I had such a lovely afternoon today chatting with another mother. Our children played together while we talked,over delicious iced water, about our families, migrant issues, refugees and childhood memories . L is two years younger than I am, and earned simultaneous degrees in law and chemistry ,  did education work with Aboriginal peoples,  relief work in Nepal and competed in  ballroom dancing competitions.

And so, we started talking about the things we’d wanted to do in our youth, and how we’d never have imagined ourselves doing what we are doing now- being home with the children, working a little, and living lives so vastly different from what we’d expected.

And I was reminded of  a glorious poem by this woman poet called Linda Pastan: “I Married You”, where at first the reader is led to think that the poet will end with a complaint or lament over an unhappy marriage.

“I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity—
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.”

The surprise comes at the end, when she writes:

“How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.”

As we exchanged notes, L and I laughed over our youthful expectations. We laughed out of a sense of surprise, that we could say with all honesty-  that we have been happy, and that “it has been very good”.   What a shining afternoon it was.

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When I started taking up writing as a calling seriously, I looked at the situation I was in -children, family- and told myself that if I ever had to choose between doing what I love (writing) , and these iridiscent years with our young ones,  I won’t need two seconds to know which one I’d drop.  God knows, it’s not because I love writing or studying any less; but because I love my children and family beyond comparison.

I also told God, that if this was really something He was leading me into, and not some self-delusional feelings I had about myself, He’d have to enable me to work(write) in the midst of our situation.  I can’t afford weekly or even monthly retreats so that I can write, or sign up for courses- not for this season anyway. No.  God would have to enable me to find the creative spaces here, where I am- in the grease and grime of cooking, cleaning, caring, forgiving and loving.

And, I also believe, that we , as  mothers-daughters-wives, will not be diminished by the responsibilities and homeliness that we bear.  And that growing old- something I welcome with open arms- will not reduce who we are. Growing old can  enlarge our views, deepen our faith, sharpen our understanding of what it means to live, play, work and pray- if we let it.   And so, my writing, I believe , will be enriched by all this- the mess, the turning away and turning back, the struggling with fatigue, tempers, character, laundry and faith.

But the story of Abraham stretched far back beyond that moment on the mountain, back to Ur, back to that embarassing sojourn into Egypt, back to his refusal of the King of Sodom’s gifts, back to the night when God commanded him to count the number of stars in the  sky and promised him descendants as numerous as the night could hold;back to the covenant-making command marked by circumcision; back to the afternoon on the plains of Mamre when three visitors arrived and fellowshipped in his tent; back to Sarah laughing and then, conceiving Isaac though her womb should have been dry and dead; back to Beersheba when Abraham planted a grove and called on the “name of the Lord, the everlasting God”.  Abraham’s decision to trust God-that early morning as he saddled his ass, commanded his men and young Isaac to heave the wood onto the beasts-was based on those long, painful and wondrous years of walking with God.

As Paul put it in his letter to the Romans (italics, mine) , “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief ( Abraham recalls the moment in his journey when God gave him the promise) ; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform, And therefore it was imputed him for righteousness.”

And this, I think, is faith- that long days’ walking with God,  so that when the moment of testing comes, we act on faith- not a “leap” into the dark, into some unknown territory- but a climb into new terrain, with the same Person who has walked with you till then, and has held you whole through pits, vipers and enemies stronger than you.

Not long ago, a writer came up to me and fervently said that experience was necessary in order to write well.  By experience, she meant traveling  and seeing places, interviewing people and spending days among communities whose lives are different from ours.  I look at the homeliness of my existence and wonder if this is a death sentence on my work as a writer.

My foray into writing began with the usual flippant tales of princesses, princes (groan), magicians and animals that could talk. I must have been nine or ten.  And then there were those angst-filled (and wonder-splattered) teen journals- books and books of them.  I’ve written for as a long as I remember, even when there was nothing worth much to write about.  Thus, to hear that my writing would be somehow stagnated by my inability to travel, and explore exciting places and cultures – all of which I would love to do, given the time and money- was discouraging, to put it mildly.

And so, when I chanced upon this quote, I was overjoyed!

“I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”

That came from Eudora Welty, and I think she expressed for me, the essence of what I believe- that writing stems from seeing, and daring to see and hear in ways that may seem dull and painful.  This , for some reason other, recalls to mind what  Kierkegaard’s critics level at him, which was  that he made Christianity absurd and paradoxical.  Conversion is a “leap of faith”,  writes K as he argues a for a higher sphere of existence which requires a suspension of the ethical.  Genesis 22 becomes the backdrop for his arguments and Abraham’s decision comes with “fear and trembling”,  for on what rational grounds can he justify his action to Isaac, to the waiting Sarah at home,  to those under his ‘care’? And so, says Kierkgaard, Abraham takes a stand and risks everything for his faith that it is indeed God who has spoken to him, and not the distortions of the sirocco.

So it is when one writes.  You throw yourself into the story or poem swimming about you, and you push away the yelling of those inner editors all coming at you from different directions, and you plunge into the silence of the form taking shape before you- believing that you have heard something : the words to a song, a giggle, a footfall- and purse it, suspending the obvious flotation devices of geography, culture and space.  I believe that is what Eudora W meant by “serious daring”. And why my  friend was mistaken. No amount of exposure can do things to to you if it remains on the outside.

I don’t mean that journalism is impersonal; only that the journalist-commentator asserts her presence in the write-up, therefor posing this distance between the reader, commentator/reporter and the report or story.   And it is precisely this- the artifice of distance- that the writer of poetry or fiction, the makers of metaphors, try to diminish.

I wish I could say that I am reading Kierkegaard firsthand. What I have on my table is Duncan’s Soren Kierkegaard from our church library.  But it will suffice for now, until my mind is clearer and I am able to sit for hours in a chair and sink myself into the words on the page.

We also read Psalm 90, a psalm that Moses wrote and probably, sang, in the last years of his life. This man never had a real home from the time he was placed in that basket by the reeds, to those many years of dust and wind in the wilderness with the hive of muttering former slaves hanging on to him all the time.  Even though that was God’s will for him, it must have been pretty hard to swallow.  Wandering about the wilderness among the rocks and wily animals, watched by idolatrous nations.

So when he declares that God is “our dwelling place throughout all generations”,  he expressed, I think, the deepest desire of his being- and the deepest longing of the people he was leading: a longing for home.  By affirming that God was their home- that one permanent place and presence- in a landscape and existence that was ever shifting,  Moses ‘ words reminds us to look at the eternal, at that which lasts, instead of the temporal.

What a hefty reminder for the beginning of the year. I pray we will keep our eyes on treasures in heaven, and make wise choices that count for eternity.

As I get ready for my weekly housecleaning routine, my heart is filled with thanks for good friends .  Lately, I’ve come to realize an obvious truth: the company of a  real friend floods an entire room with treasures, adventures and words of life. Who needs a crowd of hangers-on when you’ve got these gems for the road?

Frost described this very well :

A TIME TO TALK

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall

The point is that I haven’t done much writing. Perhaps I haven’t done any for the past 3,4…5 days? So much for getting up at 5 am to write.

And tonight I will be spending the night with my husband watching some Angelina Jolie action flick called SALT. This entry therefore is an attempt to get back into some kind of writing momentum. Hmm. Hmmmm.

I have a question. How does one go about writing Christianly? Should one go about writing Christianly and what does that mean?

I did a review lately on Gene Veith’s “Reading Between the Lines”.  He wrote that good Christian writing should reflect high aesthetic standards as well as sound biblical moral truths.  That sounds simple enough. But what if that kind of writing isn’t marketable ? That’s hard –going for those who write for a living.

A look at the bestsellers in our Christian bookstores tells us that what people want is something accessible (linguistically and intellectually) and relevant to their daily lives. We also want quick-bites of advice so we can scan through the lesson for the day and then go out there and do it; after all, didn’t James tell us to be doers and not just hearers, we hum to ourselves.

But that’s like saying, here, let me hammer that nail into the wall, and then you miss, not the nail, but the entire wall , because you have been gazing at the nail in  your hand and forgotten about why it is there in the first place.  In abbreviated form,  we’ve missed the big picture. When our sole pre occupation is with “getting it done right”- sticking to 1 hour devotions, attending prayer meetings,  following  steps 1- 89 of the “how-to-grow” manual-we lose sight of what God has called us to be – that is to simply BE who we are before Him.  We forget that the problem with the nail and the wall was that that we forgot the reference point: whose we are.  And when we remember whose we are, we recall that there’s no way we can make it on our own in the many, many years ahead, then we give ourselves up and surrender to His call .And we are called to lay down our frantic anxieties and rest. To put aside our harried  prayer requests and listen. To stop giving excuses for  sin and beg for forgiveness. To quit trying to put words to the song in our  heads and just worship.

Because of this, good Christian writing is first of all, an invitation to come. Come and fellowship.  Come and rest. Come and put your case before the Lord. Come and receive.  Come and see the cross and Jesus hanging there. Come and worship at the empty tomb.

Good writers write from who they are, not from who or what they are trying to be. The parable replaces the didactic moral sermon. The metaphor replaces the list of instructions.  If I am a Christian who follows the Lord,  my convictions will be reflected in what I write. Is a writer’s work any more Christian when she cites Scriptures and follows the formulaic “before/after conversion ” plot ? In that same vein, is a writer’s work any less Christian when these words- in black and white print- are absent from her book?

I suppose parallels can be drawn from the Christian music industry. Is a piece from Hillsongs’ any more sacred than Bach’s wordless compositions? Or Mendelssohn’s ? We know that both composers did not write for a specifically Christian audience, but see how the strains of their beautiful music have lasted through the years and proven themselves to be classics. Hillsongs..well…

Goodness. This sounds as if I worry about writing marketable books. That shouldn’t be the concern of a Christian writer, or should it? If it is a question of accessibility, should I then write material that everyone can relate to ? If so, then my role as a writer is merely to reflect their preoccupations, not to challenge the parameters of thinking, beliefs and  ortho-praxis. That doesn’t seem to be worth pursuing though. Neither does it seem biblical.

But a work must also communicate. As Moses and Jeremiah’s did. As John’s on Patmos when he gave us Revelations, which when you come to think of it, isn’t an easy book to understand. How can a work communicate without pandering to the hungry likes and dislikes of the consumer-reader? If I see myself, the writer, as a merchant, then my sole preoccupation is that my product had better be marketable to the consumers. But if I see my role of the writer as a prophet- lofty though this may sound- then, I am freed from the trappings of this capitalistic web. Well, a lot freer.

The Christian writer-prophet views writing as a vocation- a medium- through which God’s word is given to the people. Jeremiah used words, but not in the way that technology uses words to transmit information. The prophets used  metaphors to convey God’s message to His people. That makes it pretty tricky because metaphors both limit and widen  interpretations.

Metaphor also invites listeners and readers to reflect and to participate in-borrowing from Rosenblatt-”meaning-making”:  What does that mean? What else could it mean to me, to the other person there, to the world? Metaphor is at the heart of the narrative-story.

As a writer, then I seek to communicate God’s truth to a broken world through the metaphor- the art of writing.  The Christian writer’s  role is not to transmit – like a  recorder-commands, instructions and information.  The Christian writer’s vocation is to show God’s truths through variations of shade and light, beauty and the grotesque, sound and silence, and to be a voice in the wilderness that calls out, “Prepare ye the Way of the Lord”.

Prayers like gravel

flung  at the sky’s

window, hoping to attract

the loved one’s

attention. But without

visible plaits to let

down for the believer

to climb up,

to what purpose open

that casement?

I would have refrained long since

But that peering once

Through my locked fingers

I thought that I detected

the movement of a curtain.

I think I would like to spend the next few months  not running around and being quiet. In fact, I sense the call of the wild within (and without, thanks to our mongrel pooch )to return to the writing life – not that I had much of one, but, sigh, one can be inventive.

Incidentally, I found this portion of a lengthy article entitled “The best advice for writers?” , quite amusing. It should make your dinner in your contented tummy do acrobatic tricks of sorts:
“Once a commitment to writing is made it can be a long time before a person starts writing anything of quality and, as a consequence, young writers often spend years escaping into other people’s fiction in lieu of writing themselves. Then, magically, they might develop a talent for expressing their ideas in language; their ideas might not be any good, but the practice of constructing sentences around those ideas becomes far less painful. At this point, a writer might start writing more and more each day, and reading a little less.”

Painful is THE word to describe my efforts at writing – book reviews, movie reviews, THIS blog- for the past few years. I suppose this is what they call “writers’  block”.  Or “writers’ edifice” in my case.

For instance, at this very moment I am supposed to finish a book review of a wonderful book, and send it to my editor before the end of next week, and here I am – here, doing this, and not focusing on what I should be doing. In short, I am distracted. In approximately 1 hour and 27 minutes , my whole lot of happiness will come chugging home joyfully in the car, thinking that mom has completed her work and will be free to enjoy the week end with her beloveds.

I think I just reminded myself to stay on task. Well, read the rest of the advice to writers here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/02/best-advice-writers-read#start-of-comments

Ta. da.

A sheaf of wind. The Waterhorse Suite. Children’s voices playing. Quiet.

I live for such days!!

We’re done with the pre-Christmas flurry of carolling, gatherings, performances and gifts. Is Christmas ever complete without these? I suppose so. Several Christmases back, all we could manage were home-made gifts for each other and a Christmas tree the size of an upturned shoe-box. And snippets of carols from here and there.
It was a very quiet Christmas at home then.

This year was another thing altogether. It’s interesting how the same tradition, celebrated differently at different times, can be as profoundly meaningful. This year, we’ve been carolling -twice- and gone for two parties, attended a ballet performance (in which Dd8 danced) , drank endless rounds of non-alcoholic beverages at two mini-school reunions and picnicked at a park with a handful of little kids and their moms. We’ve not had much time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas, I’m afraid, or rather, I’ve not spent the Advent season guiding my kids in daily slotted meditative thoughts of why we celebrate Christmas.
Should I feel guilty? I do, a little. However, I wouldn’t have done it differently though. So have I become shallow and callous in my treatment of Christmas?

I’d like to think that the frenzied rounds of meeting various people who have affected my life at various stages, have been good for my family. It’s as if to say, ” Look, here are my friends and people I’ve met along the way. Sure, we’ve disagreed and made up, left for faraway shores and reunited, bumped into each other here and there. Here they are. Isn’t it wonderful how diverse God has made us. What do you think?” Laughter. Belch, belch, sing, dance- “Hark the Herald angels sing”.

Now we’re getting ready to go home to see the folks. Dad-in-law all alone in his house with his orchard of cili-padi, curry leaves and lime plants. Grandaunts all alone in their once-was-homes with their tv sets and blue-red plastic stringed lazy-chairs. Mom and dad growing old with brother who’s not little any more. All that is Christmas.

We treat the remembering of God’s Word made flesh callously when we ascribe it the religious paegentry of self-righteous pious works be it grand shows of good deeds, mega-productions to “save souls” and the closetting of ourselves from those closest to us. If we forget those whose love we have received, whose lives moved us to try to be better people, then, we have forgotten how He gave up the crowd for the individual- Peter’s sick mother, the woman with the alabaster jar, the lady by the well, the children impatient to sit on his lap. We have forgotten how quietly He came.

And so, we are going home. Blessed Christmas everyone.