Writing Guidelines for the Inspirationally Impaired:
A mechanical pencil squeaks its way across a line in lukewarm lead. Give me a freshly sharpened pencil any day. Intoxicate my brain with the smell of graphite and wood shavings and I will think great thoughts. Or my thoughts, at least, will seem greater because they appear in bold, dark strokes. If I must write in pen, then the ink of inspiration can only be blue-black. And the paper must not blind me with white. Filling college-ruled legal pads of recycled paper with loopy 'g's and dramatically crossed 't's makes me sigh in satisfaction.
I don't know how many times I have set down a three-quarter-filled journal to begin a new one, only because the new one was prettier. I love new beginnings, before the pages grow messy and cluttered.
For every class I teach, I begin with crisp sheets of handwritten lecture notes in the form taught to me by Miss Carolyn Hames, my empowered kiwi Chemistry teacher of the silk sarees and stilettos. She dictated color-coded notes in class. I feel secure when I teach from a page of beautifully organized blue-black notes with the headings in dark green ink. As the course gets repeated, though, I begin to scribble extra notes in the margins. Blue-black pens are not always handy, so I resort to red color pencils and black pens and, heaven forbid, even pink pens when that's all I can find. During class, I find myself continually distracted and disturbed by my circles and arrows delineating extra enlightenments I've received since I first planned the lesson. Every year, I say that I will take the time to sort and redo my notes, but that never actually happens. I never have time to clear out all the extra garbage and clarify the thread of the lesson.
New school years mean new beginnings--lots of them. With a fresh journal and a new set of teaching notes come new students and new friends. Like the Doon Valley sparkling after rain, with every line highlighted against the sky, I sigh with satisfaction at the clarity and the potential. Nothing is messy or hazy. Yet. Soon, both students and friends will begin writing in my soul and I will write in theirs. Some will be faint mechanical markings, while others inspire me instantly with bold, singular statements. Come October, relationships will grow messy. I know this. I will clench my inward fist towards an abrasive colleague. I will offend a student whose heart I did not consider when I spoke. I will forget something important and wound others with my carelessness. And it will seem like there is no time to stop and sort it all out. As with my teaching, I will prefer to simply keep moving and ignore the mess.
Ah, but what if this year, this beginning, could be different? What if I armed myself to write carefully on the lives around me? What if I managed to love my neighbour as myself? What if I pledged to work at untangling the mess and to seek clarity? We love to start over, with journals, with work, with homes, with relationships, but what if we chose to write till the book was full and see what pattern emerged? This requires a patience I'm not sure I possess; a steadfastness, too.
John Donne speaks of this in his Meditation XVII: "...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another."
THe translation he speaks of here is death, the final end. We often encounter the idea of chapters of our lives being written, but we rarely hit upon the idea that we each are chapters of some larger book God is writing. We are all connected to each other in some bigger, deeper story. When I see the people around me as part of myself, as part of a grand pattern we're being made into together, then I am compelled both to know them and to make myself known to them. Even more, I want to see how God is working in them, how he is writing our "scattered leaves" together.
Looking for the bigger story inspires me.
A mechanical pencil squeaks its way across a line in lukewarm lead. Give me a freshly sharpened pencil any day. Intoxicate my brain with the smell of graphite and wood shavings and I will think great thoughts. Or my thoughts, at least, will seem greater because they appear in bold, dark strokes. If I must write in pen, then the ink of inspiration can only be blue-black. And the paper must not blind me with white. Filling college-ruled legal pads of recycled paper with loopy 'g's and dramatically crossed 't's makes me sigh in satisfaction.
I don't know how many times I have set down a three-quarter-filled journal to begin a new one, only because the new one was prettier. I love new beginnings, before the pages grow messy and cluttered.
For every class I teach, I begin with crisp sheets of handwritten lecture notes in the form taught to me by Miss Carolyn Hames, my empowered kiwi Chemistry teacher of the silk sarees and stilettos. She dictated color-coded notes in class. I feel secure when I teach from a page of beautifully organized blue-black notes with the headings in dark green ink. As the course gets repeated, though, I begin to scribble extra notes in the margins. Blue-black pens are not always handy, so I resort to red color pencils and black pens and, heaven forbid, even pink pens when that's all I can find. During class, I find myself continually distracted and disturbed by my circles and arrows delineating extra enlightenments I've received since I first planned the lesson. Every year, I say that I will take the time to sort and redo my notes, but that never actually happens. I never have time to clear out all the extra garbage and clarify the thread of the lesson.
New school years mean new beginnings--lots of them. With a fresh journal and a new set of teaching notes come new students and new friends. Like the Doon Valley sparkling after rain, with every line highlighted against the sky, I sigh with satisfaction at the clarity and the potential. Nothing is messy or hazy. Yet. Soon, both students and friends will begin writing in my soul and I will write in theirs. Some will be faint mechanical markings, while others inspire me instantly with bold, singular statements. Come October, relationships will grow messy. I know this. I will clench my inward fist towards an abrasive colleague. I will offend a student whose heart I did not consider when I spoke. I will forget something important and wound others with my carelessness. And it will seem like there is no time to stop and sort it all out. As with my teaching, I will prefer to simply keep moving and ignore the mess.
Ah, but what if this year, this beginning, could be different? What if I armed myself to write carefully on the lives around me? What if I managed to love my neighbour as myself? What if I pledged to work at untangling the mess and to seek clarity? We love to start over, with journals, with work, with homes, with relationships, but what if we chose to write till the book was full and see what pattern emerged? This requires a patience I'm not sure I possess; a steadfastness, too.
John Donne speaks of this in his Meditation XVII: "...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another."
THe translation he speaks of here is death, the final end. We often encounter the idea of chapters of our lives being written, but we rarely hit upon the idea that we each are chapters of some larger book God is writing. We are all connected to each other in some bigger, deeper story. When I see the people around me as part of myself, as part of a grand pattern we're being made into together, then I am compelled both to know them and to make myself known to them. Even more, I want to see how God is working in them, how he is writing our "scattered leaves" together.
Looking for the bigger story inspires me.
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