Teaching this class at the local school. It's going pretty well (one more class next Monday).
There's a man who lost his wife 3 years ago and he's just never moved on. Maybe, like my dad, he finds there really is no moving on-- where do you go? But it's kind of difficult because he's taking about his own experience as "the plot", and himself as the protagonist, and it's hard to get really analytical or directive or even question, because he can't get away from the reality, and yet I can't really push him the way I might with someone else. The big thing is that he wants to write about how this kind of experience tests your faith, but that you end up with a more mature faith that accepts sorrow and unfairness and fate and death.... but he's never done that. It's clear he's still in the faith-questioning mode-- why did God let this happen? And so he can't even really imagine writing what he doesn't believe. I told him maybe the writing would help him achieve that. But I think his daughter gave him this class as a gift, hoping it would help him get over this complicated part. I don't think it's going to work.