This is a review of an editorial by Laura Moe on the Creative Nonfiction website Issue #12, 1999.  The article is titled, “About the Author: Leaf Seligman”.  I found each paragraph quotable and this led me to change my thoughts for the day and write about this article.

Leaf Seligman: The very best creative nonfiction tells us about stuff we never would have known about.  This quote grabbed me because I am used to having my own true life commentaries interrupted by those who state the obvious.  There will always be greater and lesser, it goes without saying, so why should I be preempted because someone else has story that is more extreme or tragic than my own current dilemma?  The answer is that people want attention.  All of us want attention.  But the antidote to loneliness isn’t talking about yourself.  Listen!

Leaf Seligman: We all have stories in us that need to be written, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be read.  This one threw me for a loop.  At first, I wondered if this was just rhetorical language but I need to give it a chance.  If her words are taken at face value with no interpolation or assumptions, what could possibly need to be recorded for posterity but not ever read by anyone?  I’m thinking it is the thing we want most forgotten but which must be forever remembered.  The thing that broke us, hurt us, made us give up all hope.  Of course if we are still able to write about them then we were not broken but mended, not hurt but helped, not forsaken but saved.  These are the things that need to be written down for posterity but we might reluctantly read for fear of an emotional unwrap.

You can’t make art out of pain on the same day.  I thought about this one.  When you are savoring the fruits of survival on a breezy overlook with a cool drink and a fresh friend, these are not the result of wise choices or great luck.  There is an old-you that died and decayed and descended and you have grown out of that death and decomposition.  Hallelujah!  That overlook would not be possible without the underworld of terror you went through in your transformation from lost lamb to reigning ram.  Know that every lost pursuit had a foundering purpose and that the person you were pursuing will eventually be the person you will become – if you remember your path.

If you want to be a better prose writer, write as much poetry as you can, and likewise.  I like this because I like poetry.  Well, aphorisms and lyrics and rhymes.  No one has accused me of writing legitimate poetry but there are people who wish I would stop.  Sometimes I take a thought or a thought from a poem, and expand it in a poetic many.  For me this is a way to get to the essence of the thought.  Once I have arrive at an essence that rings true to my sentiments, then I can go back an work on the prose the will expand and detail it.  Give it life here on earth in simple words that began with ethereal poetry.

All that matters is… how you remember it.  OK, another tough one.  This quote, I think, has to do with what reality taught you, not what reality did.  Can you feel me?  It doesn’t matter whether your midget race car was red with white wheels or white with red wheels, but it does matter that you raced until you eighty pounds too heavy to fit into the cockpit and that you met your first love at the race track and when you both outgrew your individual cockpits you fell out of those stressed and straining vehicles and fell into each others groping and grasping arms.  Falling in love always involves a falling out if your life is at all on track.

Sometimes it takes other people to tell you what your writing is about.  Amen here.  I have been perfectly thrilled with my writing until a barely attentive writing group pointed out that I had used all three tense in three consecutive sentences.  That I had head-hopped to the extent no knew who killed, screwed, lied to who.  That my subtext had taken my readers to a very different place than I intended – a very disturbing and disgusting place which said more about me than I wanted to know.  Have someone look at your stuff, not just for grammar, but for lucidity.  Trust me on this.  Don’t listen to the rare geniuses who don’t need editors.

I would not have gotten better as a writer without people saying “Ok, Leaf this does work, but this doesn’t.”  Again, genuine criticism is gold. It goes without saying that quick criticism is almost always interpolation if not jealousy.  If the criticism rings true, put it in your pocket.  If it wrings you, tell them to stuff it.

“When I read my early work, I realize they were really broth, not stew. It’s really humbling and gratifying to reread something six months later and see how you could make it better.”  I with her.  So was Shakespeare.  Taking something that was already written in the past and making it better is almost guaranteed.  You have matured and learned and perfected.  Look back and do the same for your prose.

“Whatever is most pressing will scratch at the door and it will tell you when to let it in, and out. Write what compels you most and find the time and space to do it. Make everything you write a love letter to the world.”  Ain’t that the truth.  Someone’s scratching at your door?  Creative Nonfiction?  Someone’s  ringin’ your bell?  Absurdism?  Do me a favor.  Let ’em in.

Immigration, you hear about immigration every day if you listen to the news.  We hear how it brings us crime.  We are told that we are losing jobs.  We fear that it is bringing us disease.  Do illegal aliens bring illegal, immoral and infectious things from there world lets look at what is said and what is actually being done, are you with me?

If you want to stop illegal immigration, you have to make it so that people who hire illegal immigrants won’t be in a position to hire them.  Jesse Ventura

States have had inherent authority to enforce immigration laws when the federal government has refused to do so.  Russell Pierce

For a period of several years, beginning with 1656, the records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and indeed of all of the New England Colonies, except Rhode Island, are filled with legislation designed to prevent the coming of the __________ and the spread of their ‘accursed tenets.’

The year 1717,lame, impotent, or infirm persons were prohibited from entering without providing security that the town into which they settled would not be charged with their support.

In England itself, the naturalization process required a profession of Christian faith and proof that an individual had taken the Sacrament in a Protestant church. As noted in this law for the colonies, exception was made for Quakers and Jews but specifically not for Roman Catholics (referred to in the law as Papists).

[T]he VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] provides a temporary visa and creates a pathway to legalization for undocumented immigrants who are the victims of domestic abuse.

2011, The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that imposes sanctions against businesses that hire illegal immigrants.  Numerous organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, argued the state’s law was preempted by the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which forbids states from imposing sanctions for hiring illegal immigrants…

2000, Directs the Attorney General to grant refugee status in the United States to any alien (and the parent, spouse, or child of such alien) who: (1) is a national of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, or any of the independent states of the former Soviet Union; and (2) personally delivers into U.S. custody a living American Vietnam War POW or MIA.

1954, Operation Wetback originated in pressure from the Mexican government to stop illegal alien entry of Mexican illegal laborers to the United States.
1943, Bracero Program Brings 5,000,000 Mexican Temporary Laborers to Work in US Farms and Railroads in a 22-Year Period.

Feb. 19, 1923 – US Supreme Court Decides in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind That Asian Indians Do Not Qualify for Naturalization because They Are Not Considered “White”.

the specific intent of randomly killing Mexicans…solely because of their Latino ethnicity, beating up Mexicans…I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition.

David Ritcheson, 16, is attacked by racist skinheads at a house party after supposedly trying to kiss a white girl. A year later, the teenager commited suicide.  Before his death, he assisted the Anti-Defamation League in creating an anti-hate program at his alma mater, Klein Collins High School.

Gilberto Mejía, owner of the Mexican grocery store Carnicería Los Primos, is verbally assaulted by anti-immigration activist June Griffin, who barges into the store and tears down a Mexican flag. Griffin then allegedly harasses Mejía and leaves threatening phone messages, which Mejia saves for police. “It was an act of war,” says Griffin, who has unsuccessfully run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican.

Churches are trying to stave off decline.  The young are defying tradition and seem to find near religion in low humor and getting high, especially on beer.  Is Pub Theology a simple solution to a complex problem or just simple?  Brian Berghoef, author of “Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation and God”, explores these and similar questions in a Huffington Post blog inappropriately (but sensationally) titled, “Pub Theology Is a Waste of Time”.

Why talk when you can do?  With all that needs to be done in this world, why sit and consume alcohol when you could be out saving the world.  Instead, you sit on your considerable arse and talk about THEM.  The problem as you see it.  Well, some of those attendees ARE doing something about THEM.  If you’re only paying attention to various conversations, sidebar conversations, and event rants you might miss the point.  Genuine words from selfless people serving humanity joyfully.  You may be talking over them.  You may be looking down at their apparent lack of intellect.  If you unaware of these people in your presence at PT, you are missing out on the most important part.  The part that matters.

The one thing that you can be sure of is that a beer fest/feast put on by christian organization will attract more Buddhists, atheists, Jews and “free-thinkers” who show up to fill the twelve chairs you arranged around three tables in a small tavern on a single Tuesday night to attract new church folk.  Though the conversations may resemble the Tower of Babel at one table and a graduate lecture at another and a comedy workshop at still another, something is happening.  While some people never return, some always return, and others connect or conclude or are convinced of something.

Something is happening when the Questions of the Night are lost when the group tangents take flight.  Nothing is happening that does not have potential for group or individual reflection and consideration.  All that is happening can perhaps affect the quiet person beside you or the outspoken colleague across the slightly slippery and snack crowded surface.  All walks of life walk into this scene and each has the possibility of staying.  Every unique personality that peeks through the metaphorical curtains of Pub Theology has something to leave and may find something to take.  Talking about similar interests and diverse opinions are the solution to dissension in this divided world if each and every participant will commit to a single act: Listen.

Active listening and respectful acceptance are the doing that takes place in Pub Theology and may lead a more fully engaged individual doing, whether it be with the sponsoring church or not.  The metaphor of moist clay may be used here.  What is the harm of change triggered by beer and conversation?  Change is good when it brings people out of their shell and into the light, whatever that light is.  Intentions are important.  One may start attending PT because of stark isolation and find bountiful and good company.  Another might seek to school the silly Christians on their fallacious notions and open their own beliefs to wider understanding, capacity and reverence.

The contemplation after the event complements the noise that has just dissipated from one’s ears.  The patience and love that is carried in by one person can surely leave with another sincere soul.  No specific achievement may be reached in a single visit.  A seeker may have experience many events glean from each one.  However, the potential is there for real and renewed belief in others and in spirit and in oneself.  None of it should taken lightly and all of it can be taken with thee.

For greater benefit there must be greater discipline.  Getting more out Pub Theology means spending time contemplating it, whether that be prayer, external discussion, or even blogging.  Even though there always needs to be something it it for me, I should never forget about THEM.  Not the THEM many of us blame in our circuitous commentary on PT questions but the them who also came looking for something and listening for genuine conversation.

Stereotypes are at the greatest risk at Pub Theology because they are all seated about you and they resist, you will find, category.  The best insight you will have is seeing the world through the eyes of the outcast, the vilified and the forgotten.  What is sacred to them probably isn’t sacred to you but will be able to understand it for the first time because you listened.  Every prejudice has a story and each story has moral when heartfelt beliefs fly from another’s lips and fall on soft ears.

Something is happening in those taverns.  No one attends without intention.  We know their are barriers that keep us from others, be it churches or family members or races.  These barriers can fall and a community can be buoyed just as Pub Theology groups around the world are lifting a pint and raising self-awareness.