Deep Hunger, Deep Joy

From October 2004

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On days when I’m stumped for words, if I sit quietly, waiting, invariably words arrive–just not the ones I was hoping for. Today, trying to push my little screenplay along, I kept getting sideswiped by thoughts of meaning and purpose, as if someone was at my shoulder prodding me to look again, look again.

Here’s the Frederick Buechner quote that’s been dogging me lately (to say that I’d been brooooding over it wouldn’t be true, but it’s been pesky, showing up randomly several times a week):

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

Today, the gladness. Tomorrow, the deep hunger.

Listen to this, a snatch of sermon from the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon:

“Bethink you, beloved, of his character, and surely he must have known the joy of being good; for there is a deep gladness in holiness, a blessed peacefulness in righteousness. The holiness of angels is their happiness, and although to a large degree the Savior laid his peace aside, yet there is a rest of soul from which virtue cannot separate. Distractions of conscience he never knew, disturbance of mind, on account of sin he did not feel on his own account, although as our substitute he was made sin for us. He suffered. Mark, I am not for a moment detracting from his sufferings, high mountains of grief I see; the eagle’s wing cannot reach their summit, nor foot of angel climb their brows; but lo, I see leaping streams of pleasure running adown the rugged steeps, and amid the hollows of the desolate hills I gaze upon deep lakes of joy unfathomable by mortal line.”

I write, act, direct, and teach not because they are pleasurable, but because it is there that I first discovered, and continue to touch, the deep joy Buechner is referring to. It is very close to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow.

“This is what we mean by optimal experience…It is what a painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a magnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape in front of the astonished creator.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

This doesn’t imply that we creators do so just for the fun of it, for the sheer pleasure of it. Csikszentmihalyi says these are not the moments of ease and fun, but the moments when “a person’s body or mind is stretched to the limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

Buechner’s notion is that God has supplied us with the psychic energy and inclination to do the very work he is calling us to, revealing our truest nature even as he pour his life through us to accomplish his goals. (That begs the question of denial, but it’s the false impulse we must deny, not the true.) Even as God uses us to meet the needs of those he loves and is calling to himself, he is at the same time opening our own hearts to see and live out the essence of being he envisioned when he formed us.

Don’t ignore the deep joy…

Breaking the Silence

 From October 2004

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In a conversation this morning with a writer-to-be new friend of mine, he wondered why he should write, why I write, why any of us should “break the silence of the universe.” Why does this need to be told, he wondered, introducing me to several of his stories, each full of worthy characters and themes. He was responding in some degree to my oft-quoted Annie Dillard-ism that nobody really cares if you write or not, that the universe will get along nicely with or without the tome you’re currently working on.

I wish I could report that I gave him a basketful of upbeat reasons to rush home and dash out his narratives, but the truth is I didn’t. What are the reasons? It’s hard to say. An idea teases us, and we launch into as many wherefores as we can stand, from the idealistic (I’m changing the culture!) to the pragmatic (I’m buying a house!) to the prideful (I’m winning an Oscar!) to the religious (I’m being called!). But in the end, who can say why we stir, why we drag over to the computer, type out a word or two, hoping to get to the end of the sentence, the paragraph–the novel, for heaven’s sake? The reasons to tear into the story may be legion, but the only one that really matters is the one that gets our fannies into the chair to actually put the words down.

I find that from day to day, that one reason changes. Sometimes it’s my family, the needs they have, both current and future. Sometimes it’s a note from an obscure reader of Leaving Ruin (“Thank you for investing your heart and soul in your writing. Your labor of love has been a word of grace and hope to me.” — got that one a couple of weeks ago…). Other times it’s a looming deadline and the promise of a paycheck. Every once in a while, it’s sheer grace, some bit of prose showing up like a perfect fall day, asking no more of me than to simply catch it as it goes by.

And then there are those days, like the last couple, when no reason seems quite compelling enough, and I drag my backside to the chair (why do I have trouble joining in the current, constant use of the word “butt”?), and nothing really happens. I click here and there, and hours pass, and I slink away from my job, having done nothing but spit out some bleak words that are far more reflective of my mood that the state of things (as I am fond of saying).

But in the end, the silence of the universe is worth breaking. Is there anything as loud as the frank “thereness” of it all? Jesus said if the children of Israel stopped praising him, the rocks would cry out. And if the rocks (not to mention the mountains and seas) can’t keep quiet, why should we?

Back to the tomes…