Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Shklovsky: Preaching lessons from Russian literature

The parable of the persistent widow. Again. Scholar, poet, and preacher Cameron Bellm has heard it a hundred times—so she turned to Russian literature for help. Drawing on Viktor Shklovsky’s ostranenie, the art of making the familiar strange, she reveals how to jolt ancient parables back to life. “It is the goal of art to make the stone stony again,” she says. She also urges preachers to learn from Russian Masters Tolstoy—”a master of the narration of human consciousness”—and Dostoevsky, who “takes us into the deepest, darkest, grittiest underbelly of humanity and lights a single match.”

In her homily  for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, she layers voices across generations—her Presbyterian grandfather’s 1964 sermons, Oscar Romero, Etty Hillesum—creating “a double-exposed photograph.” Her provocation: “We identify as the persistent widow, but like it or not, we are also the judge.”

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