Last Friday I attended the 12:00 session of Fiction and Christianity, featuring two amazing writers, Emma Natter and Madeline Dresden.
Emma's work was titled "Ruth", and was about a young woman, who was a Christian pilgrim in the Renaissance era. The woman, Ruth, was traveling along a pilgrimage route from Spain to Germany, and passed through France -- this Catholic pilgrimage is called Copistella, or "The way of St. James". Ruth was a character that was portrayed as being naïve, yet bold in questioning the way the church ruled over its people during this time. I loved Emma's diction and the way she phrased simple things to describe everything Ruth would encounter -- at least in the small passage that was read to us. One such example was a phrase Emma used to describe Ruth on her walk home -- she used a simile to describe the feeling of taking in a gulp of cold air to relate to Ruth's chilly inside feeling, and also commented on the sheep's hooves that passed by. These small descriptions did wonders to her audience's imagery -- I was able to envision the very specific visual detail in this scene. Another example from this work that I loved was the way emma described the music bouncing off the large stone walls in a chapel. She related this back to what she experienced in her own personal journey in Europe, and how she used her own experiences with hearing music in a medieval chapel to describe what Ruth might have heard. Lastly, I enjoyed her open-ended and thoughtful ending to the specific passage, or perhaps it was the first chapter. She ended with a personal thought from Ruth, saying, "Could [God] be lying to one of us?" By "us", Ruth meant herself and the priest -- as she had conflicting views with the way the catholic church promoted relationships with God. I found this to be an interesting way to leave the reader thinking - it makes us want to know the answer, or to get to know Ruth more, get to know what will happen on her spiritual journey - and for this reason, I believe all of Emma's readers will read on.
Madeline's work was entitled "His Waxen Wings". Even before I attended this symposium session, I decided that I absolutely fell in love with her title. Little did I know that her genre would actually be more leaning towards a religious science fiction -- which surprised me even more, but I was intrigued. She described to us that her title was actually taken from Doctor Faustus, which was based on the German story of Faust, in which a man sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for worldly happiness and temporal full knowledge of the world. In Madeline's story, she describes the protagonist as a dead, resurrected sinner who is currently being tried on earth by angels to work against the demons. Madeline thought up a fictional theology for her work, that although also had an almighty god, did not comprise of the views of her own LDS faith. She described how this has been a therapeutic way of answering some of her own gospel-related questions, and made her realize the importance and central necessity of our loving Heavenly Father, and just how beautifully structured our religion is in this way. Her protagonist cannot speak due to his state and circumstance, and for that reason dialogue is limited on his behalf with gestures and facial expressions. Madeline's writing style was beautiful, and as I was taking notes, I found it also hard to describe. She would often use quick sentences and use repetition. She used beautiful descriptive metaphorical verbs, such as the following example I wrote down: "The smile was well-ironed on her paper-pale face..." Overall, Madeline's storyline was in and of itself very interesting, and would keep her listeners and readers hooked, and her writing style elaborates it in a way that is hauntingly memorable.
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