/

I went to the Stream Archive, so I could replay the song, and learn more about it. It was written and performed by Spencer Bohren, an American blues and folk artist who was born in Casper, Wyoming, and is now based in New Orleans.

Here is a link to it: https://youtu.be/Q6zStmRAGbc

Here is a link to his website:

https://www.spencerbohren.com/makin-it-home-to-you

It seemed such an apt song to reference, while I gathered quotes from a chapter in Rohr’s book in which he speaks with hope and practicality about the presence of God in our daily reality.

Here are the sentences that spoke to me today:

When you can honor and receive your own moment of sadness or fullness as a gracious participation in the eternal sadness or fullness of God, you are beginning to recognize yourself as a participating member of this one universal Body. You are moving from I to We.

…humanity has never been separate from God—unless and except by its own negative choice. All of us, without exception, are living inside of a cosmic identity, already in place, that is driving and guiding us forward. We are all ‘en Cristo’, willingly or unwillingly,

Every single creature—the teen mother nursing her child, every one of the twenty thousand species of butterflies, an immigrant living in fear, a blade of grass, you reading this book—all are “in Christ” and “chosen from the beginning” (Ephesians 1:3, 9). What else could they be?

I have never been separate from God, nor can I be, except in my mind.

Without a Shared and Big Story, we all retreat into private individualism for a bit of sanity and safety.

Every religion, each in its own way, is looking for the gateway, the conduit, the Sacrament, the Avatar, the finger that points to the moon. We need someone to model and exemplify the journey from physical incarnation, through a rather ordinary human existence, through trials and death, and into a Universal Presence unlimited by space and time (which we call “resurrection”). Most of us know about Jesus walking this journey, but far fewer know that Christ is the collective and eternal manifestation of the same—and that “the Christ” image includes all of us and every thing.

Jesus can hold together one group or religion. Christ can hold together everything. In fact, Christ already does this; it is we who resist such wholeness, as if we enjoy our arguments and our divisions into parts.

We would have helped history and individuals so much more if we had spent our time revealing how Christ is everywhere instead of proving that Jesus was God. But big ideas take time to settle in.

You might wonder how, exactly, primitive peoples and pre-Christian civilizations could’ve had access to God. I believe it was through the universal and normal transformative journeys of great love and great suffering, which all individuals have undergone from the beginnings of the human race. Only great love and great suffering are strong enough to take away our imperial ego’s protections and open us to authentic experiences of transcendence.

Just because you do not have the right word for God does not mean you are not having the right experience. From the beginning, YHWH let the Jewish people know that no right word would ever contain God’s infinite mystery.

God needs something to seduce you out and beyond yourself, so God uses three things in particular: goodness, truth, and beauty. All three have the capacity to draw us into an experience of union. You cannot think your way into this kind of radiant, expansive seeing. You must be caught in a relationship of love and awe now and then, and it often comes slowly, through osmosis, imitation, resonance, contemplation, and mirroring. The Christ is always given freely, tossed like a baton from the other side. Our only part in the process is to reach out and catch it every now and then.

…for ordinary mystics like you and me, the kind of seeing I’m describing is a relational and reciprocal experience, in which we find God simultaneously in ourselves and in the outer world beyond ourselves. I doubt if there is any other way.

Nothing to believe here at all. Just learn to trust and draw forth your own deepest experience, and you will know the Christ all day every day—before and after you ever go to any kind of religious service. Church, temple, and mosque will start to make sense on whole new levels—and at the same time, church, temple, and mosque will become totally boring and unnecessary. I promise you both will be true, because you are already fully accepted and fully accepting.

Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ. The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition

The Local News

I was interviewed today, by Shelby Wye, who writes for The Harrow News, a great local paper that serves the town where I work as the United Church minister. When Shelby called to set our time to meet, I asked if we could do the interview after I finished lunch at the Harrow branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. They have a lunch special on “Wacky Wednesdays” that can’t be beat, and I’d planned to go there with a group from the church, when they finished cleanup from a pie-making bee. (The church operates a pie booth at the Harrow Fall Fair that is a huge fund-raiser for our work in the community.)

While I was at the Legion, I checked in with some members of the executive about the annual grave decorating day, which happens on the first Sunday of June. Legion members and friends remove the old Canadian flags from the graves of veterans, and place new ones. As the son of an air force vet, who kind of grew up around the Legion, I am happy to be involved.

But back to the interview! Shelby, who in her words, “heard from a little bird” about my being a finalist for the 2019 Unhanged Arthur Ellis Award, came by to talk to me about my mystery novel, my aspirations as an author, and the competition. We had a great conversation, and she took a photo for the paper of me holding my manuscript. In the interest of full disclosure, the photo that will appear in the Harrow News will show me with a mock up of the actual manuscript, because at this point, it only exists in digital form. Click the link below to the imagined book cover I created, long before I actually wrote the novel.

book cover mock up

A home for things I write

20190515_185448 My first mystery novel, The Book of Answers, made the short-list for The Unhanged Arthur Ellis, an award for unpublished crime fiction. The annual competition is sponsored by Dundurn Press and CrimeWriters of Canada. On May 23, my wife and I attended a banquet at Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club, where I had the honour of meeting other authors who were nominated, as well as a number of editors, publishers, and authors. It was great fun!

The winning manuscript in my category, the Unhanged Arthur Award for best unpublished crime novel, was The Scarlet Cross, by Liv McFarlane. You can learn more about Liv at her website: https://livmcfarlane.com/

I look forward to reading The Scarlet Cross, and the work of the other nominees:

Hypnotizing Lions by Jim Bottomley
Omand’s Creek by Don Macdonald
One for the Raven by Heather McLeod

That the manuscript of my first ever novel was even considered for such an honour, has inspired me to improve my online presence. This site is a re-tooling of my old “Sharing Bread Along The Way” blog, along with old material from “The Fifth Page”, which is where I used to post what didn’t make it into my sermons, which are always a maximum of 4 pages. (I now call them “learning times”, to reflect the truth that I am still learning as I go.)

I am a minister in The United Church of Canada, currently serving the congregation and wider community of Harrow, in beautiful Essex County, Ontario. In the words of Max Marshall, a singer-songwriter from Harrow, it’s a “bread-basket town” in “fruit-stand land”. You should also check out Max, he’s great!

https://www.maxmarshall.org/about