Discover the World of Keowee Valley

Posted on August 21, 2012 by

Katherine Scott Crawford is an award-winning writer, newspaper and magazine columnist, and college English teacher. She’s the author of Keowee Valley, an historical adventure set in the Revolutionary-era Carolinas and in the Cherokee country. Her parenting/outdoor life columns have appeared in Gannett/USA Today newspapers across the United States and abroad, including The Greenville News (S.C.), Upstate Parent Magazine (S.C.), the Asheville Citizen-Times (N.C.), The Detroit Free Press, The Herald (Scotland), U.S.A. Today, and many more.

“A glorious debut from a gifted author.”
-Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker’s Wife

“Keowee Valley is a terrific first novel by Katherine Scott Crawford–a name that should be remembered.”
-Pat Conroy, bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and South of Broad

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Enjoy the Keowee Valley Trailer

Posted on August 4, 2012 by

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Weekly Lines: “The kitchen house”

Posted on April 4, 2019 by

New lines from the rough first draft of my historical novel-in-progress, set in parallel time: in both 1804, and 2004. Told from the perspective of my 2004 protagonist, an art historian and restoration expert named Gamble. Enjoy!

IMG_5265* The kitchen house *

The girl, the girl. I have not forgotten the girl, though you’d think I had with the way I tend to run on. It’s just that for my story to make any sort of sense, you must know where I live. I live in the larger of two kitchen houses at 353 A Church Street. My kitchen house is deliciously old, and you can’t take a step without the house creaking, some whispered admittance of its 267-year-old story.

Kitchen houses were the law in Charleston, once upon a time. Because widespread fires had destroyed hundreds of homes on the peninsula, between the years 1740 and 1860 home owners were required to build separate structures, away from the main house, to serve as kitchens. That being the case, many of the oldest surviving homes in Charleston, including Catherine’s, have one or two kitchen houses which have served many roles over time: as servants’ quarters, stables, offices, and more.

But back to 353A Church Street. The ceilings are low, because people tended to be short. It suits me more than fine. Usually, I like a bit of air above my head, with plenty of room for my thoughts to circle and swirl. But since my divorce, I sought comfort and coziness. Often, the house felt like a hug. There’s a huge, working fireplace in the small living room, complete with an original hearth and nooks for bread baking. It appeases my personal need for an historic aesthetic to know a person’s been cooking there since 176_. The eighteenth-century brick in the courtyard between my small house and the other is sloping and lovely, just as Catherine promised. Kipling and I like to sit at the wrought iron table out back, admiring the [?] vines winding their way up the side of our house and watching the chimney sweeps and blue jays do battle above the [?] tiled roof.

The mail carrier, whose name is Joe, brings my mail all the way to the back, which makes me feel like a real local. In the warm months—of which there are plenty—Joe wears the white shorts and matching sun helmet of the United States Postal Service. He’s tall and stork-like, so he straddles the green Bermuda grass growing between the parallel brick pavers that follow the line of the drive. I admire his knees, most because I’m short. I think Joe’s knees reach about the same height as my hips.

I have loved my life at 353A Church Street, despite the dissolution of my marriage being my reason for moving there. I have loved it in spite of the sleepless nights, the agony of wondering what I could’ve done different, the worry of time wasted, the smudging of ghosts along the stairwell. I have adored, more than I ever imagined I could, the emptiness of my queen-sized bed. I no longer stay on “my side,” as I did when Harry and I were married, but at first opportunity made of myself a snow angel in the middle. I sleep in the bed spread wide, my limbs stretched and pointed as long as they can get. When we first moved in, I suctioned myself to that bed like a starfish, unwilling to move until Kipling put her paws up on the foot of the bed and insisted I take her outside.

More than anything else, 353A Church became my refuge, my rehabilitation station, when I needed it most. It never bothered the kitchen house that I was a non-native divorcee, childless and hoodwinked. That I was a low-born mountain girl in the land of palmetto trees, unwrinkled linen suits and monogrammed seersucker.

I always felt, not only did the kitchen house not care about these things, it held me closer because of them.

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Weekly Lines: “A Freeing and a Clutch”

Posted on March 28, 2019 by

These new lines from the very first, very rough draft of my historical novel-in-progress are told from the point of view of Gamble, my modern protagonist. For more info on what I’m writing, check out my Work in Progress page, and earlier posts.

IMG_6488* A Freeing and a Clutch *

Any time I’d ever driven away from Charleston I felt an odd combination of euphoria and longing, in a place I suppose most would call the gut. It didn’t matter if I was cresting the new, cable-stayed Arthur J. Ravenel Bridge, high over the Cooper River, or waiting on the drawbridge at pretty Wappoo Creek on my way south towards Savannah—or even if I simply took multi-laned, concrete-encased Interstate 26 and headed west: I felt it, each and every time. It was both a freeing and a clutch. It was as if I’d been released into the world, yet at the same time, pulled ever backwards.

Now that I’d been in the past—now that I knew for sure I’d lived at least one lifetime there—the feeling made more sense. History had always seemed to me, as an art historian and general restorer of old stuff, ever present. I never could shake the impression time was always doing its loop-de-loops in the air around us when we walked through the present, like one of those stunt pilots in a Red Baron biplane at a Depression-era air show. I just couldn’t understand why no one else could see the contrails. I felt like a tomboy in dungarees, eyes glued to the sky, while everyone else looked down at their phones.

But there was more to it than that. This was Charleston. And Charleston was complicated. The city was over 300 years-old: it had lived much more than a little. Charleston had seen canoes and U-Boats, hosted princes and pirates, been bloodied and bruised, shamefaced and proud. It told, ever and always, an unflinching American story. No wonder it captivated—no wonder it was so difficult to leave behind.

The city’s history was heavy. You can’t be home to the New World’s largest slave port and think it’s all going to be sunshine and mint juleps, all charm and manners. Every place you set your foot in this city has been touched by human bondage. Black, white and brown, freed and enslaved lives have intertwined here since the beginning. For a visitor, especially, it gives a simple walk through a private, lush, gorgeously-fragrant Charleston courtyard a heaviness they might have otherwise missed, to know the softening bricks you trod were trod not so long ago by people without freedom.

So maybe it’s the past which clings to me as I leave this city, or maybe it’s slavery. Maybe it’s the fact there is ancestral memory in my bones: that my past self remembers my present. Perhaps we all feel like this, leaving a place we love. Letting go is never easy.

None of the above, however, explains why I felt like this each time I left Charleston on a temporary trip. After all, I was always coming back. At least then.

When Tolliver and I drove away from Charleston, this time, we took rural SC Hwy 61 toward Aiken. He drove, and I watched out the window as winter marsh and mudflats turned to sod farms, as young pines broke with yellow pasture. The sky outside was pale and thin, the sun burning through it like light through a shroud.

I felt the freeing, and the clutch. And wondered if it would always be thus.

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First Book Love, Book Clubs & Tea Towels

Posted on March 26, 2019 by
Ready for my book club appearance. I put on makeup for the first time in two weeks!

Ready for my book club appearance. I put on makeup for the first time in two weeks!

I believe I’ve mentioned before my undying love of book clubs. Since my debut historical novel, Keowee Valley, was published waaaayyyy back in 2012, I’ve met with dozens of book clubs to talk about it. These “meetings” never fail to run me through a range of emotions, always ending in grateful joy.

Book clubs have been around since books were invented, and they’re all different: formal, informal, strict, or devil-may-care. Some clubs stick to fiction, some nonfiction, some a mix of every genre imaginable. Some book clubs are just for women, some just for men, and some for everyone. Some book clubs start through church, or work, or the local library. Trust me: even if you live in a town with one stoplight, there is a book club (and if not, you can easily start one).

For an author, book clubs are especially wonderful places to be introduced. Booky people talk about the books they love with other people. Book clubbers BUY books! Book clubbers love to read!

At every book club event to which I’ve ever been invited, I have been fed, welcomed, and feted, in ways big and small. I’ve been given space to talk, and been asked the smartest, most insightful, funny and interesting questions. At every book club I’ve had to really think about many of my answers.

Yesterday, I was the guest author at The Cliffs Valley Book Club, in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina. The Cliffs Valley is a mountain community not too many miles south of the North Carolina border. Fifty women from that community and others had gathered to hear me talk about Keowee Valley, historical fiction and history, writing, my newspaper column, and more. They treated me to a delicious lunch (soup and salad and salmon and cookies, oh my!). They bought all the books I had on hand. (Note to self: bring more books next time.) They made me feel so very welcome.

Sometimes, it can be difficult to talk about Keowee Valley. It was my first book, and I have first book love for it. I wrote it in a rush of inspiration, filling it with everything I loved about history and adventure and romance, and the land where I’d grown up: the South Carolina Blue Ridge, and the Western North Carolina mountains. But I finished writing it in 2007, and it was finally published by Bell Bridge Books, an independent press out of Memphis, Tennessee, in September of 2012. That’s nearly 7 years ago.

In between the writing of Keowee Valley and now, lots of stuff has happened. Stuff upon stuff. I traveled to Costa Rica and Scotland, taught at three different colleges, had two babies, spent three years in graduate school (and graduated!), lost one old dog and gained a new puppy, made and lost friends, became a newspaper and magazine columnist, became an aunt, tried and failed to write another research-heavy historical novel, and ever so much more. I used to think my brain could hold infinite amounts of information–I am, after all, a champion of random knowledge (you probably want me on your Trivial Pursuit team). But “mom brain” is real, and I’ve forgotten things.

Sometimes, I worry that at book club meetings, the members will know more about Keowee Valley, and remember more, than I do at this point. After all, they’ve just read it: everything is fresh and new. I lived with the story for years, and brought it to fruition, but have had to concentrate on other things. Things like jobs, and children, and new creative work.

So I love it when book clubbers (it’s sort of cracking me up to call them this: I’m picturing well-read ladies rocking out to techno in a strobe-lit night club) ask questions which force me to dig deep. Yesterday, in fact, one reader asked me, “What have you learned from your writing?” It took me completely aback, it was such a good–and complicated–question.

I went to graduate school for writing. I went at a time in my life which probably wasn’t the best move: I was a college professor with a two year-old at home and was pregnant, and gave birth to my second child, during the program. My brain was mush, but I was desperate for a creative life. I learned so much in that program, about craft in general, it’s impossible to pin it all down. I answered that my writing has taught me to slow down, to sit still with my story. That it’s taught me to consider the reader: not in a marketing sense, but in a real, story-building sense.

There was so much more I could’ve said, when answering that question. I thought about it long after, as I drove my car back up and into the higher N.C. mountains and home, rain splashing my windshield, just in time to pick my kids up from school.

Molly, the all-around awesome woman who’d invited me in the first place, gifted me with two tea towels. These tea

Readers get me. These tea towels came from Dogwood gifts in Flat Rock, N.C.

Readers get me. These tea towels came from Dogwood gifts in Flat Rock, N.C.

towels speak my language.  Molly had read enough of my writing–my novel and my many newspaper columns–to know exactly what to get me. It was thoughtful and fun.

And this is why I love book clubs.

I’m ever so thankful my first book love, Keowee Valley, continues to be read and enjoyed. This is, of course, what ever writer dreams about. I promise: I am writing so danged hard on the next novel!

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Weekly Lines: Scene from my novel-in-progress

Posted on March 13, 2019 by

teaI’ve decided to dedicate a page here, at my author website, to Weekly Lines: scenes I’ve decided to share from my work-in-progress. For more info about the novel itself, click my Work-in-Progress page, here.

Today’s lines involve my 2004 protagonist, the art historian and restoration expert, Gamble, and her best friend, an African-American History scholar named Tolliver. They’re in Aiken, South Carolina, at a venerable old horse farm, taking tea with a pair of old lady cousins who have a mysterious portrait to share. Enjoy!

* First Flush *

It was apparent Miss Saralee and Miss Corrine did not often receive visitors. They made us sit through high tea—complete with tiny ham, tuna, and pimento cheese sandwiches; cheese straws and potato salad, dainty Limoges finger bowls painted with cherries (I lifted one discreetly to check the maker’s mark. I am, if nothing else, a historian) and filled with sliced kiwi, strawberries and blueberries; multiple pours of black Indian tea with cream, and at last a silver tray papered with profiteroles, an assortment of chocolate truffles, and, delightfully: Oreos.

“I like double-stuffed,” Miss Corrine said, oval brown eyes widening in delight, before biting in.

I snickered, Tol squeezed my knee under the drape of the tablecloth, and Miss Saralee smiled, black kiwi seeds caught between her front teeth.

“There’s been a change with you two since last time,” Miss Saralee announced, much more than asked.

I thought she’d expound, but she sat like the Sphinx at Giza, and didn’t so much as blink. Tol and I looked at each other. It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. I knew that look. It said, Have at it, babe.

“Oh, leave them be, Saralee,” Miss Corrine said, “Can’t you tell they’re in the first flush? They’re like to get all het up if you pry.”

See: she said it like this, all sweet and helpful-seeming, but there was a distinct twinkle in her eyes. I don’t think she meant a word of it. I think, just like Tol and me, these ladies had a long and permanent connection. They could say one thing and mean another, and no one else would know what they really wanted.

Which is all to say, I think Miss Corrine totally meant: Come on, Saralee, make ’em talk. Get to the juicy stuff.

“They are grown adults, Corrine,” Miss Saralee countered, then swiped a tongue over her teeth. She pressed her lips together and opened them on a pop. “Lord have mercy, Tolliver here is the most fully grown man I’ve ever seen.” She leaned across the table, her shaky elbow bumping a tea cup. I reached to steady it. Big mistake: it made her turn on me.

“And you,” Miss Saralee said, a lionness recognizing the weakest antelope in the herd. “You’re looking rather rosy, rather satisfied. Young lady, you are even more in love than the last time I saw you. I don’t blame you one bit. He’s a catch.”

“Mm hmm,” Miss Corrine agreed on a long, impressively lascivious hum.

“Me!” I said, determined not to remain alone in this. “What about him? He loved me last time, too.” Indignant, I rubbed my scapulae against the ornate mahogany backrest of my chair, then crossed my arms. Beside me, Tol vibrated with silent laughter.

I gave the ladies my best stare-down, then turned to my partner in crime. He should’ve looked incongruous, at six-foot-five, in the dainty ornate chair, a full silver tea service set before him. (The ladies requested he pour.) He’d even dressed down a bit for the trip, as he’d been rather limited with the clothes he’d kept at my house: Dark jeans, a round-collared dove grey sweater, and a pair of matte black leather oxfords, scuffed to perfection. His beard had grown thick in the weeks I’d been away, and I was glad he’d not shaved yet. I loved the way the silver threaded through it around his mouth; it made him look like a medieval knight who could also deliver a lecture at Oxford. This was Tol in informal mode—his damn outfit still looked as if it had been made for him. And I was almost positive the sweater was cashmere.

Miss Saralee waved a gnarled hand in the air: a literal pshaw. “Oh, he was, too. Anybody could see it. You just had it written all over your face, dear.”

Well. That’s true. Like I said, I’m no poker player.

Tol folded his napkin and set it to the side of his place setting: an elegant effort at let’s move on. “That was delicious,” he said, as if we’d not just endured ruthless teasing by two wily nonagenarians. “It was so good, in fact, I can’t eat another bite. How about it, ladies: Is it time to see the portrait?”

Miss Saralee narrowed her milky blue eyes, and they almost disappeared in her wrinkles. For a moment I thought the push had been the wrong move. But then she nodded. “Yes, I do believe it’s time.” She looked to Miss Corrine, who gave a regal incline of her head. “I asked Baker to put the portrait in the library, under the lamps, so you could give it a study.”

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I Screwed Up Today (or, Parenthood is Not for Sissies)

Posted on March 12, 2019 by

Picture this:

It is 7:45 a.m., and my children and I are walking into school. My 9 year-old walks two steps ahead, just out of arm’s length and just far enough so that I don’t see the sour expression on her face. My 5 year-old holds my hand, bouncing along so that her light-up shoes light up. She asks me to tell her that story I told her that one time, and peppers me with questions.

At the crosswalk, our SRO greets us with a smile, and a “Good morning, girls.” My 9 year-old, who usually greets him first, cheerily and by name, instead pouts and looks at the ground.

We stop near the doors, and have a brief and heated conversation about respect. To which she responds with an “I know,” and yanks out of my grasp.

It gets worse. Inside, where she usually turns and hugs us both, my 9 year-old walks as fast as she possibly can to get away from us, alone, down the long 4th/5th grade hall. When I call after her, telling her to have a good day, her hunched shoulders and turtle shell of a backpack are the only response.

It was not a good morning. I’d like to blame Daylight Savings Time–which I consider to be an utterly idiotic way to treat the calendar–but the truth is, I screwed up.

Sure, my 9 year-old was acting like a punk. All morning, she’d responded to her little sister in tones better suited to the stock, sarcastic, teenaged character on any television show (the one every parent would like to push, clothed, into a pool). I told her repeatedly to stop. I pulled her away in private, reminded her she did the same things when she was 5, talked to her about how much her sister looks up to her: how it’s one of her jobs to help her little sister, to be patient with her. I told her how I understood her little sister could make her crazy: I, too, am an older sister.

This is Steff, from "Pretty in Pink." He's a punk.

This is Steff, from “Pretty in Pink.” He’s a punk.

None of this worked. My 9 year-old has a big brain and smart mouth, which because of that big brain moves faster than it should. Somehow, somewhere, she has learned to talk back. To be bored and annoyed and too cool. To be what some may call “sassy,” but that’s too cutesy a word for me. Me, I liken this attitude to James Spader’s character, Steff, from “Pretty in Pink.”

Weeks ago, my own sister told me she’d read somewhere that by the 4th grade, our children care more about what their friends’ think than what their parents do. That, by 4th grade, we’re officially no longer the most important people in our children’s lives when it comes to influence: instead, their friends are. When she told me this, I almost threw up.

Of course, I know my husband and I are the most important people in our 9 year-old’s life, and that what we do and say and how we serve as examples mean everything–everything–to the person she becomes. But still: it’s true. Influence is shifting. I can feel it.

I started out okay this morning. The talk in private, the gentle reminders, they were the right things to do. Bully for me. Where I screwed up was later, in the car, when we’d parked at the school and–with a 1980s James Spader scoff and ugly, diffident tone–my 9 year-old broke the last straw. Because then I yelled.

I get it. Everybody yells. It happens. Still, I am the grown-up. Damn it.

Assessing the situation now, I know–just like, truly, I did then–much more is at play here. Daylight Savings Time (may its name be cursed forever), for one. Sensory sensitivities, which my child and I share. Hormones, heaven help me. There is always more than one thing working at once. It’s my job to remember that.

Deep down, though, there’s also something else at play. And that thing is time. For it is moving at heartbreaking speed, pulling my girl away from me–from her sweet littleness–faster than I’m ready. She only has the end of this year and the next until she heads off to middle school.

I’d like to think I’m intellectual and cool enough to think of middle school in better terms: that maybe I’ll even write an essay or a book some day, something insightful, which helps us all look at middle school differently. I know there are teachers out there, especially, who think middle school is just great, and who work every day with love in their hearts for the peculiar breed that is the 12, 13, and 14 year-old. But right now, all I can think of middle school is that it’s the place where my little girl disappears, and Steff emerges.

Here’s also what’s likely to happen: After school today, my 9 year-old will emerge and give me a big hug. She’ll ask to play on the playground. She’ll tell me it was a good day.

9 year-old girls in the early stages of puberty are like highly advanced missile launchers. They fire away with almost-always extreme precision. They are almost always on target. After, they rarely regret a case of friendly fire. They rarely remember the damage they’ve done.

Because of this, I’ll find a moment tonight, in the calm and quiet–See? I’m being optimistic–and I’ll tell her I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her again about being the big sister, and how tone changes everything. Who knows if it’ll work? Parenthood is not, and never has been, for sissies. That’s why, I hope, it’s important to keep talking.

 

 

 

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In honor of International Women’s Day & Women’s History Month

Posted on March 8, 2019 by

intnatwomIn honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, here’s the link to a newspaper column I wrote in March 2017:

“Holding out for a she-ro”

* Note: If you have used up your free articles at the link, simply open a new window and Google “Katherine Scott Crawford Greenville News holding out for a she-ro,” and it should pop up.

 

 

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New scene–with coffee!–from my historical novel-in-progress

Posted on March 6, 2019 by
Hot water cask/carafe in the Heyward-Washington House, Charleston, SC

Hot water cask/carafe in the Heyward-Washington House, Charleston, SC

Hi, folks. Here’s a sneak peak at a scene from the VERY rough, very first draft of my historical novel-in-progress. Just to whet your history whistle on a Wednesday morning.

The scene came about because of the very unusual hot water cask in it. I’d seen the cask on a research trip to Charleston, South Carolina, in the Heyward-Washington House–part of the Charleston Museum’s collection of historic homes. In the scene, my 2004 protagonist–an art restoration expert and art historian named Gamble–has landed in the laps of my 1804 protagonists–a miniature portraitist named Daniel, and his sister, Honor.

Enjoy!

* Coffee scene, Charleston, SC, 1804 *

Daniel had been married once before. He had known women in his life—exotic women, women who spoke French and Italian, and read scandalous poetry by candlelight. But this slip of a woman standing on his mother’s Persian [?] rug, in his mother’s dress, with her bare toes peeking out from beneath the hem, was a mystery. He didn’t know her at all, and did not know how to begin.

“You said you’re a painter?” She asked, and it jolted him.

“Yes,” he said.

“What are you working on now?”

“Daniel has more commissions for miniature portraits than he can paint at the moment,” Honor said. She came into the room with a steaming teapot in hand, then used it to fill the silver hot water cask on their father’s favorite mahogany side table. “You must have him show you. They’re in the carriage house.”

“The carriage house?” Gamble asked, surprise in her voice.

“Yes, well,” Daniel said. “Horses do not talk to you when you’re trying to work.”

“I can hear you,” his sister said over her shoulder, as she exited the room with the empty kettle.

Gamble wandered over to the silver cask and bent down to admire it. “Isn’t this a fabulous contraption? It’s gorgeous. It looks just like a hot air balloon, only it’s stationary. Look, it has legs! As if it could walk away. What’s it for?”

Now he was truly shocked, and not just from her disjointed speech and odd pattern of thought. “You don’t have coffee where you come from?”

She straightened. “Oh, you better believe it! There’s practically a coffee house on every street corner.”

He smiled. “How delightful.”

Gamble reached out a hand, touching a finger lightly to the cask’s delicate silver spigot. “It really is.”

There was a lull, and he started to speak, not to say much of anything, only to fill the empty space because he did not know what else to do. Gamble interrupted.

“Can we take our coffee with us?” She said.

Daniel blinked. “With us where?”

When Gamble smiled, it lit the room just as the sun did on winter afternoons, when it came blazing in through the street side windows of his living quarters on the third floor. It near to blinded him.

“To the carriage house,” she said. “So I can see the miniatures.”

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Some initial thoughts: the recent decisions of the special session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church

Posted on February 26, 2019 by

candleIf I were still writing my newspaper column, I’d be writing, this week, about the special session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, which met over the past several days to make decisions about church doctrine regarding human sexuality. As of today, the General Conference has decided to continue to deny “the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals,” and that “United Methodist clergy are not permitted to conduct same-sex weddings on their church property.”

There’s much more to the decision, but that’s the gist. Here are my initial thoughts. I continue to struggle with expressing how I feel, and what I’m thinking–but here goes.

… 

Church has always been a complicated place for me. It strikes me, today especially, that I love the United Methodist Church, and the individual churches to which I’ve belonged, as I love family. And we all know how we love family: sometimes freely, sometimes painfully, joyously and in spite of ourselves. We love family, even and impossibly, when family hurts us, when they abuse our trust. It is a never-ending conundrum. But love is like that. It’s why, I think, love is so like faith.

I’m a lay-person, a parishioner. A church member, no Biblical or Methodist scholar, and certainly nowhere near an expert on church doctrine. I was raised in the United Methodist Church, attended Sunday School, sang in church choir, performed in church plays, played church basketball, participated in youth fellowship. I have participated in the rituals of the Methodist Church: baptism, confirmation, communion, the celebrations of holy days, marriage and more. I found my way back to church after navigating a labyrinth of personal and religious history, after navigating the inherent patriarchy of the Christian religion in general … and, quite honestly, after going against my own intellect. I found my way back after deciding no church to which I’d ever belong would ever be perfect, because it is made up of humans.

I came back to the church in adulthood, by and large because of my children. Growing up, my church was a second home, peopled by folks who knew my name, who hugged and loved me. Who taught me in Sunday School and coached my basketball teams, who supported me at school events, who clapped when I graduated from high school and college, and who embraced me on the day of my wedding. Who made me feel an unaccountable, joyous welcome. The God and Jesus, and the church I knew as a child was kind, benevolent, comfortable. Because of this, I have always felt in my deepest of souls a personal, spirit-filling connection with the Divine.

But I’ve always questioned, even as a child. Once, round about age 12, I was asked to leave my Sunday School classroom because I asked too many of those questions. This was rare—the only time, for me, it ever happened at church. The teacher of the class was a man hired to run our youth programs, and, thankfully, the powers that be decided quickly he wasn’t for us or for our church. Because the truth is, I’m always going to have questions. I don’t understand people who don’t. But that’s for me to contend with.

This is a touch—just a smidge—of my own experience of Methodism. And I don’t know why, but today and this weekend as the special session of the General Conference convened, I had hope my church would find a way forward which embraced the “sacred worth” of all of us. That it would stand up and say, All are welcome. We don’t know everything. But we do know the only way forward is with love.

To my friends deeply rooted in what they see as the traditions of the church—in traditions they see as Biblically planted—I love you. I don’t understand you at times, and I worry you’re being led by fear. But I love you.

To my friends hurt by the church, Methodist or otherwise—friends who have been told, in more ways than one, that their souls are dirty, that they are unworthy: I see you. You are of sacred worth. God loves you.

GOD LOVES YOU.

The older I grow, the less of which I am certain. Details are fuzzy. History is varied and complicated and strange. People are wonderful and horrible. No church doctrine will ever tell me how to love and value my friends or family. No church doctrine will ever determine the sacred worth of my gay, lesbian, or transgender brothers and sisters. After all, there are and have always been, as Dr. King said, just and unjust laws.

I fully believe the decision by the General Conference to reject changes that would make the church more open to all people is unjust law. The decision does not reflect my faith. I firmly believe it does not reflect the divinity and Light and Mystery of God.

This is an ongoing conversation. And if I’m certain of anything, it’s that I don’t know much. It is difficult for me to understand why the modern church would ever close its doors to any of us. It seems to me, always but perhaps now more than ever, Earth is in peril, in more ways than one. That there’s a battle raging for our collective souls. If someone wants to get in the fight, if they are ready to open their mind and heart to the Mystery of God, how can we ever turn them away?

How can the United Methodist Church faithfully and in good conscience continue to use this tagline: “Open minds. Open hearts. Open doors.”

We can’t. After today, we don’t mean them.

I cannot imagine ever questioning the humanity and divinity and downright dignity of another human being. How can we be so arrogant, so compassionless, so fear-driven, to ever deny any human being the anointing grace of God? How can we ever deny any human being participation in the process of Christian life?

Here is where my faith comforts me: because we cannot ever deny, across the wild masterpiece that is time, anyone their sacred worth. It is not up to us, no matter how many people at a conference stand up and say otherwise.

Just like secular law, church law is made by humans: fallible, fallen, mistake-ridden human beings. We hope, quite literally, it is inspired by God. We try, God help us, to do our best. We fail, time and again.

But I have hope, and I have faith, though my hope and my faith may look very different from yours. More than anything else, I want to believe.

Here are a few things I do believe:

We are, every one of us, children of God.

Today my church did not speak for me.

The only way forward for the church in the world is through love.

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A sneak peak at my novel-in-progress

Posted on February 20, 2019 by
Miniature in the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC

Miniature in the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC

Hi, folks.

It is a wild, woolly, rainy Wednesday here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. 30-something degree rain is just downright depressing. It should be snowing.

That being said, in the spirit of livening things up, I thought I’d give y’all a sneak peak at an excerpt from the very rough, very first draft of my historical novel-in-progress. I posted an earlier peak over on Instagram, and today posted this, too. So I thought I’d share here.

The novel, as it stands, is set in both 1804 and 2004. The following is told from the point of view of my main character, who is an art historian and restoration expert at the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Enjoy!

Excerpt: WIP
There is an excitement historians feel when we’ve made a find. When we’ve uncovered something about a life, or from a time, no one has even seen or perhaps made a connection to before. It reassures something infinite in us: it solidifies this truism we all trust, that somehow, through era and age, across millennia, we are connected. That our stories matter. That we share them, despite the often dissociating construct of space and time.

It’s how we get a person to walk into a museum. I mean, that’s a pretty big task. In Charleston, especially, there are many other things to do and see. You can eat biscuits which sing in your mouth, for example. Drink cocktails from the jazz age, mixed by clever bartenders. Take in harbor views so delightful the town put up swings. But a historian must lure a person in by other means—the means of a promise. A promise of a glimpse of the past, of an insight into how we got where we are, even with the airing of someone’s 200-year-old dirty laundry. A historian makes the promise that stories matter. That our choices matter, and that they ripple out, as many reverberations as there are waves in the ocean.

I restore art not because I want to live in the past, or because I believe it was in any way, shape, or form a better place to be. I’m a woman, for heaven’s sake. The past is even trickier for my people than the present, and that is saying something. Indeed, I am well aware of history’s fickle soul.

But saying it like this makes the past sound just delightful, even funny. The truth is, the past is marauding. It will mow you down like a Pamplonian bull if you don’t give it the attention it deserves.

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Happy Valentine’s Day from my family to yours! (Plus a column.)

Posted on February 14, 2019 by
My girls: the reason I celebrate Valentine's Day.

My girls: the reason I celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Happy Valentine’s Day from my family to yours! Even though it’s not a real holiday, and the historical origins are dicey (and possibly a bit murderous). Still. This day reminds us that, really, all we need is love.

Today I’m harkening back to my Valentine’s Day column from 2017. And middle school. And how this holiday has mortified me since the 6th grade. To read, click here.

* If you are having trouble accessing my newspaper column because you’ve run out of “free articles” online, try opening a whole new window and Googling “Katherine Scott Crawford Greenville News Valentine’s Day middle school.” It should pop up in the first few results.

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