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“They say you publish from your have life and generate what you know,” claims Susan Cushman.
Her very first novel tells the tale of a young girl escaping abuse in a spiritual cult, then getting herself enveloped in artwork. A quick tale tells the tale of a young woman at St. Jude who is healed by a weeping icon. Other works convey to of psychological overall health, adoption, caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.
And her new reserve, “Pilgrim Interrupted,” is crammed with threads from her lifestyle that readers will encounter all over the 35 essays, 3 poems and five excerpts from her novels and shorter tales.
There is the story of her pilgrimage to the Island of Patmos, checking out the Cave of the Apocalypse where by St. John was offered the E book of Revelation and the place Cushman’s pilgrimage was “interrupted.”
And there is certainly the tale of her journey into Eastern Orthodoxy, even discovering to generate “the lives of the saints in coloration” as she painted icons like people that appeared in her church, St. John Orthodox Church.
“Pilgrimages. Orthodoxy. Icons. Monasteries. It’s all in listed here,” reads the again address. “But so are stories about mental wellbeing, caregiving, loss of life, family, and crafting, such as a section on ‘place,’ a vital element in Southern literature. And how is Susan’s pilgrimage ‘interrupted’? By life itself.”
Born in Jackson, Mississippi, Cushman grew up creating. She has a shoebox of letters she wrote in the 1950s and 1960s that she despatched to her grandmother, telling her almost everything, “such as things you would not inform your very own mom,” she claimed. The letters explained to of her initial kiss, fights with her brother, and continued right up until she married.
“I create to comprehend my everyday living and what has took place to me and for healing,” Cushman said. “It is really cathartic. Writing is quite cathartic and I hope there’s an factor of healing that goes all through all my operate as properly.”
But it was not right up until 2007 that she started off her blog site “PEN and PALETTE,” posts on which would come to be the basis for her memoir “Tangles and Plaques: A Mother and Daughter Experience Alzheimer’s.”
Married to an Orthodox priest, Cushman still left the Presbyterian faith of her childhood for the Japanese Orthodox Church in 1987, the year prior to she moved to Memphis.
An entire segment of “Pilgrim Interrupted” is about “Icons, Orthodoxy, and Spirituality.”
Icons are religious functions of artwork, usually depicting Christ, Mary, saints and scenes from Scripture. They fill the partitions and ceilings of Orthodox churches.
“Icons have been termed the gospel in colour. They of study course serve particularly in the previous communities where men and women had been not literate. Numerous of them tell the tales,” Cushman said. “When I was researching it I discovered myself finding a full new amount of worship.”
For a long time, Cushman wrote icons, educating lessons and even using on commissions. She at some point retired from composing icons, concentrating on producing with words full time commencing in 2010.
It is an icon of Christ exposed by way of brushstrokes that is showcased on the cover of “Pilgrim Interrupted.”
In the long run, her new e-book is “a particular memoir as well as a spiritual journey,” Cushman reported.
In it, she hopes individuals “can find a evaluate of healing and encouragement to have their very own religious pilgrimage, whether it really is actual physical or just looking at and praying.”
Launch at Novel Memphis
“Pilgrim Interrupted,” a spiritual memoir, will be released Tuesday, June 7 with a launch at Novel Memphis at 6:00 p.m. Novel is found at 387 Perkins Extension, Memphis, 38117.
Katherine Burgess handles county govt and religion. She can be reached at [email protected], 901-529-2799 or adopted on Twitter @kathsburgess.
This posting originally appeared on Memphis Industrial Attractiveness: Spiritual memoir will tell of faith, mental health, “lifetime interrupted”
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