Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible - Softcover

Hickman, Lisa Nichols

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1426767501 ISBN 13: 9781426767500

Publisher: Abingdon Press, 2013

Synopsis

Bring your world to scripture. Bring scripture to your world. In ink, in living color. No other time-honored spiritual practice is as immediate, raw, and scripturally engaged as writing—responding to God—in the margins of the Bible. From composers like Bach to theologians like Barth, botanists and saints—all have written their thoughts directly in their Bibles. In doing so they engaged their fullest selves with our most significant text, creating a divine conversation that transforms and guides. Writing in the Margins introduces a devotional and scriptural path of engagement that is life-changing. This book inspires a new encounter with “the living Word”—and jump-starts a deep, creative, hands-on approach to reading scripture. As you sit, with pencil, pen, crayon, or marker in hand and Bible in lap, at whatever edges of life you are living within, the invitation is yours. Meet God in the margins. Let God shape your character from the living interaction on the pages of your Bible. “In her lovely and liberating book, Lisa Hickman hands out permission slips to pick up our writing tools and go for it. Lisa encourages us to physically engage the Word of the Living God.” —Sybil MacBeth, author of Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God “One of the gifts of this book is 'On the Pages of Your Bible'—deep questions that invite our deep thinking, instructions that lead to reflection and wonderment, encouragements that draw out our true and truer selves. Lisa Nichols Hickman shows us that in discovering ourselves, we discover God.” —Joyce MacKichan Walker, Minister of Education at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, NJ “In a world where life often takes us to the margins, in one way or another, Lisa Hickman's text is inspired and provocative, and it brings new and creative vitality to the biblical witness.” —Pastor Mary Brown, Editor of ON Scripture—The Bible, Odyssey Network

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Nichols Hickman is a pastor at New Wilmington Presbyterian Church, author of Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible and adjunct teacher at Westminster College in the Religion Department. She writes regularly for Faith and Leadership online magazine as well as its "Call and Response" blog. Recent articles appear in The Huffington Post, in The New Castle News and in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. She lives in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Writing in the Margins

Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible

By Lisa NICHOLS HICKMAN

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2013 Lisa Nichols Hickman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4267-6750-0

Contents

Foreword...................................................................
1
Sacred Edges...............................................................
7
Love Letters...............................................................
17
Facing the Margins of Our Lives............................................
28
Laying Out the Golden Ratio of Page Design.................................
38
A God Who Writes in the Margins............................................
45
Marginalia and Memos, Scholia and Scribbles................................
55
Connecting Word to World: Praying the Horizontal and the Vertical..........
70
Praying in That Inch of Space..............................................
79
Writing Through Conflict...................................................
91
Practicing Scriptural Disciplines..........................................
101
Living in the Margins......................................................
108
Marginal Writing in a Digital Age..........................................
119
Writing, To Set Things Right...............................................
127
Acknowledgments............................................................
136
Notes......................................................................
140
Bibliography...............................................................
144

CHAPTER 1

SACREDEDGES

To live sacred lives requires that we liveat the edge of what we do not know.

—Anne Hillman

Blank Spaces

The invitation of this book is, at its simplest, to pick up a pen andwrite in the blank spaces of your Bible.

It is an invitation to look at the blank spaces of your biblical textand see in the margin around its border an opportunity for a life-giving,chaos-breaking, transforming, creative conversation betweenyou and the eternal God.

To have a conversation in the blank spaces holds a particularchallenge. You must be comfortable with the wide-open space—notjust of the margin on the page but also of the invitation to sit stillfor an extended period of time, thereby creating the space for a realconversation.

Or maybe you do not need to be comfortable with the blankspaces. Maybe you just need to be willing to become comfortablewith the stillness. Or you need to be willing to brave the discomfort;I keep finding that some of the most fruitful spiritual experiences ofmy life come when I am willing to brave the discomfort.

God's best work occurs in the margins. If we have the courage tostep into that wide-open space, God will meet us there.

Sacred Edges

Perhaps, like me, you have hoped to connect to God by readingstraight through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation—everychapter, every verse, every levitical law and psalm, every parableand proverb. With great resolve, you have laid out a chart and set toreading. Genesis unfolds in its praise of creation and prose of familylife. We are drawn into the joy of childbirth, the drama of jealousy,and the crazy grace of providence. In Exodus, we are amazed by thesalvation story of slaves escaping from Egypt led by the everymanMoses. Even the building of the tabernacle, as detailed as the storygets, creates awe and wonder as a place for worship is dedicatedand great offerings of each person's skill and craft and resourcesculminate in its beautiful design. This is the dwelling place of God,and at this point in our journey to connect with God, we are completelyconnected and even awed.

And then we get to the book of Leviticus.

Have you done this? Made it through Genesis and Exodus, thenturned the page to Leviticus and those burnt offerings and lists oflaws and been completely done. All resolve goes up in ashes withthose pigeons and turtledoves. So much for the chart and the goodintentions. When the daily discipline of Bible reading is alreadyslighted by the sleepy eyes for the evening devotion, or the ruse ofbusy days for the morning reading, and then those Leviticus chaptersunfold, we can't help but get interrupted. In my head, I knowthat Leviticus is the story of how God met God's people, of howIsrael engaged with and danced with and lived with the living God.But sometimes my eyes glaze over, nonetheless.

This is precisely where the margins matter. The very place inscripture where we so often stop reading is precisely the place weneed to deeply listen. God cares about the margins, and that messageresounds in Leviticus 23:22: "When you harvest your land'sproduce, you must not harvest all the way to the edge of your field;and don't gather every remaining bit of your harvest. Leave theseitems for the poor and the immigrant; I am the Lord your God."

Here, God says very clearly, the edges matter.

God is referring to the fields for the harvest, but this same principlematters for the margins of our Bibles as well. For the fields,setting aside the edge created a sacred space, an offering of sorts,for the poor and the widowed, the migrant and the immigrant, toglean and gather a portion of the harvest for their nourishment.

When I read these words, I can't help but wonder about the connectionsand conversations that occurred around those edges asstrangers met, shared in the bounty, exchanged words of wisdom,offered encouragement for the journey. This edge became a place ofnew connections, an intersection wherein those who might not crosspaths in daily life made acquaintance and found strength from oneanother.

Is it possible that our Bibles are just like these fields? Perhapsthis might seem contradictory at first. If God says save the edges,then why would we go and fill the margins of our Bibles?

But I wonder if there is an invitation in this text from Leviticusfor us to think about how we look at the margins of our Bibles.Could this border be a sacred edge? A place for offering? A placefor firstfruits? A place to invite in the outside world we might otherwisekeep at bay? A place to engage in new conversations with thepoor, the widowed, the migrant, the orphaned child? Perhaps thoseconversations are sometimes with a stranger we hear about in thecomings and goings of our daily life and then bring to God in prayeron the page. Or perhaps those conversations are with whatever partof ourselves is poor, widowed, a stranger in a new land, an orphanedchild who has lost something precious. What if the Bible were ourfirst field? A place to practice this discipline—of making sacredthe edge—that we then take and practice in the other portions andfields of our lives?

Ironically, maybe, it is precisely in Leviticus that we learn howimportant connecting with God on the pages of our Bibles really is.The list of instructions in the text of Leviticus could be read as hohumand humdrum, or they can be seen as a lifeline—a whisperedsecret to living. Leviticus 23 is all about the spiritual disciplineof margins—that is, keeping the edges of our fi elds, our days, ourweeks, our hearts, our minds, our lives open and available to thesurprising work of God.

Wouldn't it be amazing to see what could happen if we could keepsuch a practice? My hope and prayer, in the pages of this particularbook, is that praying in the edges of our Bibles becomes a witnessand a way into keeping those margins open in other parts of ourlives. Then, in that sacred edge, new crops might be cultivated.

Wide-Open Spaces

Writing in the margins is about cultivation—finding that blankspace that frames all of life, and creating an atmosphere inside thatprecious one-inch rim of breathing room. Writing in the margins isabout finding a new way in the midst of confusion. It is the back andforth that comes from spending time with an old friend who knowsyou better than you know yourself.

Writing in the margins is about making sacred connectionsbetween ancient text and present day—an arc spanning time andspace—that intersects the now and the real and the sometimesoverwhelming, and finds wisdom and depth from those connections.

Writing in the margins is about bridging the distance from wordto world and finding a new horizon as those two connect. Writingin the margins is a way of finding spaciousness—a spacious yes, agracious no, and a ripe and pregnant maybe for the varying conversationsand decisions of your life.

It's creating a space, having a conversation, making connections,and venturing forth from that place to a holy and changed life—transformed.

Mostly, writing in the margins is an offering—an act of makingsacred the borders of our days and the edges of our prayer—as weconnect and converse in new ways at this sacred intersection.

In this book you will find an invitation to cultivate, converse,connect, and change as you engage the breadth around the pageby connecting the depth of scripture to the depth of your soulfulexperience in living.

This is a place to doodle, a place to write with your nondominanthand, a place to scribble, a place to pray, a place to write things thatsurprise you, a place to be honest. It is a place to think hard but notto overthink. It is a place to pray your heart out, but not piously. Itis a place for you alone—in conversation with God.

In an article on marginalia in The New York Times, Dirk Johnsoncaptures just what kind of conversation writing in the margins canbe:

Studs Terkel, the oral historian, was known to admonish friendswho would read his books but leave them free of markings. He toldthem that reading a book should not be a passive exercise, butrather a raucous conversation.

Writing in the margins of your Bible is, simply, a way of having anongoing, raucous conversation with God.

Growing up in south Louisiana, my dad and I would venture tothe local public library on Saturday afternoons and check out stacksof books. There were no better days than these. We would get homeand collapse on the sofa with the piles beside us, and more daysthan not, listen to the afternoon thunderstorm roll through. I remembersitting with those books knowing that the border around theedges kept the world at bay. The margins created a sacred spacewhere a whole new world could be explored.

Now, as an adult, I crave that time when the world stopped and allthat existed was the comfort of my dad and the space those marginschecked out from the library created. All was well with the world,for a moment, those afternoons. Sometimes I fi nd that peace againwhen I work in the edges of my Bible. That wide-open space, thatwork in the edge of the margins, creates wide-open spaces for me tobreathe, but even more to serve as I reach out to others in justice,humility, and mercy having been strengthened by my time in themargins.

In this book, we'll learn about all sorts of margin-writers whohad raucous conversations in their margins: musicians from Elvisto Bach, writers from Melville to Mary Karr, artists and doodlers,sinners and saints. We'll learn from ordinary folks like you and mewho unearthed lives of meaning in the depths of their margins. Andwe'll learn how margins recovered the lost language of the WampanoagIndians. We'll learn how the margins nurtured someone's love.And we'll see how the margins of a young girl, McKenzie, led to thebuilding of orphanages halfway around the world.

Our invitation to write, and in so doing to set things right, comesfrom our creator God—the one who writes creation into existence.Because we have a God who writes, we have an invitation to write.And, because we have a God who sets things right, we might just bemade right in our practice of writing.

Virginia Woolf says, "The beauty of the world ... has two edges,one of laughter, one of anguish." I wonder if our Bibles meet thosetwo edges of laughter and anguish every time we open the pages.

In my life, I've known a lot of laughter, and just a bit of anguish.In my ministry, I've seen both through and through. I go to the marginsto remember the laughter and lament the anguish. These arethe sacred edges of our world, our lives, and of this amazing text.

We meet this sacred edge with the Bible in one hand and a penin the other.

Connecting with God

Renee Aukeman Prymus

It has been a long time since I have picked up a Bible toread it, and when I do, it's a newer Bible without a lot ofmarginalia.

Today I picked up my duct-taped Bible and riffledthrough it. When I got this small, hand-sized Bible, at agefifteen, it had a maroon hardcover on it. Inside the frontcover was a sticker with the approximate years of variousages and which Bible characters likely lived when. TheBible was with me on a hiking trip through Israel for twoweeks when I was a teenager.

I carried this Bible everywhere between the ages offifteen and twenty-one. At some point in college, themaroon cover fell off and I reupholstered the Bible withduct tape, taking care to create a tab for a pen and apocket for my index cards at the back of the Bible. Sincethe Bible was so well used, the pages should be frail andpliable, but the Bible fell in the pool one summer while Iwas lifeguarding at a Christian camp, and the pages werenever the same after that. All my purple-ink marginaliahas faded to bright pink.

I flip through the pages of this Bible, and it's similarto walking through the pages of my journals. Matthewcontains big scrawls of my high school handwriting inIsrael about the spice trade helping to fund Jesus' ministry.Smudges from flowers cover the pages of 2 Kings16:9–17:41, where I've now tucked encouraging quotesfrom former students, rewritten Psalms, and notes fromsermons. Colossians and 1 Corinthians, both books thathelped me through college, are filled with underlining.

When I look at these notes, at my very early, veryevident devotion to God, my mind flips through pages ofthoughts.

First, a twinge of guilt. Where did my avid Bible-readingdays go? As I look through those pages, I standin awe at my younger self. I was dedicated, devoted,and diligent in my studies, my prayers, and my relationshipwith God. I know that person is still inside me,still dedicated and devoted. Maybe I can discover heragain.

Next to Exodus 14:13-14, where Moses tells thepeople not to be afraid in the face of the Egyptians, Iwrote "prescription for unexpected life." Somehow,moving back into the margins might help me live into thatadventure.

On the Pages of Your Bible

• Open your Bible to Psalm 1 and read this prayer, which asksthat we might become rooted in the word of God, just like "atree replanted by streams of water, which bears fruit at just theright time" (Psalm 1:3). Around the margins of this page, museabout the fruits that might come from planting yourself evermore deeply in the Scriptures—how do you hope your commitmentto engage God's word on the pages of your Bible bring willbring growth to your life?

• Take several deep breaths. As you breathe in, think the words"wide open," and as you breathe out, think the word "space."As you breathe in and out this breath prayer, allow God to createwide-open space within you. Simply look at the margins ofyour Bible to see that wide-open space and imagine what possibilitiesGod might have for you there.

• Just as we often want our margins "justified" against the rightedge of the page, we look to God for justification. Through thework of Christ, God makes things "right" in our lives and invitesus to live holy lives. Galatians 2:16 is a key verse in the Biblethat proclaims that truth. Turn to Galatians, and read 2:11-21.Take notes in the margin in three ways. First, write down thewords, images, or line that stands out to you in bold. Second,write down any questions you have. Third, choose one phrasefrom the passage that you especially want to hold onto and paraphraseit—write it down in your own words.

• What if your Bible was a field? Consider it a crop waiting to beharvested. Open the Bible and look at the layout of the land.Then, linger on the invitation of Leviticus 23. What might growand be cultivated in this sacred edge? What might be offered?What crop is growing there now? What do you hope will be collectedin the next harvest?

• Virginia Woolf speaks to anguish and laughter as the two edgesof life. Read any of the following texts and reflect in the marginson the relationship between joy and pain in God's world:

Isaiah 61:1-6

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Psalm 30

Matthew 5:1-12

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Writing in the Margins by Lisa NICHOLS HICKMAN. Copyright © 2013 Lisa Nichols Hickman. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1426767501
• ISBN 13: 9781426767500
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 166