Let me begin by saying that I cannot say why “we” write, but why I write, and perhaps people like me. I’ll start with some personal history.
I moved to Boulder, Colorado in August of 1998 and started journaling mostly from necessity. I knew no one in Boulder, and living in an apartment instead of the dorms, making friends was slow going. I had had a couple of writing classes at the University of Central Oklahoma and had loved them. I wasn’t satisfied with my own writing in those early workshops, but in critiquing my classmates’ work, I found that I had an understanding and appreciation for the depth and beauty of poetry. That first season at the foot of the Rockies began years of sometimes furious scribbling in various shaped notebooks, now filled with prayers, dreams and musings. My first semester in Colorado began years of on-again off-again depression, and writing poetry was the one productive activity I could do when the world would turn inside out. With practice I learned to write out of other states and my writing would grow into a form of worship. I now often feel the spirit near me when I write.
In the winter of 2004, I started teaching part-time at an alternative high school. I worked there for two-and-a-half years, mostly covering whatever classes were needed, a semester of geography here, some physical science there. For my final year my wonderful boss, Barbara, let me teach creative writing. I had all summer to worry about it. I was afraid the students
wouldn’t write, would completely refuse. From what I had seen in my and other teachers’ classrooms, these kids in particular hated to write. Let me explain that the majority of our small student body had been sent to us from the district after being expelled from their regular schools. Sometimes these students were ready for college level texts, but more often they would be behind in some or all of their academic areas. We as teachers had to balance classes of students from the entire spectrum, a student who read at a level expected of second graders next to one who could handle Derrida.
This was one of my concerns that summer. Luckily I was much too busy counseling elementary aged kids and adults with developmental disabilities to spend much time worrying. Some beautiful writings came out of those classes. Some of my students found the writing exercises, especially daily journaling, healing and comforting. As often as possible I would take my kids out of the school and we would walk down the tree lined streets of the old Mapleton Hill neighborhood and find a place in the grass in which to sit and contemplate the leaves and the sky and write.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; ?
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language ?
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth, ?
their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)
Last spring I decided not to return in the fall and to look for work out-of-doors for the summer and beyond, wanting to be in the sun and rain and needing a break from being so emotionally involved in my work. The doors opened miraculously, and I found myself repairing irrigation systems for a small sprinkler company out of Boulder. This summer I felt lazy. I stopped running entirely. Somehow going out into sunny neighborhood streets didn’t appeal to me after already having been outside all day. I was equally uninspired in my faith. The long running small group I had started with some friends finally collapsed after dipping below critical mass. Too many friends had moved, and being out of classes, college ministry and a big house with lots of roommates meant that the continual flow of new friendships had ceased. The one way that I found myself experiencing God was on the job, on small ranches and in backyards, in the trees and wind and birds and clouds and morning light. I didn’t think about it much, but experienced great peace from these daily visions. As the season came close to an end I realized that I wasn’t only seeing this beauty in my typical way, that is, in God using these good things to express his love, but I felt like these objects were themselves worshiping their creator. I was just one of a myriad of lovely machines expressing my love to the heavens.
You will go out in joy ?
and be led forth in peace; ?
the mountains and hills ?
will burst into song before you, ?
and all the trees of the field ?
will clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12)
This is when God started dropping some signs into my life. One was James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, at runs fantastic and fantastically boring. Agee’s the author of one of my very favorite novels, A Death in the Family, and the wonderfully gorgeous prose poem “Knoxville: Summer 1915.” He was a reporter for Fortune during the Great Depression and was sent on assignment to find and live with families who were examples of the poorest southern white tenant farmers. Along with photographer Walker Evans, Agee lived with three families for about a month. He did not end up writing the Fortune article, but years later published Famous Men. In the book, Agee, who struggled his whole life with the Christian faith, talks briefly about art and how it is never as good as nature, that objects in nature are always the more beautiful, just as they are. In his definition of “natural objects”, he includes man-made objects not made for art’s sake. He spends a lot of pages describing the families’ houses, which are built (not by the families themselves) out of the cheapest materials without any sense of aesthetic in mind. These houses are then “natural” objects, not unlike, say, anthills, and Agee finds them immensely beautiful. Man-made art objects, he argues, are only as beautiful as natural objects in the fact that they are also natural objects. (I should probably now explain the “boring” comment from the top of this paragraph. Agee spends dozens of pages explaining aspects of the farmers’ lives, such as their houses, in incredible detail. He argues that this is a better use of time and space than storytelling as mere entertainment. He strives to describe things just as they are, as natural objects are naturally beautiful.)
Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship. Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, to help him. Also I have given skill to all the craftsmen to make everything I have commanded you… (Exodus 31:1-6)
I find this all appealing in speaking to my belief that creating beauty is a worthy undertaking in this life. I’ve had an incredible desire lately to create; to write as well as to, hopefully, paint and make music. I’ve also noticed recently an absence in certain desires which I once had and which I’ve used in thinking about future education and career. I’ve thought in the past of being a pastor and/or a counselor. Lately I’ve been much more interested in teaching high-school or college level literature and creative writing, along with spending great amounts of time making art.
In American Christian culture, this is not the highest use of one’s time. One should either work full time in an overtly ministerial position in the states or become an overseas missionary. It has been pointed out that a young person heading off to seminary will have a much easier time soliciting education funds from her parish than a young believer entering film-school in order to make art that glorifies God. I’ve had to let these pressures go, realizing that the callings of Christian culture are not synonymous with following Jesus.
One final hurdle in my thinking about creating is that to live in a literary or academic or art world,
I will have to succumb to all the pressures these spheres possess. Then I found this last gem in the most recent issue of the literary journal Tin House in an interview with graphic novelist Lynda Barry. She says:
I like to keep prices for original art very low, because I think it’s sad that only rich people can afford art, and I don’t believe they use a lot of the art they buy. Also, I HATE GALLERIES! I hate the whole art scene. All of it feels like an intensive care unit to me. And it makes art have to be this THING that feels unnatural instead of it being the MOST natural thing in the world. And then it clicked: it’s all very simple. We are made to create, so why sweat the culture?
Let us create naturally out of the beings we are, created in your image and responding to your beauty with beauty. Let us worship in spirit and in truth and not grow weary. So be it.
