Edging into Mystery

Jan 27th, 2012 by

Earlier this month, I declared 2012 my year of prayer. This year, I said, I want to pray more often, more deeply, more intentionally.

As I’ve pondered what this might look like, Eugene Peterson pointed me in a surprising direction. In a different book than the one I quoted last time, he writes of his journey as a writer, of what he calls “heuristic writing:”

It was a way of writing that involved a good deal of listening, looking around, getting acquainted with the neighborhood. Not writing what I knew but writing into what I didn’t know, edging into a mystery…

Writing as a way of entering into language and letting language enter into me, words connecting with words and creating what had previously been inarticulate or unnoticed or hidden.

Writing as a way of paying attention.

Writing as an act of prayer.

Yes and yes and yes.

I’ve long known that I write myself back to faith when doubt or fear assails me and that part of the reason I write is to hold on to the moments of my life, so they won’t slip away so quickly. I’d never thought of these things as prayer. Now I’m beginning to.

And I’m beginning to see, too, that even when I’m not writing with pen and paper or pixels on a screen, I am writing in my mind, capturing the present moment for a little longer when I hold it with gratitude or acceptance or pleas for mercy. Or all three simultaneously.

Sometimes, I can even move beyond the writing in my mind, the trying to capture in words the sights and sounds and smells and emotions of the moment, and I can simply be in it, me, here, now.

This, too, is prayer. It is prayer that prays itself, without consciousness and without self-consciousness. Perhaps it is the best kind of prayer, because it is prayer not just with my heart or my mouth or my mind, but with my whole self because I am wholly here, wholly alive, wholly now.

Or is that holy?

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Of Midnight Dangers and Moon Caves

Jan 24th, 2012 by

Two days before we left on our trip, Jack and I had the writing date he’d proposed just before Christmas.

We walked down to the coffee shop where I write on Friday afternoons. I bought two steamed milks, plain for me, with vanilla for him. We sat at my usual table by the window. He pulled out his notebook. I pulled out my laptop.

I wasn’t sure how well this was going to work, honestly. He’s eight. A very active eight. This is the boy who climbs the windows and door frames, who prefers running to walking, especially in the house, and who delights in wrestling, wrangling, and otherwise harassing his siblings. (And no, even his 18-month-old brothers are not exempt: they are regularly subjected to fake punches on the back, arm, or even in the face.) He fidgets with his clothes or his lip when he’s reading to himself. He fidgets with my clothes or his lip when I’m reading to him. He seems all but incapable of sitting still.

So I was skeptical about my getting any work done at all. But I managed to write a whole host of emails and even work on a blog post.

While my fingers flitted over my keyboard, Jack sat quietly across from me. He sat there for more than two hours. Mostly he stared out the window, but he did manage to write almost a whole page.

As we were walking home in the damp dark of a January evening, he took hold of my gloved hand. “That was fun,” he said. “Can we do it again when we get home from Alabama?”

I squeezed his hand. “It was fun, wasn’t it? And of course we can do it again.”

The rest of the way home, we talked about his book, brainstorming possible dangers for John and Sara as they travel to the chamber of mysteries.

Much to my surprise, Jack worked on his book while we were in Alabama, writing part of the scene where John and Sara meet the obligatory sage who points them in the direction of the chamber of mysteries and gives them the obligatory gift for use in their darkest hour. My son has a keen understanding of the conventions of fantasy stories.

But despite the formulaic nature of this story – he is only eight, after all – he has moments of prose that blow me away.

Just after the obligatory gift scene, Jack wrote one of the best chapter endings ever: as the sage sends John and Sara on their way, he warns them, “The midnight dangers await you if you do not reach the moon cave before nightfall.”

When he read that to me, my eyes widened. You see, I started writing stories when I was six. By the time I was eight, I had progressed from “Candyland in Trouble” – a three-page story about the bullied Candlylanders and their quest to run a frizzy-haired giant out of town – to the eight-page “What Rabbits Do at Night.” They play baseball. (Duh. What else would they do?) Luckily, I ran out of steam after four excruciating innings of singles, doubles, triples, and homeruns, and I ended the story before they could play all nine innings. Thank God.

Let’s just say that midnight dangers, moon caves, and nightfall were completely foreign ideas to me. Even now, I’m not sure I would have come up with the first two. No wonder my eyes went wide.

I think for our next writing date, I’m going to pick Jack’s brain, see where he comes up with stuff like that, and if he’s got any more like it. Then I’m going to steal it.

Writer-mama turned word-thief: now there’s a midnight danger.

 

 

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Reach

Jan 20th, 2012 by

Last month, I invited you to consider memorizing the epistle of First John with me this year.

I know this is a stretch, even a reach, for many of you: a whole book of the Bible? (Gulp.) But I’m here to say that if I can do it, anyone can.

Last year my friend Susan made me a booklet with my memory work pasted onto each page. I can’t do that for you, but I have made a template you can download, print, and cut and paste into your own little notebook. We’ll be memorizing no more than four verses each week, and just three most weeks, with a few review/catch-up weeks thrown in for good measure, which means we’ll have all 105 verses of 1 John memorized by mid-October.

If that sounds daunting, it is.

But it’s also completely do-able, one verse at a time.

For those of you who are game, here’s the template. And here’s a cheat sheet to help you with your memory work (okay, so it’s not really a cheat sheet; it’s a helpful hints sheet, but that only alliterates; I wanted to rhyme).

If you’d like to join the fun (and yes, it really is fun…some of the time…), and you haven’t already left a comment or sent me an email, please do so: I’ll be sending out monthly emails to encourage and exhort you to keep up the memory work. And you’ll be holding me accountable to doing the work as well.

Let the reaching begin.

 

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