The Novel

I’ve been working on a novel. There. I’ve admitted it.

This is a very weird thing for me.

I started it years ago…so many that I can’t remember when. It started with a dream, and you know how there was that one novel written some years ago…was it the one that started the Oprah Book Club…where the woman got the whole thing from a dream? Well, anyway, even if I didn’t know about that book that sold millions, I’ve got a thing about stuff that comes from dreams, so I began it back then, and then abandoned it after a good first 30 pages or so, and then went back to it here and there.

The novel is called "The Hamburger Bun Project." The “Bun” is a utopian idea gone bad, the name arising from the look of the domed project where people escaped “the world” by creating their own.

It’s the kind of thing that lets me express all sorts of my spiritual ideas in a different context. I get to explore the question of utopia, if perfection is reachable, if “the world” can only be escaped, and what might happen when escape is taken as a real alternative. There were days, there for a while, when I was having a blast with it. It was just plain fun. It didn’t have to be good. I could worry about that later if it seemed as if it could be good.

My son, who I briefly tried to encourage a collaboration with a year or so ago, read the first 30 pages and compared it to The Catcher in the Rye. Of course, he knows that’s one of my favorite books of all times. I forced it on each of my kids. But I honestly didn’t think he was pulling my chain when he said it. Even so, that was a year ago at least. The flattery didn’t get me going on it. The time, with writing of any kind, has to be right.

But what I found, not in those initial fun days of working on it again, but as it started to bog down a bit, was that I was wondering if it was a worthwhile thing to be doing. Was I escaping? Was I escaping all of my usual self-absorbed questions about spirit and soul and meaning and daily angst? Was this a great thing or an escapade into fantasy? Was I discouraged with my spiritual writing and so turning elsewhere?

At any rate, the “self” questioning came back. It was then that I realized how great it had felt to live without it as I was immersed in that other world of the novel.

Writing can be a way of movement or a way of getting stuck. I’ve noticed that more than a few times. I’d guess most writers have. One day it can fill you with doubt that is crippling, and another day it can liberate you with a feeling just as extreme. The writing books and teachers, even the maniacal Anne Lamott, will tell you to just keep at it. If you haven’t got anything to write, just look out the window and write what you see. Or just make something up.

I’ve had this idea, that felt spiritual as it came and still does, of creating out of nothing. You get, after a while of carrying on with a certain theme, or writing as if to an audience, to feeling like you’ll burst if you don’t break free of writing “for something” or “for someone”…of writing for a reason. Writing always with a starting point. Writing as if you’re driving somewhere with a place to reach.

The blogs have provided a great freedom in that regard and every time I consider turning to the theme of writings of my past, no matter how much they call out to me at times, I pretty much set them aside when it comes to the blogs. People who read A Course of Love will sometimes write me about reading these blogs, of their surprise that I just share my ordinary life. I’m always kind of glad of that, even though, once in a while, I wonder “Why not? What am I avoiding? Am I avoiding something?”

Case in point. I was at a naming ceremony for my friend Lou’s grandchildren yesterday. The man who presided over the ceremony is a pipe carrier. He told a story about his first pipe and how his second one, the one he had with him, had come from an elder who passed it on as he was dying. “You can’t have two pipes,” he said, so he gave his old one to someone in a community without a pipe carrier. He said that the pipe wasn’t his, it was given him to help the people.

I feel that way about my work with A Course of Love even though I call it “my” course often enough. I feel that it was given to me to help the people. It’s just that when I say it, it doesn’t sound the same as when this man leading the ceremony did. People call him, as my friend Lou did. They offer him tobacco. They ask for his help. He lives within an existing culture where he has a place. I don’t.

You might say that no one’s clamoring at my door. Am I needed in all this? There was a message that was needed – I’ve no doubt about that – I do my best to keep it available and if I knew of something “to do” that would bring it to the attention of more people I suppose I might do it. But that hardly seems like spiritual help, and generally, when I get started in that direction something trips me up. I don’t know what it is.

Most of the time I feel fairly confident in the Course’s main message of “being who you are” and feel like that’s what I’m doing as best I can: being who I am and expressing who I am. Funny to think that might be enough, but what if it is? I don’t mean that arrogantly at all, just as one of those really profound spiritual questions/answers all wrapped up in one.

I was gifted with A Course of Love. There’s no other way of seeing that. I’ve passed the gift on to help those it will help. I give talks when I’m invited, things like that. What else is there to do? And I mean that literally. If there’s anyone out there who thinks they’ve got an answer, I’m seriously open to hearing it.

Writing The Given Self gave me a chance to be a bit of a helper and be myself at the same time. There are a dozen or so people who’ve told me I accomplished that feat with it, and that feels pretty good.

I don’t know where "The Hamburger Bun Project" will take me or even if I’ll finish it at this point, but I thought I might as well admit to it. Isn’t that the funniest thing…as if it’s a dirty little secret. I’m writing a novel. How weird.