Thursday, October 28, 2004

Deep Joy, Deep Hunger... On days when I'm stumped for words, if I sit quietly, waiting, invariably words arrive--just not the ones I was hoping for. Today, trying to push my little screenplay along, I kept getting sideswiped by thoughts of meaning and purpose, as if someone was at my shoulder prodding me to look again, look again. Here's the Frederick Buechner quote that's been dogging me lately (to say that I'd been brooooding over it wouldn't be true, but it's been pesky, showing up randomly several times a week): "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC Today, the gladness. Tomorrow, the deep hunger. Listen to this, a snatch of sermon from the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon: "Bethink you, beloved, of his character, and surely he must have known the joy of being good; for there is a deep gladness in holiness, a blessed peacefulness in righteousness. The holiness of angels is their happiness, and although to a large degree the Savior laid his peace aside, yet there is a rest of soul from which virtue cannot separate. Distractions of conscience he never knew, disturbance of mind, on account of sin he did not feel on his own account, although as our substitute he was made sin for us. He suffered. Mark, I am not for a moment detracting from his sufferings, high mountains of grief I see; the eagle's wing cannot reach their summit, nor foot of angel climb their brows; but lo, I see leaping streams of pleasure running adown the rugged steeps, and amid the hollows of the desolate hills I gaze upon deep lakes of joy unfathomable by mortal line." I write, act, direct, and teach not because they are pleasurable, but because it is there that I first discovered, and continue to touch, the deep joy Buechner is referring to. It is very close to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow. "This is what we mean by optimal experience...It is what a painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a magnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape in front of the astonished creator." Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience This doesn't imply that we creators do so just for the fun of it, for the sheer pleasure of it. Csikszentmihalyi says these are not the moments of ease and fun, but the moments when "a person's body or mind is stretched to the limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." Buechner's notion is that God has supplied us with the psychic energy and inclination to do the very work he is calling us to, revealing our truest nature even as he pour his life through us to accomplish his goals. (That begs the question of denial, but it's the false impulse we must deny, not the true.) Even as God uses us to meet the needs of those he loves and is calling to himself, he is at the same time opening our own hearts to see and live out the essence of being he envisioned when he formed us. Don't ignore the deep joy... 4:40:54 PM   comment []

Let there be light... a solar flare It begins in the beginning, the basic orientation toward creating, making things. Somebody (Abner Doubleday, Alexander Cartwright) made the rules of a game Red Sox Nation celebrates this morning, the light of day finally shining on a championship in Boston. Somebody took the steps I've been reading about in Mitchell Stephen's The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word: the early cave paintings, the making of paper in China, the block type letters of the printing press. Even today, millions will live out what Nicolas Berdyaev (early 20th C. Russian philosopher) simply calls the creative act, taking what he calls "a way out, an exodus" into sacrificial living that is, at heart, "liberation and conquest," an experience of power moving away from pride, selfishness, and depression. Indeed, God saw the light, and called it good. Did you see the Red Sox celebrating? I guess I'm still thinking about the why of writing. Isn't it close to the why of anything? Why make rules about balls and bats and outs? Why spend the money to ogle over Titan? Why make a film, or a law, or a decision? (or a blog...) What are we but "making" creatures? Yes, folks, it's that time of year for me, when I begin to prepare for teaching my class in Faith and Art at Abilene Christian University, and I start ruminating on creativity. For me, it is at the heart of what it means to be human, connecting us deeply--in the realm of character--to the Maker who made us makers. But truth is, God's progeny or not, there are days when energy drains out of us, and we can barely make toast, much less art, or relationships, or love. On those days, it's back to the deep, formless and void, the Spirit brooding there, waiting for the word to come to pour out the light again. And God speaks it again, over and over. But we've evolved, haven't we, since the original void first welcomed the light. Can you imagine the void speaking back, saying, "No, thanks...I like the darkness just fine?" Yet that's what we do...that's what we do... Let all creation praise him... 7:47:11 AM   comment []

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