Last November, I spent a long weekend holed up in Lauren Winner’s living room for a writing retreat.
The time to chat and practice the craft alongside other writers equally passionate about their words was nothing short of a gift — and one of the writers I had the pleasure of meeting is none other than today’s author, Mary McCampbell.
Now here’s what I want you to know about Mary: she’s hilarious.
She wears funky shoes and speaks with this deep Tennessee drawl. She’s brilliant, and further, she holds this uncanny ability to blur the lines between academic and memoir writing. More than anything, she holds a deep love for the humans around her.
I picked that up in just a couple of days, but I also intimately got to know it by reading her book, Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves.
I’m so grateful our paths have intersected and am excited for you to meet Mary too.
Enjoy!
Cara Meredith: How are you coloring outside of the lines, all over again, when it comes to your writing and this book in particular?
Mary McCampell: This is a great question, but I first want to ask who has drawn the lines and what lines they are? I have recently thought a lot about how the embodied command to love our enemies is at the heart of the Christian gospel and, perhaps, one of the very hardest parts of it. In my book, Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves, I spend a bit of time unpacking the story of the Good Samaritan as a subversive corrective to the religious culturally constructed “lines” that tell us who to fear, whose pain to ignore, who to walk by and pretend is invisible, who to judge rather than offer help. I also have a chapter on works of art that can help us to imagine ways to love our enemies. The hardest part of this for me is when my “enemy” fails to show empathy and love themselves. Just as some religious culturally drawn lines would tell me that my “neighbors” are only those who look and think and believe like me (as we collectively ignore and even oppress others), there are other religious culturally drawn lines that tell me that only the oppressed are my neighbors—that the oppressors are not worthy of God’s love. Of course, this misses the heart of the message of Jesus who shows us that none are “worthy” of God’s love. That all is grace. It’s important to remember that Jesus called a tax collector (Matthew) and a religious terrorist (Saul/Paul).
But then we get back to those lines again. If there are no lines, then we color and create a muddled amorphous shape that means nothing. We need some lines! I think the problem comes when we draw our own lines. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche based his entire philosophy on scrapping the Judeo-Christian lines of “good” and “evil” in order to follow our own survival of the fittest impulses. Sadly, along with the rest of a very covertly secular materialistic American culture, we have seen many so-called Christians behave this way when seeking power rather than sacrificial love of neighbor. These are the lines of Christian nationalism, the lines of racism, the lines of refusing to wear masks, the lines of hoarding all the toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic. And to a degree, we are all guilty. If we have no lines, we resort to drawing our own, and that is a disaster. That is the whole theological horror plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein–the story of a man who desired complete freedom and power and who was ultimately enslaved and killed by it.
Psalm 16:6 says, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.” We can only love, forgive, and do good things for the sake of our neighbors when recognizing the lines drawn for us–the lines of love of God and sacrificial love for neighbor. And having an empathetic imagination that propels us to love our neighbors does not mean scrapping all the lines so that we always agree with everyone. This is not love. Love is patient and kind –and love speaks the truth even when it is hard. In order to love our neighbors, we must scrap the delusional manmade lines of empire, selfishness, desire for acceptance at all cost. The only lines we must stay within are the divinely drawn lines of God’s love, a love that commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Cara Meredith: Putting ourselves out there when it comes to storytelling always feels a little scary. How was publishing scary and perhaps even vulnerable for you?
Mary McCampell: Although I have technically written a book length manuscript before (my doctoral dissertation), it did not have so many eyes on it! And I have never worked so closely with an editor on such a long piece (although I have worked with some wonderful editors on smaller pieces). I remember the first time I wrote for a publication “out there” (not run by people who were my friends lol). My first piece was an album review of Bon Iver’s first album and, as an academic, I could not resist a super deep analysis of most of the lyrics. When I got the editorial comments, I was CRUSHED. I felt exposed, trampled upon. I had to rewrite the whole thing. I remember being SO upset, walking in a daze around the grocery store afterward and feeling like a failure. But then the editor (who I worked with again on a second album review) reached out and said, “Mary, you are a good writer.” And that is really all it took. I realized that, as much as I preached in my English composition classes about needing to be aware of an audience, I had not at all followed my own advice. Most people reading an album review do not want an academic lyrical analysis–they want to know what I loved about the album, how it made me feel, and some select highlights of really great lyrics. Wow. I really learned a lot from that process. That was 15 years ago. In writing Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves, I had to relearn about the needs of my audience–which are very different than those of an academic audience and of the audience of an album review! I had a GREAT editor who, at one point, told me I needed to rework the entire thing. Yikes! But she also pointed out what was good in the writing while reminding me what kind of readers I would have. Thinking about the needs of your audience is a practice in empathy and understanding itself. I learned so much. It was humbling and inspiring, and I’m so thankful for that process.
Cara Meredith: What is your heart, your intention, the real push behind writing this book?
Mary McCampell: This book came straight out of my classroom teaching. I have seen over and over the power that engaging with narratives (via novels, music, film, etc.) has to grow our imaginations in the direction of empathy. I recently wrote an article specifically about how this has impacted conversations about race in my classroom. Two books that I teach regularly to large groups of students are The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Othello by Shakespeare. I want my classroom to feel like a safe space for students to grapple with difficult concepts and ask hard questions. Just last semester, I had a lesson planned for class, but reading the “Appendix” to Douglass’s book led to such a vulnerable, honest, and beautiful conversation (among 40+ students!) that I just let the lesson go and allowed them to talk. It is especially powerful when students who have experienced oppression of any form raise their hands and share some of their experience (I would, of course, never point them out or ask them to speak—this is all their choice). This is a life changing classroom experience. Reading and discussing these powerful stories openly is what often brings us to this point. I often say that being attentive to the narrative of a work of art is also an act of love. And I want my students to understand and practice this; it’s much more important than any grade they are trying to earn. All of this is to say that I wanted the book to be an invitation into my classroom. I wanted to create an occasion for readers to really embrace the many opportunities that learning to be attentive via engagement with art can help us to love our neighbors more. As a Christian, I believe that the Holy Spirit can and does use art of many forms (from Christians and non-Christians) to teach us more about Himself and the ways that we need to love one another.
Cara Meredith: Okay. We talk so much about audience when it comes to book-writing, but what did you learn about yourself along the way?
Mary McCampbell: I learned, once again, that writing is hard and humbling. It is something that terrifies me but that I cannot let go of; I need to do it!
I also learned that writing about empathy does not mean you are the expert on empathy. Being empathetic is a process and a practice. Every day, I need to revisit what it means to love my neighbor. It is hard, and I cannot do it on my own.
Cara Meredith: Anything else from your ordinary, everyday life you want to share with us?
Mary McCampbell: You probably can already tell how much I love teaching. When I speak in a classroom, I feel the most like me. Writing a book has helped me realize that writing is also part of this. When I teach, I am not just up-front pontificating, but I am learning from the process about myself and my students/ audience.
Learning to love and to be more the self I was made to be is greatly impacted by conversations of all sorts.
On this note, my good friend Joe Kickasola and I have started a podcast called The Empathetic Imagination that focuses on the importance of empathy in the areas of art, ministry, activism, etc. It should be out soon! I also have a Substack called The Empathetic Imagination (that I need to update!).
Thanks so much for the opportunity to share all this. It has really made me think!