Art, blogging, Creativity, Faith, Fall, Fridays with Robynn, Grace, Life, Robynn, Transition, Writing
I find it impossibly difficult to return to writing after summer time. It's so maddening. I finally have the space and the quiet I need to write and ... nothing. Brick walls. Dead ends. The words refuse to come. I have nothing to say. I have nothing more to write about.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but I really don't write much during the summer. Like many I greet every summer with joy at the longer lazy days. Summer in Kansas smells like fresh cut grass and barbecues, sunscreen and chlorine. I enjoy my kids streaming in the front door and heading out the back. The youngest teenager still needs shuttling around and it pleases me to drop her off at the pool or at a friend's house. One would think that with flexible scheduling would come serendipitous wide-open moments to write. However in my experience those moments never seem to materialize. I end up frustrated and greatly peeved at the people and perturbances that seem to conspire to keep me from picking up my proverbial pen! The problem perplexes me every year and then I'm perpetually surprised at my perennial seasonal shock!
The summer is now over. At least here in Kansas it seems that way. University students are pouring back into town and settling in on campus. Our local school district officially welcomed back elementary and secondary school students on Tuesday. The air is cooling off a little at night now. The fall football schedule is published. Summer is over.
I sat down to write yesterday morning. Granted, I did have some technical problems with my aging Macintosh computer, but that didn't fully explain why I had the hardest time writing. Nothing would come. I started several attempts, bits of words, bobs of ideas, but nothing stuck. I couldn't write. I contemplated messaging Marilyn that I'm done. I can no longer write. I really do have nothing to say.
I suppose it's similar to how I felt when we got back from our family vacation on August 10 th. August 11 th I woke up completely overwhelmed. I sat in my chair with my morning cup of coffee and quietly contemplated the day and the daunting list of things to do. The amount of things on that list left me paralyzed. I wasn't sure how to proceed. Lowell joined me on the other side of the room, in his chair, and he enquired after me. I took a deep breath and said, unbeknownst even to myself, "I'm determined to live slowly today." I'm not sure where that bubble of wisdom broke loose from but it rose quietly to the surface in response to my own panic and Lowell's question and it seems to apply to the writing thing too.
More wisdom came today when I finally prayed about my writing woes. I brought my stubborn fingers to the Father; I laid bare my broken word bank to his scrutiny. Any purpose in me that points to writing comes only from him. I'm created to bear the Divine's image to the world...part of how I do that is through my words, my writing. Of course it makes sense to pray about it. And as I did another quiet thought floated to the top, "Enter in Gently, Robynn".
It was balm and bandage. It was consolation and (hopefully) a quiet cure. I will live slowly. I will breath in and out the creative courage that comes from the very Spirit of God. I will enter in gently.
I know the application is broader than returning from a holiday or coming back to writing. We are given many opportunities to live slowly and enter gently. Oftentimes it seems more efficient to rush through our panic, to push past our own obstinacies or hesitations. But I think more often than not, even if the to-do is accomplished, we've only served to muddy the waters and stir up our spirits to greater anxieties. Living slowly and with gentle rhythms works against that frenzy and mysteriously frees us up to be more present, more whole hearted.
There's an old song we used to sing at boarding school. I think the words went something like this: I want to be the pen of a ready writer; and what the Father gives to me I'll bring. I only want to do his will. I only want to glorify my king. I knew it was from a psalm but for the life of me I couldn't remember it well enough to find it. Until today. Psalms 45:1 is a writer's holy mandate and when read gently reads like this (in a modern slightly me-modified version):
My heart bursts its banks,
spilling beauty and goodness.
I pour it out in a poem to the king,
shaping the river into words....slowly and gently!