For Safe Keeping
Something Karen at Beyond wrote to me that I think I may need as I follow the star this year….
“The artist that moves towards vocation - whether that be writing,
visual arts, dance, production etc. - practices. Skills must be
acquired and this requires hard work. It is an illlusion that much
magic is involved. There might be talent but like those who choose
athletics, there must be practice. In this way, it is much like the
contemplative motto of “prayer and work” - the two weaving back and
forth to make a life. Or as L’engle says, ‘Inspiration usually comes
during work, rather than before it.’ ”
Amen!
Practice implies engagement. Engagement to go back again when the going gets tough. Engagement to celebrate the victories. Engagement to invite others in–coaches, athletes, specatators. Engagement to allow the practice become the living.
Yesterday I was just lamenting the fact that songwriting actually doesn’t just happen for me in stream-of-conciousness fashion. Isn’t that an absurd expectation?
and when I think about all the work in that creative process that I have no idea how to do, that I would love to do, i feel like becoming an investment banker instead- at least there’s a clear route to that!
not to mention my thesis- which i am supposed to be working on right now. . .
Before we get too carried away with the notion of practice and hard work, let’s not forget the core of this work: love. It must be work we Love, and that this is what draws us to the practice and labour and the occasional slough of despond. It is this that makes the work into prayer, I would say.
Love, to echo JeB, is a function of engagement, relationship, involvement. There are times when i find that scary, especially as my work takes me into people’s lives, sometimes deeply. But that’s the risk, and that’s what makes it worth the candle.
I could practice and work hard, probably, at, say, athletics, but I could never come close to the love i am immersed in while writing. At very best, I would be indifferent, uninvolved, and thereby wasting everyone’s time and energy, especially mine.
To paraphrase Paul of Tarsus, if we practice and work our butts off, yet have not love, we are not worth a bananda republic dictator’s fart.