Indulgence

I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.  (from Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert)

"Indulgent."  That's what Simon Cowell would say about that sentiment and the way it was written.  He uses the term to censure American Idol contestants who choose to sing songs with some great personal meaning, instead of attempting to present something the audience will understand.

I've been re-reading Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's very popular memoir about her own epic spiritual journey, and I suppose you could consider the entire affair a bit self-indulgent.  Really, how many people have the opportunity to spend a year abroad - four months each of pleasure seeking in Italy, spirit seeking in India, and heaven seeking in Indonesia - completely funded (with the stipulation that you'll write a book about the experience) by one's publisher ?

 Gilbert's writing is fun to read (hence the re-read, I guess). She's never pedantic, and in fact has a wicked sense of humor about herself and her journey.  And she definitely has a knack for pulling the reader into her world of the moment.  During the past few days, I've had a definite craving for pasta, and have to bite my tongue to keep from calling out "Ciao!" when I leave the room.

But now I've followed her to the ashram in India, where she's attempting to get her spiritual house in order.  And though our situations couldn't be more different, her spiritual quest strikes its own chord with me.

I wasn't raised in The Church, although I occasionally went to my aunt's little Baptist church, but I was never very fond of the church- going experience.   I always felt a bit like an imposter, because I wanted to buy into the concept of God but somehow couldn't quite get it.  As an adult, I began attending church regularly almost 20 years ago, but I'll confess that the main impetus for my attendance is the sense of community I've developed.   That, and playing music.

I don't find God at church. 

In fact, if I were to say I feel close to God, feel the power of a Divine entity, it would be much more likely to happen standing before a sparkling clear lake, where the sunlight "amuses itself" on the face of the water, sparkling like a kazillion diamonds.  Or walking in the park near my house on a bright summer morning, letting the dogs run free in the valley, a soft breeze rippling our hair and caressing our cheeks.

But like Elizabeth Gilbert, I long to feel that true spiritual connection with God, yes, the one they used to talk about in the Baptist church.  I long for that promised metamorphosis when you "let Jesus come into your heart."

 "I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate," Gilbert writes.  "I don't want to hear it anymore.  I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances.  I just want God.  I want God inside me. " 

"I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water."

Indulgent?  Perhaps.

In the Christian calendar, we're coming upon the season of Lent, the period of time before Christ's betrayal and crucifixion.  The darkest time in the history of Christendom, when the sins of mankind were heaped on Christ's shoulders.  During this period, it's customary (indeed, it's de riguer  for some) Christians  to "give up" something - to make a pertinent sacrifice to remind them of Christ's ultimate sacrifice.   I grew up in a very Catholic neighborhood, and clearly remember my friends having major discussions about what was right and proper to sacrifice for the season.  Naturally there were the jokesters who tried to give up washing dishes or doing homework...of course that didn't fly.  You had to relinquish something you really loved -  if the sacrifice didn't hurt, it didn't count. 

It's all I can do to drag myself to church during Lent.  I dread the focus on doom and gloom, the dirge like hymns whose poetry is dark and despairing.  I hate the refrains about betrayal and death, of pain and suffering.  On Sunday mornings, I want nothing more than to stay in bed drinking coffee and eating some sinfully delicious pastry.

"But then there's Easter!" my friend Millie said to me once, when I complained about the concept of Lent.  "That's the reward for all the sorrow!"

Fooey.  I don't want to be reminded that life is filled with sorrow, and that sometimes only suffering can fully enable us to experience pure joy.  I don't want my face buried in six weeks of sadness, just so I can have the light for one day.

Indulgent? Probably.

But in order to make it through the next six weeks, I think I'll need to indulge myself.

Resurrection

You have to keep your writing on life support, and give it oxygen.   Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint it Black

Write On Wednesday has certainly flat-lined over the past few weeks, hasn't it?  The rest of my life, however, has gone rushing past, reminding me of those scenes from ER when the paramedics come crashing through the doors shouting "GSW to the chest!  He's tachycardic and bleeding out! Get me an amp of epi! STAT!"

Happily, nothing that serious has occurred for me, but in the midst of general life busyness - training a new employee at work, rehearsals for three new musical events, a week's vacation with a friend - the last few Wednesday's seemed to come and go in a flash, and writing on that day was truthfully the farthest thing from my mind.

Just as life sometimes mirrors the chaos of a hospital trauma ward, so does ones artistic practice occasionally wither and languish from neglect.  When that happens to me, I panic a bit, and tend to rush in with haphazard attempts at revival.  These include everything from searching through my "How to Write" library to rummaging around the web looking for new writing prompts.  I go out and buy myself new notebooks and pens.  I download lots of  podcast interviews with writers. I re-read some of my favorite authors.  Basically, I transfuse myself with inspiration from other writers - the famous and the not-so famous.

When I get the pulse going again, it's time to look at prevention.  How to protect myself from suffering this same disease in the future?

Most often, neglecting my writing occurs when I allow daily life to overwhelm me.  For example, Sunday morning while I was unloading the dishwasher, I thought of a novel to write.  Research would be required - lots of it, but that's all right, I love research.  I began thinking about the biographies I would need to read, the historical period I would need to study.  Some of the very books I needed were on my bookshelves, I could get started right away.

But first, there was church, and I had to be there to play duets in the service.  And then I had promised my aunt I would take her grocery shopping that day.  Of course, I really had to work at the score for Sweet Charity, since rehearsals at the community theater were beginning Monday evening.   Sunday drifted by, and Monday too, with an extra day at the office thrown into the mix this week.  Now it's Wednesday, and there's work today, and (not one, but two!) rehearsals this evening. 

Daily life has a way of infecting my writing life with a deadly virus.

"I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes - learning how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again - that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now,"  wrote novelist Anne Tyler, in an essay entitled Still Just Writing.   Perhaps I should put the writer part of me into quarantine occasionally, construct my own version of an isolation unit and admit myself when it's time to start writing.

Perhaps that's what I'm doing "write now," sitting in my study at 6:30 a.m. while the rest of the house still sleeps.

How about you?  Is your writing life healthy these days?  How do you keep your writing life alive?  What are some of the remedies you use to revive it?

How Was Your Weekend?

Usually I don't work on Mondays - at least not in the office.  But today I went in to prepare for the arrival of a new employee tomorrow.  Actually, it's the return of a former employee,  my friend K., who was my alter-ego at work, and will provide a welcome respite for me.  She's been working elsewhere for the past two years, and in that time I've become a little bit more indispensable than I'd like to be. But I digress.

When I'm in the office on Monday's my boss always comes by and asks, "So, how was the weekend?"   I find myself a bit nonplussed by this question...my weekends are either crowded with concerts or sedately empty of activity.  I'm fine with either one, really, but the pleasure I take from such  activities isn't always readily understood.   If I reply that I performed in a concert and then played in church on Sunday morning, and that I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I might get a skeptical raised eyebrow in return.  "Really?  You like doing that sort of thing, then?"

Yes, actually, I do.

Conversely, if I reply that I sat around in my pajamas, read books, did some writing, watched videos while eating pizza and drinking wine, and it was marvelous, I'm sure to get an even more highly raised eyebrow.  "So, you like the quiet life, huh?" 

Yes, actually, I do.

Much as I enjoy spending time with my husband,  my son, or my friends, I'm equally happy with my own self for company.  Perhaps it's the legacy of an only child, this ability to play well alone, recalling the hours when parents were pre-occupied and the only available playmates were imaginary or four-legged (both of which I had in abundance!)  I can happily potter around for hours on my own, and sometimes feel guilty for craving the opportunity to do just that.

As for my original question, I wonder why my boss' inquiry leaves me slightly uncomfortable.  Perhaps my boss is the type of person who loves being on the go, attending parties and social functions, entertaining friends.  Perhaps she'll think less of me if I reveal my tendency to introversion, my rather low-metabolic rate in regard to a social life.   A huge fan of the TV show Sex and the City, perhaps she'd prefer her employees to have a bit more of Carrie's panache and joie de vivre.

Well, I'm afraid that's really  not my style. 

So back to my original question - how was my  weekend? 

 Simply lovely.

How about you?   How was your weekend?

Cafe Writing: Dearest Love...

Do not imagine, because you find these lines in your journal that I have been trespassing. You know I have not - and where else shall I leave a love letter? For I long to write you a love-letter tonight. You are all about me - I seem to breathe you, hear you, feel you in me and of me. What am I doing here? You are away. I have seen you in the train, at the station, driving up, sitting in the lamplight, talking, greeting people, washing your hands… And I am here - in your tent - sitting at your table.  ~Katherine Mansfield (in a letter to John Middleton Murray)

Pick at least three of the following words, and build a piece of writing around them. The form is up to you: poem, scene, flash-fic, essay, or general blog entry. If you want to be really daring, write a love letter, instead.

greeting, hands, imagine, leave, letter, people, train, trespassing, washing

My Dearest Love,

By the time your eyes read these words, I will be on the train, surrounded  by people who mean less than nothing to me -strangers trespassing upon my solitary grief.   

My attempts to imagine life without you are futile, even as this powerful engine speeds me ever closer to that reality.   A new life opens before you, one which can not include me.  Though I accept the inevitability of my sentence, I fear it's reality will be more painful than I can bear.  But better for me to endure this pain than for you to suffer the sorrow that our life together would entail.   For it was I who trespassed upon your life, who crossed the boundary of your home and threatened the peace of your family. 

Do you recall the day we met?  Of course you do - it is etched in your memory as it is in mine.  Your greeting was perfectly polite, yet when you took my hands in yours, you set my soul afire.  From that moment there was no retreat for either of us.

At least there wasn't until today.  This morning I watched you hold your new baby daughter, tiny Emma Grace with her auburn ringlets, her ten perfect fingers and toes.  As the four of us stood before the altar, sun burst through the Rose Window, illuminating the two of you in a perfect mist of light.  Did you notice my fingers quiver as they dipped into the font?  Did you hear those holy words catch in my throat as I uttered them?

"I baptize you..." I started out saying, wanting to continue with "my one true, and holy love, from now until death do us part."  Instead, I gave your daughter her name and consigned her future to God, through the auspices of you and your husband.  

I pray my departure does not sadden your heart overmuch, does not detract one iota of the joy you should now be feeling.  And I pray that our love remains a vibrant and joyful memory in your mind and heart.  Perhaps one day we can meet again, when we are not encumbered by our separate vows.  Whether that day be on earth or in heaven, I look forward to it with great anticipation, and I remain...

~Your Dearest Love

for Cafe Writing, February Prompt Number Three

Happy Valentine's Day

A Map of the World ~Ted Kooser

One of the ancient maps of the world is heart-shaped, carefully drawn and once washed with bright colors, though the colors have faded as you might expect feelings to fade from a fragile old heart, the brown map of a life. But feeling is indelible, and longing infinite, a starburst compass pointing in all the directions two lovers might go, a fresh breeze swelling their sails, the future uncharted, still far from the edge where the sea pours into the stars.

I found this poem quite by accident this morning, in one of those circuitous blog explorations which I couldn't retrace if my life depended upon it.   And I copied it inside my husband's Valentine's Day card,  because I loved so much this last bit...

But feeling is indelible, and longing infinite, a starburst compass pointing in all the directions two lovers might go, a fresh breeze swelling their sails, the future uncharted, still far from the edge where the sea pours into the stars.

We've had 35 Valentine's Days, my husband and I, and in recent years have barely taken notice of  its passing.   Kooser's words here remind me that feelings needn't fade from our "fragile old hearts," that  we still can follow the "starburst compass pointing in all directions," can sail off on a fresh breeze with our future uncharted. 

Here's to opening the map, smoothing out the creases, and setting our faces to the wind.

Happy Valentine's Day :)