During the course of the summer, the students take part in what we call "collectives" - they get to choose between book-making, writing, photography and music. I had the AMAZING privilege of being one of the leaders in the writing collective this year (along with two of the best brothers a girl could ask for), and we had the most fantastic time. We produced a BOOK by the end of the summer, I kid you not. One day we'll have it in pdf format, and hopefully then I'll be able to share it with you (if all the authors don't mind). BUT here's the thing about me and writing. I love writing. I know it is a deep passion of my heart, and something I'm meant to be pursuing more actively. But because my heart is so serious about it... well, quite honestly I'm scared stiff most of the times I come to write anything. I think perhaps my four years of studying 'The Greats' in English literature gave me a deeper love for it all - but severely intimidated me. How can you produce something when you know it'll never hold its own when compared to Dickens/Shakespeare/Milton/Donne/Henry James/Herbert etc etc etc?! Therein lies the problem... comparison. If I keep comparing my writing to others', I'll never write anything. And the world will be robbed of my unique voice. A friend of mine once told me that if I create something with others in mind - worrying how they'll judge it - then I give them the authority and power to do just that: judge it. If I make it for them, it belongs to them. But if I write just because I LOVE it, and because I MUST write... well then, no one can judge it. It is mine. And my Father's. Because my voice carries His too.
SO.
I am going to share with you two of the free-writes I did this summer. Both are unedited - this is just how they came. And both start out a little waffley because that was just how I had to begin, before I could reign in my brain! And before I throw in any more discaimers:
FEAR
Exigencies. The word on my mind since I read it in
Brennan Manning’s “The Rabbi’s Heartbeat” (which I inevitably end up calling
the RABBIT’S heartbeat...). Exigency. The deep urge, the profound necessity,
the pressing requirement. Do I feel the exigencies of writing? Yes, yes I do.
As I type this, I feel the knot tightening in my stomach. It twists my insides
uncomfortably, and I feel my palms getting sweaty as the silent but deafening
roar erupts from my deepest places. And it is no longer a cry of “Can I
write?”, but the overwhelming demand: “I MUST write.” But this cry goes against
everything I naturally feel – it goes against every fear that enshrouds my mind
and heart – it is a cry placed in me by a much bigger Voice than my own, and
called out of me by a Love stronger than fear and indeed death itself. And yet
the fears wrap around my voice and render it hazy, lost in the mists of
uncertainty and insecurity. I have heard it said that you have only to walk
through the veil of fear to discover that it is just that – a veil. But that
veil appears all too solid, all too impenetrable at times. I fear getting lost
in those mists, not finding my way out into the light. I have been lost in
those mists before.
There is however a question that I find myself
coming up against. It appears as an ominous edifice in the midst of the
swirling shroud, but it is also the solid point I can push my back up against,
so that I can turn and face the mist with greater courage. That question,
lurking solidly in the shadows, is: “Do I really have something worth saying?
Is my Voice worth being heard?” If I answer “No”, I fling myself back into the
marshlands of dead voices, the utter waste of the silence of death. But if I
can find it in myself to stammer out “Yes”, even to only half-heartedly fling
that one word of shining hope out into the haze, it takes on a strength and
bigness of its own, it agrees with the heaven that is found beyond this earthly
miasma, and it becomes for me a beacon, a flare, Florence’s lamp which guides
me out of the rank doubt of my human mind’s sickness.
And all the while, the exigencies of writing press
down on me. But perhaps it is not, as I have viewed it before, a crushing,
overwhelming, perplexing weight. It is rather a yoking to the task at hand. The
Good Master has placed His good and easy and LIGHT yoke on my shoulders. It
keeps me ploughing at the correct furrows, moving in the right direction. That
weight keeps me safe, keeps me centred, keeps me moving. It keeps me.
MY VOICE
“Love is the voice under
all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong
mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than
star...”
e.e. cummings
What is the opposite of fear? I refuse to believe
that love is the opposite of fear – love is far greater than just a
not-something. But perfect love does cast out all fear, because to be perfectly
loved is to be perfectly known and to understand that value doesn’t lie in
performance or doing, but in being. So what IS the opposite of fear? Un-fear?
When fear is removed from me, what is given in its place – what fills the void
that it leaves behind? Or is fear not really something that has filled me, but
something that has oppressed me, weighed down upon me? When I feel fear
leaving, perhaps it is not draining out of a deep pit within me, leaving me
empty. It is instead being unwrapped from me, its tight coils released from
their death-grip around my throat and chest. I breathe again, and I discover
fullness, I discover who I really am under the mask that once enclosed me.
And underneath the confusion that fear brought me?
Peace. That full, nothing-missing, nothing-broken peace. Nothing is wrong,
nothing needs to be fixed, nothing needs to be done, nothing needs to be proven
or won. I am at peace. “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on
the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the
turtledove is heard in our land...” I rest in the full sunlight
of being a daughter, being loved as I am, as I was created, as I have always
been known. And my voice begins to rise up in me, without me even trying. Like
a satisfied kitten oblivious to the purring rumbling in its own chest, I bask
in the delight of my Papa, and my voice hums out of me.
I have always known my voice is strong. I know well
the weight of the sword, the ringing of battle armour, the speaking of light
into dark places. I know what it is to lead battle charges and cripple armies.
But I didn’t understand the handing over of my weapons to hands far stronger
than my own. Silly really, when they were the same hands that first gave them
to me. I have feared the cage of irrelevancy, of inactivity, of silence. A cage?
No, indeed, a CAVE. He wooed me into a cave where I could be hidden from the
battle raging round. I mistook His rest for His silencing. But I gave in to his
taming of me. I have handed myself over, I volunteered. And in rest and quiet
and in the secret cleft of the rock, my voice has been growing. It has been
growing and growing. It is expansive. It is wide. My voice has grown into
His voice, His into mine. My voice like the morning glory vine entwined around
His. My voice grafted into the voice that makes Lebanon skip like a calf, that
thunders upon the waters, that breaks the cedars like twigs. My voice. My
voice. My voice carries light and life and the fullness of the created, the
un-created, the waiting-to-be-spoken forth. My voice. My voice. Creation is
waiting for my voice. My hand in his, my sword in our hand. Standing still, the
breeze on my face, the sun warming the top of my head. We raise our sword...
