And to add a final daub to an already heaping pile of irony, I had written a long post yesterday when the computer shut down suddenly and I lost the whole thing. In the immortal words of Bruce Almighty, "Smite me, O Mighty Smiter!" But then, when I wrote yesterday, I hadn't gotten Liz's valuable comment yet, which has added so much to my reflections on this subject, and prompted me to go deeper. It has grown and grown, and I can't seem to find a way to shorten it, though I'm trying. Bear with me.
So, ab initio.
I have been very moved by everyone's comments and queries. I spent time yesterday reading through the blog. As I reread old entries, I was struck with gratitude to be able look back even a little way and see the path I've taken, and the issues I've been struggling with along the road. A lot of the themes remain constant, developing slowly. I receive with thankfulness the upholding and eldership I've been given along the way, much of which is still feeding me as I go (I hope) forward. This is something I'd be hesitant to give up without very careful discernment. The fruits of the blog, on the outside, have been wholly positive. It strikes me that the central question I'm dealing with is:
What is the blog meant to do, and am I accomplishing it?
I think there are three main purposes I could see the blog having.
1.) As a self-publishing tool for my essays and writing in general.
2.) As a threshing tool, where I work out and test my leadings, thoughts, doubts, ideas, emotions, discoveries, setbacks and questions.
3.) As ministry. I don't think I've ever actually intended the blog as ministry, though I have been open to the idea, and have seen it maybe work that way.
My issue is that these purposes all currently seem to be in conflict with each other.
The main reason I started the blog was #2: I wanted a place to explore my new faith and the huge packet of questions and uncertainties that came along with it, and to match this faith and theology against the old questions and uncertainties I've always wrestled. Graham Wallas, or W.H. Auden, or E.M. Forster, said: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?". I've seen it attributed to all of these guys and more, but whoever said it was very right.
The main trouble I'm running into is this: along with being a seeker, I am also a writer. I am suspicious that in my effort to frame "what I say" for a public audience, I may be molding it artificially, clouding the truth of "what I think", almost unconsciously, to make a better essay or "piece" out of it.
Knowing this, I have to question the integrity of the threshing or ministry which may or may not occur in my writing. The absolute honesty and emotional poverty necessary for true seeking may fall by the wayside in favour of "craft", whether I'm really aware of it or not. If this is the case, I am obscuring my way to the Truth I was originally sent to find and share. My editorial hand could cloud the spiritual process, and it may be capable of shading over anything which could be considered a message from God. The very nature and structure of an essay begs an arc of thought and some sort of conclusion, neither of which may actually be present at any given point in my search. I'm forced to ask, do I discover these things through the exercise of writing the post, or do I paste them artificially over what may have been a God-induced muddle, thereby avoiding the real work, and enabling myself to look like a smarty-pants? The answers to this question is never really clear.
For better or for worse, I'm starting to have some grudging respect for the old Quaker suspicions about art being, at the root, dishonest.
Of course I'm speaking subjectively. I do feel that real art reveals something of the Truth, even if at times it seems on the surface to deviate from "reality".
I think that we're often limited to viewing and transmitting Truth through a prism, which distorts the natural form of the Light and diverges it, though in doing so it reveals a truth about Light's nature. Newton proved that white light is a mixture of lights of different colours, which are basic and cannot be decomposed. When light is refracted, all of these colours are separated and visible. The textbooks say "The prism is simply a convenient shape for amplifying the effect into something that is easily visible."
Maybe this is what I am doing in my writing: encountering and dispersing Light in a refracted form. But what if I am disatisfied with refracted Light? What if I feel a need to meet the Light in its pure unfiltered form and pass it on just as I have recieved it? Is this real desire for the Truth about God, or is this pride? Is this the perfection to which we are called in Matthew 5:48?
Refraction is defined as "the bending of a light beam as it passes from one material into another." For the word "bend", the dictionary gives both "to cause to swerve from a straight line; deflect" and "to misrepresent; distort: bend the truth".
Is there a way to avoid this bending of Light?
Quakerism says it is possible to receive the beam of God's Light directly from the Source itself, unbent by the filters of others. But to do so, you also must make sure you are not bending it yourself. And since we all have the responsibility of sharing "our" beam of Light with others, before we open our mouths we need to be even more sure.
Refraction is not the only way to encounter or share Light. What about reflection?
There is a poem by G.K. Chesterton about the Annunciation, addressed to Mary, called "A Little Litany". It is full of beautiful images, one of which has recently struck me as important.
When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven — and saw the earth...
...Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.
Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face...
The idea is that God found in Mary "the ... glass/That would not break with that unbearable light". Her obedience and faithfulness and openess were so complete that she could reflect the Light of God without disortion or blemish, in absolute Truth and wholeness. Of course, this Light, perfectly reflected, was Christ. In the mirror of Mary, "God looked on God", and what is more, man could look upon God on Earth. God was made manifest (incarnate?) in our fleshy material world. Can't this metaphor of Mary apply to our lives, too?
Back to the science of reflection. All objects reflect rays, but objects without a flat surface give off diffuse reflection and become indirect-lighting devices. For example, your body reflects much of the light it receives. But because the body's surface is rough, varied, angled, bumpy, when light is aimed at it the rays have all different angles of incidence and different angles of reflection and so are diffused. This phenomenon allows objects which are not the sources of light to be seen. (Here I must insert an emphatic editorial "Huh.")
A surface which reflects almost all of the light which falls on it is called "specular". For a specular surface to act as an effective mirror, to reflect that light without diffusion, it must be smooth, flat, and regular. Any object with a flat, smooth, specular surface is called...
wait for it...
...a plain mirror.
Yes it is a coincidence, and yes, in this context it is a bit of a pun, but it's true, and the idea holds.
How does all of this come back to my blog? Well, it seems obvious that the purpose of a blog (just like everything else we do) should be to reflect the Light of God, with as little distortion or bending as we can manage.
But what should you do when you're very far from being a plain mirror? When you're still functioning as a lumpy corporeal object with reflective powers so diffuse that they serve only to draw attention to yourself? Or if you're a prism, taking the Light into yourself and then sending it forth, bent, dispersed, and split by its travels through all your different facets?
It seems important to continue reflecting what Light you can while working out the long process of becoming a plain mirror. But what if these imperfect reflections and refractions are in danger of impeding your progress towards perfection?
Thank you Liz, for the reminder to hold my worries gently. I sometimes feel so frustrated. Every time I think I am stripping away a layer of artifice there's another layer to be discovered, more subtle, sly and sneaky than the last. It's enough to make me paranoid, or at least suspicious about what nasty trick my ego might play on me next. I don't trust even my best impulses as far as I can throw them, nor my ability to truly discern the Whisper of God from the hissings of some tempter hidden in the depths of my self-love. The only place I feel safe from myself is in stillness and silence. I remember the quote I posted here in January...
"I know of no other way, in these deeper depths, of trusting in the name of the Lord, and staying upon God, than sinking in to silence and nothingness before Him... So long as the enemy can keep us reasoning he can buffet us to and fro; but into the true solemn silence of the soul before God he cannot follow us."
- Quaker Faith & Practice (Britain Yearly Meeting) from John Bellows in 1895
and I think of the hope of the Psalmist for the faithful:
Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
Psalms, 31:20
His enemies were outer, mine are inner. But even this desire for silence is a leading I'm trying to test carefully. Even this could be a new temptation. Do I really seek to be faithful in the quiet, or could it be a cloak for my deficiencies? What am I truly seeking in silence? A refuge from the din of life, so that I can pry away the incidental and learn to be True? Or a place where I can hide with my current concepts of God, avoiding the need to correct my faults, away from the Light of my Friends? Am I more likely to fall into error if I seek in silence and solitude, getting wrapped up in the tangles of my thoughts without others to help temper them?
The answer, I would think, is implicit in the John Bellows quote. If I withdraw to a place where there's a chance I'll get tangled up in my thinking, that place is not really silence. The perennial trouble for me is that I cannot stop thinking. (ny more than I can stop writing this, it seems) This "true solemn silence of the soul" is constantly eluding me, and sometimes I wonder if it is a state that I can actually achieve, or if even this is a gift which I must wait patiently to receive.
I'm not spiritually hyperventilating as much as it might seem. I know there's nothing to be done but be still. I just get confused and troubled when I am foiled in my best efforts to achieve even stillness. I know that I must simply do what is before me, and be faithful in the small things, and learn to be steady and constant in my daily life. But as I go through this process of learning, the fact remains that decisions must be made. For example, what will "my daily life" consist of? How can I decide which of the little things I do every day are faithful and which are blocking the still small voice I need so much, even just to make these little decisions?
How can I be still and know, until I know how to be still?
The very existence of this post, in the face of everything I've just said within it, seems mildly comical. Even in this post I see at least hints of everything that I am troubled by; a determined (perhaps willful) quest for understanding, a certain amount of pride in my reasoning and little epiphanies, a quiet craving for distinction, a carefully shaped structure imposed by my mind on the raw material. I did command these words. This post was composed, a word which the dictionary defines variously as:
To to make or create by putting together parts or elements.
To create or produce (a literary or musical piece).
To make calm or tranquil.
To settle or adjust; reconcile.
To arrange aesthetically or artistically.
I think some of those are more desirable that others. But even given all this, when I read everything my Friends had to say to me on the subject, I really did feel led to write more, to be more clear about the precise nature of my concerns and aims. I actually gained some insight on the subject myself. So I wrote more. A lot more, apparently. Yeesh.
PS:I refuse to footnote my blog, but I'm indebted to the library of thinkquest.org for helping me refresh my memory about the workings of prisms and mirrors.
7 comments:
Of course the light is refracted and bent by each of us. At the threshing meeting last night it was so clear that people are terrified to be present to each other, afraid of each others pain, afraid of each other's hurt and all hiding behind a vision of God devoid of unity. So many quoted so much to say why they could not come to simple unity and love.
And I keep coming back to Hill el... do nothing to another that is abhorant to thyself, that is the Torrah and the rest is commentary...
be present, be kind, undertanding and gentle... treat the lonely the hurt, the angry, the lost, as you would be treated... tenderly... and all the rest is comentary...
be gentle.
Much of your writing speaks to this... much of your life speaks to this... and we all have to keep looking inside.
and the rest is silence
lor
You said :
I am suspicious that in my effort to frame "what I say" for a public audience, I may be molding it artificially, clouding the truth of "what I think", almost unconsciously, to make a better essay or "piece" out of it.
I feel that I do this sometimes as well, but I consciously challenge myself to be brutally honest about all of my thoughts about my faith, and maybe that's all you really need to do.
If the big problem you're having with blogging is your tendency to gloss the writing, then why not challenge yourself to be nothing but truly and nakedly honest?
:) It may point out more of your "flaws", but I think it's important and even more graceful in its honesty.
Don't be impatient or embarrassed; I wouldn't be surprised if more words had to come out of you before your blog could rest and be silent. There are people whose calling and gift is to generate words, and efforts to silence them (kidnaping St. John of the Cross and keeping him in a dungeon, or some of the other great prison writers) or their own efforts to silence themselves (Gerard Manley Hopkins trying to be a good Jesuit and not write poetry, or the writer of Psalm 39) only serves to purify the stream, not stop the fountain.
So your laying your blog pen down may just be temporary - or permanent; there's no telling, especially for the people like me who aren't you and couldn't pretend to have any idea. But the labors you're having to go through in order to get your pen laid down are important to record; you're blazing a trail for other people who may have trouble silencing their public voice.
I like the idea that once you withdrew from your blog you'd continue to write on bread wrappers and stuff them into a drawer, like Emily Dickinson, or compose poems and toss them into the river like Li Po. In any case, know that when the Lord needs your pen, He'll put it back into your hand and tell you to start writing.
John
dearest -
You are no John of the Cross, Emily Dickinson, or Li Po.
Sometimes, you spell words incorrectly; you don't make any sense, and you bewilder me with your immature and vain thoughts.
I even think that you are crazy on occasion...
... and I love you for it all.
Rob :)
Some random replies, Amanda:
1. You write: Every time I think I am stripping away a layer of artifice there's another layer to be discovered, more subtle, sly and sneaky than the last.
It sounds like you are being "exercised," in the way that Woolman used this word.
2. You write: [...Am I] avoiding the real work, and enabling myself to look like a smarty-pants?
You are the only one who can answer this truthfully for yourself, though many of us can accompany you on the journey of reaching deeply within to find the Seed of self-understanding. (I'm guessing you're cursing at me by now. smile)
And here's a reality check, from someone who's been among Friends for more than 10 years: I still have to ask myself similar questions quite often. "Why am I really writing this?" "Why am I really offering this workshop?" "What is my hidden agenda, and can I find a way to be direct about it instead?"
It's made it easier for me to get to the real answers when I'm surrounded by people who want me to be honest rather than wanting me to be polite or sell myself short.
3. From Marianne Williamson (often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela):
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same; as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
...I have to say, though, sometimes it is my very own light that frightens me. And I know that God does not wish for me to be frightened. God wishes that I live up to the measure of Light that I have been given, and as I am able. That's the tricky part: as I am able.
4. I believe God is all-compassionate rather than all-knowing, and this has made all the difference to me: I can trust my timing in how I come to live up to the light I have been given, as long as I am being honest and living within my integrity. Sometimes, I simply am not able to, though, and it has helped to believe that God does not judge me in my slowness and in my doubt. God just waits for me to catch up, and maybe God weeps over my pain and struggle to let go of my "playing small."
Still, it sucks sometimes. Being Quaker doesn't guarantee being perfect, in the secular sense of the word.
5. I'm sorry for the struggle you are going through, because I know it is difficult and uncomfortable at times. I trust you have fFriends close by to witness you as you go through it, and who can hear you into your truth.
I hope you'll take your time and continue to be tender and gentle with yourself. Thanks for trusting us, your readers, with your humanness.
Blessings,
Liz
Well Friend.
I appreciate you doubts. Do not think doubt is the enemy of faith -- they shape it. And your doubts about writing are intrsinsic to the every possibility of a Quaker faith in particular.
What you have to say of blogging applies equally well to vocal minstry. And after kicking around (mostly) liberal unprogrammed meetings for the last 20 odd it seems clear to me that folsk who carry these kinds of concerns into the witing worship have a richer - deeper ministry than those who do not.
an btw -- last night I spoke with one travelling in the ministry -- she expressed doubts about the internet as a source for spiritual community and Quaker work and witness. I cited you blog as a counter-case.
Honestly I didn't know of any other Quaker communities other than the one I grew up in. Wow! Even in New York, it really shocked me I was flipping through these and saw that you chose to be Quaker. Cedar Square in NC was the other place where I knew of a "Quaker" community. I hold alot of the ideals of simplicity just with various changes made for me. Rock on and stay true!
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