Keeping it Tight with a Timely Tale

Excerpt taken from Madeleine L'Engle's delightful book, Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith and Art:

"There's a story of a small village (about the size of the village near Crosswicks) where lived an old clockmaker and repairer. When anything was wrong with any of the clocks or watches in the village, he was able to fix them, to get them working properly again. When he died, leaving no children and no apprentice, there was no one left in the village who could fix clocks. Soon various clocks and watches began to break down. Those which continued to run often lost or gained time, so they were of little use. A clock might strike midnight at three in the afternoon. So many of the villagers abandoned their timepieces.  

One day a renowned clockmaker and repairer came through the village, and the people crowded around him and begged him to fix their broken clocks and watches. He spent many hours looking at all the faulty timepieces, and at last he announced that he could repair only those whose owners had kept them wound, because they were the only ones which would be able to remember how to keep time.  

So we must daily keep things wound: that is, we pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain. 

We may not always be able to make our "clock" run correctly, but at least we can keep it wound so that it will not forget."

As Christian artists, Madeleine posits, we pray and we write. We write and we pray. And we're supposed to do it everyday.

I've been doing the writing part. If not everyday, then at least every other day.

The best lesson I learned as a creative writing student was to spend 20 minutes a day with my butt in a chair and a blank screen in front of my face. Even if I just stare at the screen. Even if all I write is "I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write" for twenty whole minutes.

Because even on the days the "clock" isn't working properly, it's a way of keeping it wound for the days when inspiration strikes. For the days the clockmaker returns with his tools and his tinkering.

On the writing front, I understand this. It's been drilled into me since Freshman Comp. Even in the midst of burnout. In the midst of "hating" all work and all writing, I still couldn't help but write. Couldn't help but keep my own sort of time.

But on the praying front I've had a harder time with discipline. I've whined and I've cried, "God why haven't you healed me? Why haven't you shown up?" before taking the time to ask for healing or to invite His presence into my life.

I make time to write. Why shouldn't I make time to pray?

I believe that God speaks to me. That God can speak to all of us in different ways. This week he used a friend to remind me how desperately He wants to spend time with me, to pour out out his love on me.

What if I took time to just "sit with God?" In short, to pray?

20 minutes a day. My butt in a chair. My heart open to the One who loves me.
No notes, no writing--although writing is spiritual for me, this is different from my writing time--just chatting with God. Sitting with a friend. Even if I don't want to. Even if I don't feel his presence or can't hear him speak. I will sit there in anticipation. I will keep the clock wound.

Writing God In: Thoughts on the Blogging Life

The day my grandmother died, I started a list of details. An inventory of humdrum data to delineate the day, the particulars of a grief observed.

The stockings lay limp by the mantle, the bounty already uprooted. A Christmas day in the mid-afternoon.

We were huddled on the couch, my brothers and I, watching the Motorcycle Diaries—to me a Christmas miracle that they had agreed to be burdened by subtitles—when we got the call.

The details rose up to my consciousness, as unstoppable as grief, as love.

       I sat in the backseat on the passenger side.

       I picked at a hangnail on my right thumb.

       I held my mother’s hand as we walked down the hallway that smelled of urine and antiseptic.

      Colored ball ornaments hung from the ceiling.

I couldn’t feel; could only record.

Above all else, I wanted to remember.

****

“It makes me wonder whether only writers’ minds work this way,” said Brendan Koerner in a fascinating post on the mind of the writer.

He is referring to an excerpt in Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs in which “Buford gets pummeled by Italian riot cops.” Instead of wishing it were over, or merely trying to get through the pain, Buford writes, “mainly I was thinking about the pain. It was unlike anything I had known and I wanted to remember it.”

That Christmas at the nursing home, the grief was unlike anything I had known and I wanted to remember it. Not my grandmother, per se. I’d already stockpiled a million and seven spaghetti-and-meatball-cooking-I-Love-Lucy-watching details about her in the months and years preceding her death. I wanted to remember that day, that pain, those particulars. So I could tell the story.

At the end of his post, Brendan writes, “when your life is given over to telling stories, this is the default approach to every situation. There’s always a little voice chirping in your ear, “Imagine how this will sound on the page.”

A writing mind is an observant mind; a mind hungry for the story.

There’s always another narrative to knit, another phrase to turn over like a butterscotch hard candy in your mouth, clanking against your teeth, spreading sweetness across your tongue.

The mundane begs to be immortalized in my words. The death of a grandmother brings life to my musings. I am a different person by the time the words spill from my lips. I am a new creation as I track details, grant new names, new life.

Almost a year ago to the day, God whispered to me, in the middle of a church service, to “write my love story.” It was a command to share my story, the story of God’s love for me. It was the motivation for this blog, but it was also a command to remember.

To remember the times I couldn’t step foot in a church. To remember the outrage I felt at injustice. To remember the first time I felt a real, a raw, a ragged hope begin to stir in my own honesty.

Writing is an act of remembering. Even more, it is a discipline of thankfulness.

The writing, the blogging, the sharing, is shaping me. It has shaped me—in good ways and bad.

When I want to write God off, blogging forces me to write God in.  And that is good.

In writing I uncover details I’ve forgotten. I remember miracles. I marvel at the threads of goodness pointing to a good God woven through my life.

Writing can transform prayers of pleading into proclamations of praise.

But lately I’ve discovered a downside to writing. I’ve found that blogging has changed my prayers, what I’ve come to expect, what I’ve started to demand.

The whispers of God that I used to view as grace, grace, and more grace have become—like Buford recounted—nothing more than great story material. God gives me a revelation and I’m immediately thinking, “Imagine how this will sound on the page.”

I’ve been desperately wanting God to speak not because I legitimately want more of him, but because I want more to write. I want God to speak so I have something to say.  So I sound smart. So I sound spiritual. So people don’t wonder why I didn’t post. So my blog metrics don’t tick down to just my mother, again.

It’s thoughts like these that make me want to nix it all. Tear down the blog. Rip up my journal. Cry out for forgiveness for manipulating God’s words for my own purposes.

I ask myself, For whose glory am I writing?

The heart check comes back inconclusive: Some days I write from pure gratitude that God would speak at all, that he would allow me to share, that he would use my words to speak to others. Other days I write from a selfish stance, greedy for my own glory.

I forget that it was God who prompted this blog in the first place. God who crafted me with a proclivity for details, with an instinct for recollection, with an unceasing desire to write to write to write until I see His face.

And so I write. And so I pray and ask forgiveness. And so I ask for God to speak.  And, then, in the details, in the remembering, in the recounting, I want to give glory.

I want to write God in, for it is in God that I write. 

Blogger friends, can you relate to this urge to mine every word, conversation, and prayer for good content? Do you think it's still worth writing about God even if your motives are mixed? How do you stay centered on God's glory? 

T.S. Tuesday: On Wanting Things

“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.” 

― T.S. Eliot

I'm reminded of a story, a parable of a persistent friend who does not give up on what he wants. 

"Jesus said to them, 'Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

   

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." Luke 11:5-10

Wait a minute? Ask anything? Want anything? Even if it's my fault I'm ill-prepared to take in a friend at midnight, I can still ask for bread repeatedly, obnoxiously? And Jesus goes so far as to make this the example for prayer. 

I have a problem with wanting things. Well, not a problem with wanting things, but a problem with feeling guilty for wanting things. I don't believe I'm allowed to want something unless it's world peace or the end of poverty or the well being of someone else. I'm not allowed to want something just for me.

I also get wrapped up in thinking that it's somehow my fault that I don't have it in the first place--like the man who wasn't ready to care for his traveling friend without a neighbor's assistance. I can't ask for it because I should have handled it on my own. I believe I'm left to handle it on my own. 

And when good things happen--things I wanted--I question how much was God and how much was my "bad enough?"

The fulfillment of a selfish desire. I still feel guilty.

How is that freedom? How is that basking? Wasn't it God who made my heart and its desires? Isn't it God who wants to see me thriving and fulfilled? Who wants to give me joy? 

Why do I have such a hard time believing He wants good things for me? Why do I have such a hard time accepting the good things? Or an even worse time asking for good things?

God, I know you know the desires of my heart. You placed them there. You knit them into the fabric of my being. I ask for wisdom in distinguishing your prompting from my selfishness. And I ask for grace when I confuse them. 

I ask for humility to use the gifts you've given--the things I've wanted--to serve and bless others, to bring your Kingdom.  

I ask for the courage to want something bad enough that it just might become possible. And I ask for the humility to give thanks both for the desiring and the fulfilling. 

Amen.