Stalking Grace
Sitting down to write again after an absence of more than two years feels like sneaking out at night to meet a bad boy boyfriend. I want to do it but I’m not sure I can stay in charge of whatever comes up. I know he’s not good for me or I’d meet him in the daytime. At home. But, I’m half-way down the drainpipe and he’s already got the engine gunning so I might as well admit I’d going to do this.
The respite from writing was involuntary. I did not do the work, so it didn’t get done. There are writers who believe they can be forced to write. A coach, a spouse, a friend, a publisher will cudgel them until they submit to the terrors of the blank page. Not so. Long ago when I churned out political speeches, I knew that the deadline was implacable. Consequences were swift and reliable for those who didn’t meet speaking deadlines. Leaving a public figure without the ammunition to charm and persuade is upsetting for both the writer and the hopeful candidate. But the consequences are materially different: the writer gets fired and the public’s hero goes on to find another wordsmith. Even with the best speeches written by, maybe, Churchill or Desmond Tutu, the similarity to the words put on paper and the speech actually given may be remote at best. Today we call that going off-script. Media talking heads welcome these forays into extemporaneous outbursts, but I’m less convinced that those who are off-script much of the time should talk at all. I don’t have to fill a 24-hour news cycle, so I’m not judging. My audio sound buttons work fine, and I can turn off the noise made by the scripted and unscripted voices that shout at my world.
My job is getting these words on paper and then hoping to hold your attention through an idea I think is worth exploring. That’s hard enough, and up to now, apparently, not happening at all. So, let me skip the parts where I digress into something completely unrelated to this book. Digressing is another way not to write; to produce words without purpose, and stories without focus.
I have some stories to tell. I’m a big believer in stories because without our own stories there is nothing but another person’s noise. Stories need to mean something. They must resonate first with the story teller and then with the one who receives the message. I like to think that a good story calls us to collect the pieces of ourselves that are seeking direction. If my story finds a place in your ongoing experiment with the universe, then I have made something that wasn’t there before. It may be true that there are no original ideas, that the sweat of creation is just mist over a story lying dormant, waiting to be fed and to rise again. I take an easier line on this thought. I write my own words, perhaps not new to you, in the hopes they be shaken with the old meanings into extraordinary patterns that grab your attention.
Writers maintain that a day spent coaxing words into order and concepts is a pristine, creative impulse never done in quite the same way twice. This is really true if you consider that there are at least a million way to express every thought that convinces, every idea that takes hold and spins a new pathway. Mine might be the one that makes sense to you. And for that I am astonished and grateful. Thank God something makes sense to you that didn’t before I collected just those words in just that way. That’s what keeps me coming back to my stories; you might be looking for a way in, or a way out, of something that confounds and confuses. I don’t claim to have any wisdom beyond the ramblings of my own well-travelled life. Along the way I’ve learned some things and so have you. Maybe you know that our separateness craves a buddy with a similar perspective on something, anything. It is difficult to go it alone, hoping that the unique being continues to thrive with solo solutions. I couldn't show up to write if I thought someone said it all before and probably better than I am doing now.
These days I think a lot about grace. I can’t define grace. When I catch a glimpse of a ghost rounding the corner, just before I can grab hold of his sleeve, I wonder if I belong with him. There’s the great blue heron’s vertical takeoff from water to sky. When I can’t breathe because the air is full of pain and disappointment, a second passes and then there’s the light. These things that appear and glide away might each be a piece of the grace puzzle. I’m still learning. Life appears even if I’m not looking for it. Especially when I’m not looking for it. I’d like to be faced with things I thought I would never see: truth in the musings of the cynics to who have taken our power, wonder at lessons learned from really big mistakes, joy at the loss of a love I couldn’t live without, laughter at my own awkwardness and misdirection. Maybe I have to sneak up on grace? Find it where I wasn’t looking. Hear it in the voices I’ve ignored to still the noise and the regret. We’ll see.
