The knowing becomes real in the making known

I received a copy of The Loft Literary Center’s catalogue in the mail today. The Loft’s mission is to support the artistic development of writers, to foster a writing community, and to build an audience for literature. I don’t know how many areas have literary centers and feel lucky that we do.

The Executive Director, Jocelyn Hale, wrote an opening letter that I really liked. It reminded me of me some years back, (well more than a few…I’m pretty sure I’ve only attended one class at The Loft since the ‘80’s. I was a card-carrying member for more than a few years, though, and still find it a place worth supporting. That I took a class a year or two ago on finding an agent is what got me this catalogue, if not an agent, and it’s probably worth the price of admission even though I can’t say exactly why.) Hale writes:

“I first became a member of the Loft in 1998 and would hover over the catalog conflicted about which class I should take. My emotions were all over the map. I worried that someone would demand a writers’ identification card when I entered the building. I wondered whether I was too advanced. I was sure that I had no talent. I wanted to take all the classes, but felt I had time for none – in fact, if I had any time, shouldn’t I spend it writing? Who was I to write? I should just read a good book. The more time I spent reviewing classes, the more mixed-up I became. Soon the catalog would become dog-eared and filled with sticky notes.”

After enjoying the trip down memory lane that Hale provided, I found myself musing over why I never felt that same confusion of excitement over spiritual offerings that I did over the chance of writing. I wondered if some people do. If they salivate over the catalogues, have visceral reactions to the descriptions of the classes, or feel those same feelings of wondering if they’re too advanced or will be shown to not know anything. I would imagine that sometimes there’s a pull. There’s generally a spiritual event or two each year that I feel a pull toward – as if there’s something there for me – but it’s not quite like with writing.

It may be that I got those “emotions all over the map” feelings over writing classes because I knew that if I was going to join a writing class, I would have to share my writing. I would have to share who I am. I’d have to be vulnerable. I’d have to “put myself out there.”

I still get that confused/excited feeling over writing and all manner of “putting myself out there,” stuff. I still am certain that it’s got a deeply spiritual component to it. I keep attempting to say why, and how it’s needed, mainly because I need it. Like Elizabeth Lesser. She wrote in “Broken Open” about writing an article and then having someone call her to do a workshop based on it. She shared all the feelings she had driving there on the appointed day, and how she wanted to throw up under a tree. I love that stuff. I need it. And I need it spiritually too. I need to hear about those times when an awareness was so painful that vomiting seemed the only way to go. I need people to describe their feelings and to quit trying to teach me things.

I know there are spiritual workshops that cause people to open up too. I haven’t had any desire to go to them. I don’t know why. But I know it doesn’t feel the same at all. Maybe it’s just how I’m made. You don’t ask a Sax player to come play the drums and expect him to come, or at least not to come with the same excitement he’d come with if he was going to be playing his own instrument. A chance to play drums might be fun but it wouldn’t really put you and your instrument, your means of expression, the thing you’re passionate about, the thing that matters to you…on the line. But it’s not exactly that either because it’s not about how much it matters or the passion or the instrument or the expression but more about something in you bursting to get out. That whole – if I don’t write this poem I’ll go insane thing.

These aren’t always the most pleasant feelings in the world, but I wouldn’t want to live without them. There’s some sort of truth and discovery thing that happens from that push or pull to bring what is inside out. It’s there in one of the great Jesus sayings:

“If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.”

And it’s there in The Dialogues of A Course of Love too – all manner of talk about the need to find your voice, come to expression –.

“It is as if through this union, you have learned a great secret that you long to share. But what is it? And how do you share it? How do you convey it? How do you channel it? Through what means can you express it? Can you put it into words, make it into images, tell it in a story? You will feel as if you will burst if you cannot share the union that you touch … How do you let it pass through you to the world? … You must express the unknown that you have touched, experienced, sensed, or felt with such intimacy that it is known to you because the knowing becomes real in the making known.”

It is as if, in following that pull, that internal urge or yearning, you’re finding the voice of God in you.