Praying about Our Projects

Yesterday afternoon, a colleague took me out for a late lunch.  She wanted to do something to show appreciation for how much I had helped her during the great syllabus project of late September.  She had been in a place with limited Internet access while she helped aging family members.  I did most of the syllabus work for her.

I told her that a simple thank you was enough, but she continued to ask me to let her buy me lunch.  And so, I did.  Sometimes it's good to let people return a favor. 

As we walked to lunch, she asked me what I was working on in terms of my writing.  I told her that I was transforming blog posts into a book of essays that explores how one woman tries to live an authentic life even as the values of one place, like work, conflict with another, like church.  I joked, "It's going to be like Eat, Pray, Love, but with a more solid theological grounding."

My colleague has solid theological grounding herself, although we come from different Christian traditions.  We talked about the need for books that explore the idea of authenticity.  We talked about the need for grounding.  She even prayed over me/with me about the project.

I must confess it was not a typical lunch with colleagues.  But I found it nourishing nonetheless.

She prays in public much more differently than I do, when I remember to pray at all.  She talks to God like God is sitting there eating garlic rolls with us.  She asked God to be my PR agent, to find me the best deal for my book, the one that would let my important words be spread far and wide.

And she prayed for the other books that she knows that I will write.

Our late lunch made me think of all the ways that the world sends us validation.  I worry that I've taken too long with this project.  I think about the inner wisdom that I got 2 years ago, the experience where I heard clearly, "Get that memoir written," not "Go to seminary" (for more on that experience, see this blog post).

I've been feeling a bit of despair because here it is 2 years later, and though I still feel the urgency, I'm not done yet.  I've worried that I've blown it somehow, lost a chance.  It was good to be reminded that there is still hope. 

I have other friends who also function as believing mirrors, as cheerleaders, as people who prod me to go in the direction I should go.  But what was interesting about yesterday is that this colleague did the same thing, but in a different way.  She said, "Have you asked Jesus for what you need?"

Actually, no I haven't--and for much the same reason that I offered when she asked me if I would self-publish.  I am not good at self-promotion.  I am not good at asking for what I need.  I know that God has more important priorities than my writing life.

I also realize the fallacy of these thoughts.  Is my God really so limited?  Surely God can find time for our issues, in addition to the bigger issues of Ebola and war and trafficking and all those other injustices that we heap on each other.

By now, some of you might be saying, "Don't you have a theology blog for these reflections?"  It's interesting to me how I feel strange about discussing the idea of prayer and creativity and God over here at this blog.

At one point, my colleague talked about the prayers that we offer before we start on our work.  I confess that I did not confess that I don't often pray before I start on my writing tasks and other creative work. 

What might happen if I did?

I thought my colleague was returning a favor with a simple lunch together; I didn't realize that I'd get so many blessings in return.

Columbus and Metaphors for a Creative Life

Writing time is short this morning, so let me run a Columbus Day post that I wrote last year.  It's one of my favorite meditations on Columbus.

Today we celebrate the federal holiday of Columbus Day, although October 12 was the actual day of the first sighting of land after almost 2 months at sea. I’m always amazed at what those early explorers accomplished. At Charlestowne Landing (near Charleston, SC), I saw a boat that was a replica of the boat that some of the first English settlers used to get here. It was teeny-tiny. I can't imagine sailing up the coast to the next harbor in it, much less across the Atlantic. Maybe it would have been easier, back before everyone knew how big the Atlantic was.

In our creative lives, we may have to set off on a tiny boat. We might wish we had different resources, but we start with what we have. Sure, it would be nice to attend that MFA program or to have the job that only has a 2-1 teaching load (do those exist at an entry level anymore?). But the good news is that we can make our way across a wide ocean, even if we have less resources than others. All we need is a smidge of time and the resolve and self-discipline that it takes not to waste that time.

Important journeys can be made in teeny-tiny boats. It's better than staring longingly out towards the sea.

We often think that starting the voyage is the biggest hurdle. But once you begin the journey, the hard part may be yet to come. I've often wondered if Columbus and other explorers ever woke up in the middle of the night and said, "What am I doing here? I could have just settled down with my sweetheart, had a few kids, watched the sunset every night while I enjoyed my wine." Of course, back then, a lot of options were closed to people, and that's why they set off for the horizon. No job opportunities in the Old World? Head west! Sweetheart left you for another or died? Head west!

Maybe we need to just set sail, knowing that we're going to be out of sight of land for awhile. Maybe we need to get over our need for safe harbor, for knowing exactly where we're going.
It's easy to feel full of enthusiasm at the beginning of a project. It’s far harder to keep up that enthusiasm when you're in the middle of a vast ocean, with nothing but your instruments and the stars to guide you, with no sense of how far away the land for which you're searching might be.

Maybe we have a manuscript that we feel is good, but no publisher has chosen yet. Maybe we have a batch of poems that seem to go together, but we have no sense of how to assemble the manuscript, while at the same time, we know we need to create 20 more poems. Maybe we have a vision of the kind of job that might support our creative selves, but no idea of how to get to where we want to be from where we are.

I'm guessing that many of us have similar feelings during our creative lives. We start a project full of enthusiasm. Months or years later, our enthusiasm may flag, as we find ourselves still wrestling with the same issues, even if we’ve moved on to other projects. We can take our cue from the great explorers of the 1400s and later. It’s true that we may feel we’re making the same explorations over and over again. But that doesn’t mean we won’t make important discoveries, even if it’s our fifth trip across the Atlantic on a tiny boat.

I keep thinking of the ship's logs and the captain's journals, which Columbus kept obsessively. Perhaps we need to do a bit more journalling/blogging/notetaking/observing. Maybe it’s more calibrating or more focused daydreaming. These tools can be important in our creative lives.

Maybe we need a benefactor. Who might be Queen Isabella for us, as artists and as communities of artists?

The most important lesson we can learn from Columbus is we probably need to know that while we think we're sailing off for India, we might come across a continent that we didn't know existed. Columbus was disappointed with his discovery: no gold, no spices, land that didn’t live up to his expectations. Yet, he started all sorts of revolutions with his discovery. Imagine a life without corn, sweet peppers, tomatoes. Imagine life without chocolate. Of course, if I was looking through the Native American lens, I might say, "Imagine life without smallpox."

Still, the metaphor holds for the creative life. Many of us start off with a vision for where we'd like to go, perhaps even with five and ten year plans. Yet if we're open to some alternate paths, we might find ourselves making intriguing discoveries that we'd never have made, had we stuck religiously to our original plans.

Grief and Gratitude on Columbus Day

Although tomorrow is the federal holiday, today is the real anniversary of Christopher Columbus stumbling across the "new world" as he searched for a shorter trade route to Asia. For most cities, gone are the days when we'd mark this holiday with parades and time off. Those of us who grew up in the 70's and later have likely rethought this holiday.

What marked an exciting opportunity for overcrowded Europeans in the time of Columbus began a time of unspeakable slaughter and loss for the inhabitants of the Americas, many of whom have never recovered or who disappeared completely.

We could also celebrate this day in the name of religious freedom, including the option not to practice any religion.  We could remember that day in 1492 as the beginning of a time of enormous religious expansion, first for the Catholics and later for Protestants, many of whom needed a place to escape religious persecution. We could feel sorrow at the religious persecution of the Natives and of various other minority groups--or we could celebrate the religious diversity and tolerance that somehow survived our best efforts to kill it. 

We could celebrate the ways that various cultures were enriched. Look at the European cuisine before the time of Columbus, and let yourself feel enormous gratitude for the vegetables that came from the Americas. Look at the cultures that existed in the Americas before the Europeans arrived and let yourself marvel at the ways in which technology enables the building of cities.

Or maybe we want to leave humans out of the picture and once again marvel at this amazing planet which is our home, at its diversity of land, water, and weather, at the currents that swirl through the oceans and the air, at the abundance of natural resources just waiting for us to stumble over them on our quest for something different.

Music for Midlife: Bob Seger while Baking

I woke up yesterday morning craving these pumpkin cinnamon rolls, a recipe that I found a few years ago at the Smitten Kitchen site.  But it's clearly not a baked good that one can crave and have emerge from the oven in half an hour.  So, I put off making them until evening.

In the meantime, some CDs I ordered from Amazon came in the day's mail.  So, as I was putting together the dough, my spouse put a greatest hits compilation CD in the player.  I listened to Bob Seger songs that I haven't heard since college.  I was struck by how many of them center around characters who are struggling with the dissatisfactions and dissolutions of midlife.

It's amazing to me that this group was so popular with high school and college kids in my youth.  Of course, in my youth, I never thought I'd identify with these washed-up and out voices in these songs.

So, it was sort of a bittersweet backdrop, hearing those songs.  In so many ways, it was a delight--those songs hold up well, and they take me back to a happyish time.  But those lyrics also led me to make assessment of my own life.  In so many ways, my college self would see me as very successful.  But she would wonder why I hadn't yet published any of the novels that I've written. 

My college self would likely have expected to see my spouse, who began as my college boyfriend, helping make the pumpkin rolls.  It's amazing to me in so many ways that we've been together for decades now--and yet, my younger self would not be able to comprehend how quickly those years zip by. 

But Bob Seger knew--even as a much younger man writing those lyrics, he knew.  It's music full of images of "autumn closing in."  He knew that something as innocuous as the "sound of thunder" can take us back to a very specific time.  He understood the qualities of wistfulness and nostalgia that haunt us.

This morning, it's on to a different nostalgia.  I'm making gingerbread from a recipe from The Silver Palate cookbook.  I remember saving up my precious grad school dollars to afford the book.  I got a discount because my young spouse worked at B. Dalton--remember that bookstore that was in almost every mall in the U.S.?  Remember those sprawling U.S. malls?

Many of those recipes called for ingredients that were quite exotic in those days.  Candied ginger?  Calvedos?  And all those cheeses I'd never heard of?  Now I can find many of the ingredients that once could only be found in the big cities in the regular grocery store.

But I digress.  The gingerbread recipe had simple, easy-to-find ingredients:  molasses, flour, sugar, eggs, spices, vegetable oil, and boiling water.  It seemed fairly healthy as far as desserts went.  And as it bakes, the house fills with the scent of autumn.

We still have summer weather, down here in the southernmost parts of the U.S.  But the pumpkins and the cinnamon brooms have shown up in the produce sections of our grocery stores--a sure sign of the shift of seasons.  In the big stores, the outdoor items have been moved aside for Halloween and Christmas.

I don't do the autumnal baking for all the same reasons I used to do:   to warm up the grad school apartment by having breads in the oven.  But some of the reasons remain:  to note and to celebrate the changing of the seasons.  And listening to the music of my youth fulfills some of the same yearnings.

Strength: of Planks and Persistence

Last night, I got word that my Tuesday morning Spin and Strength class would be cancelled.  On the one hand, I'm sad.  It was my favorite exercise class, the one where time flew, and I was amazed that we were already at the end of class.

It was also the one where I was shocked to discover that my instructor thought of me as strong and fit.  In some ways, I am strong and fit--especially for a 49 year old woman when compared to others in my age group.

But in a gym, I'm always surrounded by people who seem more fit than I am.  Of course, I mean that they are thinner.  Can I really tell how long they can hold a plank position just by looking at them?  Of course not.  Do they take the stairs?  I doubt it.  Do I?  No, but I could.

I remember in one of our early sessions, my instructor said, "I hope you don't mind if I push you to go harder."

I said, "By all means, you should push me.  I tend to be a lazy exerciser."

She rolled her eyes and said, "You are hardly a lazy exerciser."  Wow.  That compliment made my day, the same way my day was made when the same instructor said, "That's a perfect plank position.  Hold it for 15 more seconds."

On Tuesday, which would be our last Tuesday, but I didn't know that then, my instructor said, "A perfect plank position, as usual."  Again, not words I thought I'd ever hear directed to me.

Some times, it's good to get a new instructor and a new perspective.  Now, most of the trainers and instructors at the gym think of me in good terms, I think.  But they've also seen me much heavier.  Perhaps my weight loss and exercise improvement has left them with a higher assessment of me.  But they've also seen me at times when I couldn't hold a plank position for 15 seconds at all, much less after holding it for 30 seconds.

It's also good to remember that I'm often harder on myself than anyone else can be.  Right now, I'm angry with myself for still not being done with my memoir project.  I forget to give myself credit for plugging along, for getting other projects done, for continuing to write at all.  I forget to give myself credit for persistence.

The good thing about the cancellation of the Tuesday Spin and Strength class is that I'll get some writing time back.  Time to finish the current draft of the memoir--I'm almost done--and then on to the final polishing.

Moonrise, Moonset

Wednesday nights are usually my late night at work because once we employed many adjuncts, and most of them had a Wed. night class--I wanted to be available to them.  Now, it's a habit.  My spouse is usually at choir rehearsal, so it's a good night to stay late.

I drove home in the twilight.  I admired the clouds and the rosy colors.  I looked for the moon, last seen at the midpoint of the eclipse, but no luck.  The irrational brain of mine said, "What if the moon has been obscured forever?"

I decided to grade online materials, even though they weren't all submitted yet.  May as well work ahead. 

Although I could theoretically do computer work anywhere--I have a laptop, after all--I usually write in the front bedroom, the guest room, the library, the closet where I keep my clothes and boxes full of memorabilia and writing archives and Christmas decorations.  I write on the student desk left behind by my best friend from high school who later became a housemate.  The window above my desk faces east.

At one point last night, I saw a pearly glow from the east.  The irrational brain of mine said, "Did I work through the night?"

And then I realized that I was seeing the early hours of the moonrise.  Too late to get to the beach, where I bet it was spectacular.

It was still spectacular from my window.  The clouds came and went in huge feathers.  I got to the end of my grading.  I went to the front yard to get a better view.

I spent much of yesterday in love with the wonders of creation, from the moon in the early morning to the autumnal flowers in burgundy and butterscotch colors to the clouds that swirled through each hour to the moon at night.  I found myself with ample supplies of patience, as I helped students solve problems.  I usually enjoy being with colleagues and friends, but yesterday, they seemed even more special to me.

I suspect that much of my good mood came from being up early and having some solitary time to get some writing done. That good mood inspired an attentive air all day, which led to many moments of gratitude.  There's a lesson there.

Wednesday Eclipse Watch and Gratitude List

Eclipse watch 5 a.m.:  so far, no signs of eclipse yet.  We had a much better vantage point in the Spring.  This year, the eclipse will coincide with sunrise.

But what a gorgeous moon!  My backyard neighbor needed coffee, and when I opened the door to take my offering to her, the sight of that moon left me breathless with gratitude for the chance to see it.

What else fills me with gratitude this morning?  Let me list the ways:

--Yesterday, I not only got an autumnal bouquet for the inside of the house, but 2 pots of mums for the outside.  The mums were striking:  burgundy on the outside of the petal, yellow towards the middle.  They were $8.99 a pot, which is about what I spent on flowers for last year's porch decorating project.  I decided to splurge.

--The pots that I got on Memorial Day week-end are flush with flowers too.  I suspect it's their last hurrah as annuals.  But I'll enjoy it now.  I have an arch of summer flowers and one of autumnal blooms.  It makes me happy all out of proportion.

--I got a few packets of poems in the mail yesterday.  Hurrah!

--I've been up several hours.  Some days this fact might have distressed me, but this morning, I've been grateful for solitude and writing time.

--I've been working on a piece for the Living Lutheran site.  It explores the pumpkin and the pumpkin patch as metaphor for God and God's work and God's community.  I've felt delighted by this writing, which I don't always feel these days.  It's good to get that feeling back.

--I woke up feeling slightly guilty about my not-so-nutritious eating yesterday.  But I'm grateful that it's not worse.   Instead of fast food, I ate 2 commercial granola bars.  Instead of a regular meal, I ate more cheese and crackers than advisable.  And bacon, leftover bacon from what my spouse fried up for himself.  It could have been worse.  I did not eat the big Cadbury bar that I bought yesterday.

--And I had 2 very good workouts yesterday, which will mitigate the extra calories somewhat.  I'm feeling grateful for my middle-aged body which can still do so much.  I am stronger than I think.  I had that moment of realization yesterday as two different instructors complimented me on my ability to power through a tough work out.

Eclipse Watch 5:35 a.m.:  the clouds feather across the surface of the moon, obscuring it and beautifying it.  I'm fairly sure there's no signs of the eclipse yet.  It's a great metaphor, but one I've played with before, in this post, which also has a poem.