From: Phil deHaan (dehp@calvin.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 14 2003 - 12:31:50 EST
February 14, 2003 == FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
This week's blizzard in Michigan was a forceful reminder of winter's power.
But for Calvin College professors Susan Felch and Gary Schmidt winter has not
only a physical force, but also a spiritual impact. It's a concept they explore
in a new book of essays and poems they edited called "Winter: A Spiritual
Biography of the Season."
The book, from Skylight Paths Publishing, explores winter's character - it's
cold, stark, dark and even deadly character. It also examines what winter does
to those who endure it.
Already in its second printing and featured in such media as the Boston Globe
and Vermont Public Radio, the book brings together essays by Jamaica Kincaid,
Rachel Carson, John Updike, Henry David Thoreau, E.B. White and a multitude of
others on winter's vicissitudes and its joys.
The collection was the idea of Skylight editor John Sweeney who wanted a
seasonal book with a spiritual focus. Schmidt and Felch were happy to take on
that challenge.
Their collection includes musings about dead gardens, winter fishing, winter
burial, wood-splitting and whether or not a seagull will eat a smelt. Donald
Hall ruminates about how winter drives us into hibernation, saying "we are
partly tuber, partly bear." Annie Dillard stalks a reticent coot along a frozen
river. Jim dale Huyot-Vickery mourns over every dead deer he encounters.
Central to all these experiences of nature is the human response they provoke.
Felch and Schmidt broke the book into sections that map out a spiritual
trajectory for the season. In the section entitled "Winter as a time of Sorrow
and Barrenness," Barry Lopez talks about perlerorneq, the extreme depression
suffered by Polar Eskimos during winter darkness. In "Winter as a Time to Be
Scoured and to Succor the Scoured," William Cooper exhorts "We shou'd be
patient under the cold since 'tis God's cold." In "Winter as a Time of
Shoring Ourselves Up," John Updike discusses the wardrobe created just to get
through the season. The Sufi poet Sultan Bahu meditates on love in "Winter as a
Time of Purity and Praise." And Mark Noll celebrates the snow in which
"buttoned, capped and booted, you and I go dancing, tromping, dancing by" in
"Winter as a Time of Delight and Play."
Felch who grew up as the daughter of missionaries in Pau Pau, New Guinea, had
to learn to appreciate winter. So she empathized with one offering in
particular: Jamaica Kincaid's admission that she simply doesn't like the
season.
Schmidt and Felch were struck by the generosity of many of the contributors,
particularly by Barry Moser's free gift of illustrations he has used for
another book. Some of that generosity, they said, is the outgrowth of the
college's Festival of Faith and Writing, where many of the authors featured in
the book have made connections with the Calvin English department.
The two editors spent a year compiling material, drawing on memories of
favorite works and favorite authors and searching books, microfiche and even the
internet for inspiration.
Because of the first book's success, the pair will next collaborate on a book
about autumn. They've already begun brainstorming.
Contact Schmidt at 616-526-6540 or 526-6591 (note Calvin prefixes are switching
from 957 to 526)
~reporting by staff writer Myrna Anderson
-end-
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