I can’t even write the words “blind faith” without my skin crawling. Despite forty-six years of attending church and more than half that time intentionally engaged in spiritual practices, enough of me is rational, academic, and post-modern that I’m unwilling to “blindly” do anything.
We can be in dialogue with our whole being, accepting what life makes of us, taking what has happened, and making of it something new. From this dynamic exchange comes aliveness—our own and the world’s.
I thought of her over the long weekend without me, pouring all her energy into this paper representation of our family; I imagined her bent over the dining room table, making her passionate “I love you—I love you—I love you” into little flat people she could give hair-dos and tenderly clothe, and I saw finally how we’d each in our own ways been praying all weekend, placing our hearts into this vast, connected, and holy family.
Revision insists that we reject the single story in favor of layered, complex, and contradictory stories. Just as intimacy and awareness break down our stereotypes, intimacy with and awareness of our material break apart our over-simplifications and half-truths.
This morning I stumbled on some contrary advice from Teresa of Avila, that light-hearted, contrarian mystic. Don’t try to still the mind and create a contrived state of recollection, she chides. Such attempts are likely to backfire.
All writers know the magic of putting aside a problematic passage (for a nap or a walk) only to have the solution appear unbidden. This turning away from writing is, paradoxically, an essential part of writing.
I’ve been bowled over by how many people have shared with me that they feel like frauds. It plagues artists, for whom there’s always some level of public recognition to strive for that might finally affirm our worth; it plagues leaders, who must stand in front of people who will inevitably question their authority; it plagues parents, who feel they should know what they’re doing and don’t. Is there anyone who doesn’t at some point feel fraudulent?!
Over my years of teaching writing I’ve had hundreds of people ask me, “Is this writing good enough?” This question shows up in different forms—“Is it publishable?” “Do I have talent?” “Should I keep going?” But it’s inevitable. I’ve yet to work with a writer (or meet any artist, for that matter) who didn’t ask …
Emily and I recently had one of our two garages torn down (for the sake of more garden) and replaced the hole in our house with a magnificent bay window. The immediate consequences of this project is a house full of dust and a tremendous amount of painting. In my every spare minute I’m sanding …
The summer I first began gardening, I turned fresh compost into the beds, planted seeds, and watched the veggies grow—those I’d planted as well as an extraordinary number of squash upstarts. I thought those self-starters were wonderful and in a show of democracy accepted the compost’s contribution to my garden. Until squash vines choked out …