Contributor Spotlight: Magin LaSov Gregg

Magin LaSov Gregg’s essay “Lech Lecha” is part of Issue 76 of Bellingham Review. Subscribe or purchase a single issue through our Submittable page here.

What would you like to share with our readers about the work you contributed to the Bellingham Review?

For years, I could not speak about the events “Lech Lecha” describes. I felt tremendous shame that I had cremated my mother, and I did not know how to honor her. I did not know what it meant—or what it would mean—to carry her legacy through the rest of my life. Ultimately, I feared I had failed as a Jewish person and as a daughter. I wrote this essay to redeem myself, and I wrote many versions of “Lech Lecha.” As I wrote, a cat I’d rescued years before began to die. When he died, I understood the essay needed this cat in order to open a conversation about love, loss, and redemption. Once I made that connection, I wrote in a frenzy. I finished the essay quickly. I worried about submitting, and heard voices of doubt: who wants to read about a woman, her rescued cat, and her dead mother’s ashes? Bellingham Review was my first choice for publication, and my dream publication. I am grateful to the editors who have made a beautiful home for “Lech Lecha.”

Tell us about your writing life.

In her essay, “Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson,” Adrienne Rich describes Dickinson as a “great psychologist,” who “had to possess the courage to enter, through language, states which most people deny or veil with silence.” Whenever I read this essay, I feel as if Rich is writing directly to me. The impulse to break silence compels me to the page. I write to interrupt self-imposed silences and the silences of family and culture. This impulse is the most significant impulse in my life, and I write every day. Over the years, I’ve learned to let my impulse to tell a story be bigger than my fear of how that story will be received. It’s more important for me to tell a heartfelt, true story than to be liked or to receive approval. And I do not write in a linear way; for example, I had to write the ending of “Lech Lecha” before I could understand the essay’s questions and complete other sections. I’m comfortable with making huge messes on the page for days at a time. The mess used to scare me, but now I recognize the jumble as essential to my process. I keep faith in the process. A story that needs to be told will find its way.

Which non-writing aspect(s) of your life most influences your writing?

Questions of spirituality and faith are a primary influence on my writing. I am not so much interested in the question of “Which belief system is the best,” or even “Does God exist?” but more in the question of “How do stories of hope, faith, and redemption intersect with stories of suffering, pain, and loss?” The second question that most interests me is the question of compassion. It’s easy to be compassionate when life is going well, but I want to know how to be compassionate when I’m wrecked with grief or anxiety or suspicion. The literature of Judaism, my religion, is masterful at raising—and not answering—these questions.

I’m also inspired by leaps of faith. My husband, Carl, is a tremendous influencer of my writing. He was reared in a Southern Baptist family and ordained as a Baptist minister. We met and fell in love when he ministered to a small congregation in the Louisiana delta. He never expected to marry a Jewish woman, and I never expected to marry a Baptist pastor. Our ten-year marriage has been my life’s greatest leap of faith. In 2012, Carl left Christian ministry and transferred his ministerial credentials to the Unitarian Universalist Association. While I still identify as Jewish, I also identify as a Unitarian Universalist, and we have found an unexpected home within this denomination.

My identical twin sister and her three children are the second major influencers of my writing. My sister’s generosity and belief in me have carried me through terrible times. Her faith has been big enough to sustain both of us, and she has been my first reader since I began writing. Her first son was born on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’av, which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples, as well as other disasters in Jewish history. There’s a Jewish belief that the messiah will be born on Tisha B’av, and I love this metaphor. I love that, in Jewish thought, the promise of redemption lives alongside the historical reality of suffering. My sister’s children have taught me what resurrection means.

What writing advice has stayed with you?

When I was a teenager, the writer Janet Fitch visited a bookstore in my town. I’d never met an author before, and I went to hear her read from White Oleander, a beautiful and memorable book. She gave advice to the crowd about her daily writing practice. She said something like, “You can keep a body on life support, but you can’t resurrect a corpse.” This is by far the best writing advice I have ever heard, and I call on it frequently, especially as I near completion of my first memoir, which I’ve been writing for the past seven years. Janet Fitch was absolutely right: It’s easier to keep a body alive than to bring back the dead. I work on my book every day, and every day I get closer to finishing, even if I can’t yet see the finish line.

What is your favorite book (or essay, poem, short story)? Favorite writer(s)?

As a girl, I slept with a copy of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson beside my bed. The meter lulled me to sleep. I did not understand her themes, but I sensed the power of her work. I sensed the spiritual questions, and they comforted me during an unstable and frightening time. Her poetry means a great deal to me. Also, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Kathleen Norris’s Dakota, and Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness are spiritual guidebooks. I keep them close.

What are you reading right now?

The stack beside my bed measures ten inches, and it keeps growing! I read multiple books at a time, as I suspect many writers and teachers do. Right now, I’m reading Love’s Long Line by Sophfronia Scott, When We Were Ghouls by Amy E. Wallen, Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey by Karen Salyer McElmurray and The Gospel of Inclusion by Bishop Carlton Pearson, a former Pentecostal preacher who lost his megachurch and fame after rejecting a belief in eternal damnation. Bishop Pearson is the subject of a new Netflix film “Come Sunday” starring Chiwetel Ejiofor. I try to read my husband’s sermons every week. Also, I’ll confess that I’m re-reading the Harry Potter series. It’s the best.

What project(s) are you working on now, or next?

My first priority is to complete my memoir, Mother of Rebellion, that extends the story I’ve told in “Lech Lecha” to include Carl and our relationship. The story responds to the idea that love is the greatest mystery in our lives, a force more powerful than religious ideology or death. This idea is not unique to me, and I owe all credit to Emily Dickinson, who wrote, “Unable they that love—to die/ for Love reforms Vitality/ Into Divinity.” Her poem 809 is the epigraph for my book, and it sets the story of my own spiritual journey in motion. That story begins in the Louisiana delta and ends on the Western shores of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, where I scattered my mother’s ashes nine years after her death. I let her go, and I will never let her go. She was my first home, my first god. Mother of Rebellion is about what it means to remake ourselves in the image of love, and to “practice resurrection” in the words of the poet Wendell Berry.

Anything else our readers might want to know about you?

My house is a zoo. Pepper, the feral cat rescued in “Lech Lecha,” was the gateway rescue to five other pets, four of whom still live with us in a small row-house. Also, I’ve had serious health challenges in the past five years, and was recently diagnosed with late stage Lyme disease. As I struggled with Lyme disease and unpredictable symptoms, I became interested in magic as a metaphor for power. This has led to an intense obsession with Harry Potter. In addition to re-reading the series, I want Harry Potter everything: board games, candy, clothing, Legos, a Hogwarts Haggadah. I recently bought a Ravenclaw T-shirt to wear on hard days. I most identify with the character of Luna Lovegood, who lives in Ravenclaw. I share her expansive belief system and her heart. And I see Nargles everywhere—just kidding. But I do know how it feels to be misperceived and dismissed and treated as “loony” because of the stigmas of Lyme disease and this disease’s effects on my neurology and sensory processing.

Where can our readers connect with you online?

Featured Image: “urn” by mariellerenee