Writing for Pastors & Chaplains with Nate Klug
Justice Listens at the Door of Beauty: Writing for Pastors & Chaplains
Pastors, chaplains, anyone in ministry—maybe you have to do a lot of writing for your job, and you want to find a way to make that writing more spiritually alive (for you and for others). Or maybe your work has presented you with lots to write about and you are looking for forms, prompts, and models to help you translate your experience onto the page.
The poet Aimé Césaire writes, “Justice listens at the door of beauty.” We’ll organize our class around these three keywords: listening, justice, and beauty. Learning from model texts and from one another, our goal will be to create memorable writing across different forms that can act as a door to a changed world.
Each Day
Each class will include time reading and discussing model writing in different genres (personal essay, poetry, fiction, letters, maybe even a sermon!). Based on the models, I’ll offer a prompt each day, and participants will be asked to draft a page of writing in the afternoon.
The second part of each class will consist of sharing and commenting on each other’s work, focusing on the particular writing context of each participant.
Preparation
I’d love to hear a little from each participant before the class about where they’re coming from and what they’re hoping for.
Supplies
A notebook and pens/pencils. A laptop if you'd like.
Who is best suited for this class?
This class is for anyone whose work represents a form of ministry, broadly considered (local church pastor, chaplain, teacher, hospice worker, therapist, caretaker, etc.) and who longs to integrate their creative self more deeply with that work.
About the Instructor
Nate Klug is a poet, translator, and essayist. He is the author of Rude Woods, a modern translation of Virgil's Eclogues (The Song Cave, 2013), Anyone (Chicago, 2015), and Hosts and Guests (Princeton, 2020).
A new chapbook, Beautiful Meteor, is out from The Economy.
His poems and essays have appeared in The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His writing has been supported by fellowships from the James Merrill House, MacDowell, and the Poetry Foundation.
He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and three young children. He works as co-minister at the First Parish in Lincoln, a church affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ.