I Write -Again

Many –yes many years ago, I began a story about angels and their strengths and weaknesses and how it could be that such an awesome, divinely designed creature could ever become a rebel and be filled with everything false and depraved.  I worked on it for well over a year, and then life happened and in other pursuits, it sunk into the chronicles of my ‘unfinished’ life. 

It wasn’t a particularly spiritual write, but I tried to keep it from offending the scripture, when not necessarily aligning with it.  It was more of a concept of truth that I was reaching for, than a revelation of fact. I thought it was a good story, as far as it went, and I felt it was making some kind of overworked, verbose point that was valid among mankind.  I recall and consider it sometimes and have made lackluster attempts at locating it a couple of times to perhaps revive, edit and rewrite the valiant parts and bring it to a proper conclusion.

To say I love writing would be an understatement for those who know me well.  I’ve written stories, poems and prose as long as I can recall.  When I broke my arms at the age of 9, the first creative thing I was able to do was to laboriously type on an old manual typewriter.  I could not hold a pencil or play the piano, but I could put my thoughts on paper in story or poem form. And, I did, in spite of the pain, one finger at a time.

To say I am a writer would be a long stretch, because I’ve only been published by default and that sparsely in my decades of writing.  To my defense, I must admit that I’ve made little effort to be formally published and the events of that nature were generally the doing of others who saw some merit.  Yet I write, and in social media, I have found an audience.  For that I am grateful, because if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, who cares?

The title of my active blog is “Wording out the complexities of life.”  Honestly, most of my writing is as much a question as it is an answer.  I don’t consider myself a prophet or a theologian, though I do enjoy studying and reaching a conclusion that is my own, even if it is not original.  In fact, a huge portion of my writing has no great spiritual message at all, but I have begun to understand that as I am a spiritual being –and we all are one way or another, my belief about God and personal integrity, my understanding of and personal views about good and evil and the general human condition will surface in my writing.  I will slip aggravatingly often between those aspects of my life, for in me, they are not separate.  Even my failures are divine testaments to the great mercy and strength of God’s plan and character.  It is how I face the complexities of life most of the time –by wording them out.

I do get things crossways at times.  I do reach wrong conclusions.  But I am generally searching for truth.  A year or so ago, I began a story about a changeling fairy and as I wrote, I found I had strayed into such a forest of non-conclusion that any truth I might have pursued was lost in a labyrinth of pointless events and ineffectual emotions.   As I reread it a couple of days past a particularly productive session, I felt complete embarrassment at the direction it had taken.  There was no soundness left.  I located the part where I had gotten off track and began my desert wandering, and I began hacking away at the story.  I realized I didn’t have time to rewrite it all then, but I needed to injure it badly enough that I could well see what needed change.

I have a painting student who sometimes gets far enough off track that the fix is greater than he can see and I must often move his painting critically away from its present direction for him to perceive the logic in what must be accomplished.  I don’t like to ‘fix’ a student’s work as a rule.  I’d rather lead them to fix.  But there are times when the only way to see what it needs is to mess it up in the right direction.  These days when I announce “I’m going to ruin your life,” he doesn’t even cringe.  He just moves back and smiles.  He already knows it’s not going where he wants it to.  When I’ve messed it up sufficiently, he is clear to rewrite the story with his brush.  He knows it will be a radical change at that point, but he’s already floundering in the paint.  After I make a few destructive strokes, he always has the “Aha” moment.

And so I see it that sometimes my great Father chops and hacks at my canvas, my story.  I know I’m floundering, and though I badly want to fix it, I cannot from where I stand.  I cannot even see the fix or precisely what is wrong.  I’ve learned to observe, to step back and consider as he messes up my efforts and rights my world again.

But then he hands the pen back and says “Now write.”  And a little embarrassed at where I had been taking it all, I begin again with a bit more caution and purpose.  It is who I am.  I write.