In October of 1884, Vincent van Gogh, at age 31, wrote the following to his younger brother:
"I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm — but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
"Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all."
I face that paralysis every time I set out to write. During the past year, that blank Word document has taunted me like a giant Philistine warrior.
I have unconsciously come to adopt a pre-writing ritual to free myself from that paralysis: I bury my face in my hands and pray a mash of gibberish mostly along the lines of Please, please. Sometimes I say, hosanna — a Hebrew word that means both "help" and "praise."
Here I am, 119 miles from Los Angeles. A self-imposed writing retreat and meditation center. Mostly because of a dream. And forty-eight hours in, I am superficially connecting to the outer world via the Internet at a Starbucks.
What did Jesus do in his wilderness to escape his rabid thoughts? Perhaps he found a small cottage near his favorite rock. And in that cottage, a frail widow who brewed a mean tea. Perhaps every three days, Jesus took a break from dancing before God to indulge in slow conversation with the widow. A conversation about the mother he missed.
Or about the relentless winds, shaking the palms like maracas. And the mountains, which, he noticed and noticed, contrary to the Psalms, do not bow. "Yes!" the widow must have agreed. "They don't bow!"
And Jesus, in his purified wisdom, must have said, "How still they stand. The mountains — closer to God than the swaying palms, the shaky people. So close to God, they can do nothing but remain frozen in reverence — so as not to miss the tiniest, most negligible movement of God."
And then Jesus would have tipped his hat — should he have had a hat — and he would've strolled back to his wilderness. And perhaps every few hours, he wept. And once a week, perhaps he took a longer nap than usual.
Yesterday, I spent four hours in silence with ten talkative elderly people who spoke a language I understand in spurts when I devote excruciating attention to it.
I had ample time to daydream. I thought to myself what a pastor once said: "Don't turn theology into anthropology."
But that's all the theology I know.
God became human. That's the only story that ever appealed to me. And telling and retelling and fictionalizing and exploring and stretching and drilling in that story in all its true and irreverent evolutions — that's really all I care to write about. Nothing else interests me nearly as much.
A God who crammed himself into a man's body. And then was masochistic (or loving) enough to subject himself to one of the most searing deaths possible.
Whether you accept that story as truth or as myth, you have to admit: that tragedy is undeniably gorgeous. The ultimate tale of unrequited love.
The more viciously I write poetry, the more I realize that in art, nothing is random. Every line, broken with painstaking intention. Every object in every set design, meticulously arranged.
So then if there is a Creator out there — if that unrequited love story is true — then what if nothing is random? And if it is true, and nothing is random, then holy —
— doesn't that change everything? About what it means to be human? What it means to exist? The purpose of the person sitting next to me at this coffee shop! And this coffee shop, also an important prop in an even more important narrative.
Then why — in the name of everything spectacular and holy — are we stumbling forward, groping for our happy hours and weekends with our eyes pinned shut?!
If all that is true — the way they say it is — then shouldn't today MEAN something? Shouldn't it burst with delicious, purposeful details — the parts of the story that will set us up for the climax to come?
Yes. Yes. In short, a very loud 'Yes.'
I am expectant.
