My friend Jolin is a pastor and painter in North Carolina. She and a colleague are co-sponsoring an art exhibit titled Spinning the Parables in the fall. They want artists from various genres, particularly under represented folks, to help people think about Jesus' parables in new ways. Seeing as how I am a writer from an under represented group and Jolin likes me, she asked me to write a poem. My first response was panic-- What if I have nothing to say?! God always laughs when I ask that. Still. . . . "Poems either do not succeed," says Mary Oliver, "or they feel as much delivered as created." Amen. Amen and if God doesn't deliver, poets are sunk. Amen and I have this abiding fear that Saul's experience will be repeated in my life.
Saul was king before David came along, and when Saul was king, for most of the time Saul was king, God's spirit rested on Saul and everything was hunky dory. Saul got everything he wanted. Everyone loved him. Life was good. . . until that shepherd boy with a sling shot ruined it all. Who said God doesn't play favorites? God withdrew God's spirit from Saul--Don't ask me why, but he did--and gave it to David. The only time Saul felt any peace after that was when David played the harp for him. Music soothes the savage king.
Writing is an odd thing. I decide what to write about; I choose words. I change my mind and choose other words. My name goes at the end of the poem or essay or story. Good, bad, or somewhere in between, I am responsible for the words on the page. And yet. . . And yet if I think too hard, if it's all a rational decision, if I replace words in a sentence the way a mechanic replaces a muffler, it won't work. If writing doesn't flow from someplace deep within me, it will sound wooden. If God doesn't show up, I'm sunk. I'm afraid one of these days God won't show up.
So the other morning I woke up thinking about Jolin's request, and I started to sit up. Halfway into a sitting position, I noticed my legs were even more spastic than usual: I couldn't put my foot flat on the floor. Talk about panic! What's going on? What if this is permanent? I wondered. And then! And then these words came from out of nowhere:
Your body speaks through the tension in your bones,
And you are as persistent as the widow before a judge
In following its lead.
I love it when God turns the world upside down! I love it when God takes the crappy things in our lives, and uses them to make art--Poetry, paintings, music. Vivid, intense, richly textured paintings from the mire of Van Gogh's depression, Kaethe Kollwitz's arresting charcoal drawings from the horrors of war; clear words in the midst of spasms. . .I love it when God wrests beautiful from ugly!
In case you haven't seen it, here's the poem I sent Jolin:
Power
The world looks at you and says "Weak."
But
Your body speaks through the tension in your bones,
And you are as persistent as the widow before a judge
In following its lead.
How has God wrested beauty from the pain in your life?
Beautiful. Seems to make a case for writing / art-making as an act of faith -- a certain confidence that G-d will show up.
ReplyDeleteBut what happens when she doesn't? What do you do when you feel G-d's spirit has been withdrawn? Makes me feel bad for poor old Saul. Ain't none of us has no guarantee, yet faith demands that we act as though we do. That's a mighty big load of cognitive dissonance, for me.
Rsf, my own experience and belief is that God's spirit is never withdrawn, that when I feel it has been, it's because there's a risk for me in accepting it -- often I'm feeling shame about something and unworthy of mercy. Someone once said, God wants to pour sunshine all over us every day, and we keep diving under rocks. And I'm not saying we're bad to do so, I believe we have to sometimes turn away from God in order to do self-building that's necessary in the long run to be healthy individuals. I think it's both natural and sad that we keep diving under the rocks, and happily we often remember to come out into the sunshine.
Delete"Ain't none of us has no guarantee, yet faith demands that we act as though we do". . . I never thought about that but I like it! I will ponder those words for a long while. Thank you. And I think you're right about the cognitive dissonance, or some kind of dissonance, that creates. As for what we do when She doesn't show up. . .I agree with Alyce that the Spirit is never really withdrawn, but I know what you mean too. There are moments when it doesn't FEEL like She's coming through. I think that's why it's important to learn the CRAFT of our art--So that when it doesn't flow, we can use the skills we've acquired to create something that is at least workable; that will do what we need it to do effectively even if it's not the most beautiful or inspiring thing we've ever written. And often when I've created something that I know is technically ok, I find that if I put it aside and go back to it on another day, my connection to Spirit is stronger and she flows through me again, infusing the wooden structure with life; making the bones live.
DeleteHow has God wrested beauty from the pain in my life? Lots to say.
ReplyDeleteI was raised Swedenborgian, and Swedenborgians believe that God always brings the most possible good out of anything evil. They also believe in an afterlife and that sometimes God ("the Lord") has need of someone in the other life. And in June 1989 when I heard about Tienamen Square, I was surprised to believe, after being an atheist for 13 years, that I still wanted to believe that. Two months earlier, my darling father-in-law, Lloyd Swift, had died of ALS, and I was still in grief. Lloyd was a Quaker, and a member of a worldwide Quaker committee that worshipped with attention to peace in troubled places in the world. He had lived in China and was fluent in Chinese.
And when I heard of the violence at Tienamen Square, I was shocked to find that I wanted to believe that Lloyd had been called to the afterlife in order to help mitigate the forces of violence - and that what happened in the Square would have been far worse if he had not been there.
I believe that God wrests beauty out of pain, to use your lovely expression. Another way to say that is, that suffering has meaning and purpose, that we do not suffer randomly. And that belief is an underlying belief in Shadow Work, and we talk about it openly during a process we do. We do a variety of processes, and this one (called a God-Split) we do with someone who wants something that they've come to believe is "impossible" or "hopeless." We ask the person if they believe in a higher power, and if they do, we bring the presence of their higher power into the room -- we ask them to embody it in the room in some way, have it played by a person or by an object in the room. We ask them to watch the higher power and imagine what it's saying to the situation that's already been embodied in the room – by this time in the process there's usually a critical part of the self present, and usually a reaction to the criticism (for example, a vulnerable part saying "I just want to be loved"), and often a third part that's defending the little one but ineffectually.
And what usually happens is, the person hears a shaming message coming from the higher power. And we ask them if it reminds them of anybody, and it usually turns out to be the message they got from someone they knew, often a family member, and we invite them to consider that they may have enshrined a message from a family member in their "holy of holies" as a way of loving and honoring and staying connected to them. And then we work through any risks involved in bringing the "real" higher power into the scene to offer a blessing.
And we ask the higher power, Do you think that people just randomly suffer, or is there a golden lining in their pain? Does suffering have some purpose? And what purpose might there be that would be big enough to justify all this pain?
And we hear the most amazing meaning and purpose and blessing from the higher power.
This process has an enormous impact on someone life. They've been living with a shaming decree, and since a higher power is the sovereign of the psyche, that decree has been in effect throughout the land. And once that decree is lifted and replaced with a blessing instead, it's amazing the transformation that can happen.
I've done this process a number of times, always with profound impact. The last time I did it, in fall 2011 after my mother's death, I became convinced that lifting a decree from a false god that uses a word like "hopeless" may be the lynchpin beneath depression and possibly beneath bipolar disorder. My mother was bipolar and profoundly depressed during her last years, and once you've got a decree like "hopeless" nothing can be done -- it's pointless to take any kind of action because it's hopeless.
So. That's a lot, isn't it? And I strongly believe that God always seeks to bring mercy out of judgment, and meaning and purpose and beauty out of suffering.
Somehow your comment about your father in law reminds me--I have always been struck by the oddity that I was ordained on the same day as Tiananmen Square--a powerful reminder, I guess, that life is a mixture of blessing and pain.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I believe all suffering has a God-given purpose, but I do believe we can make most suffering meaningful or even redemptive.