This journey I am on is wrapped up in writing, in learning to be a mother and a child at the same time, in trusting and in not fearing, in releasing myself to pain, in dropping down my walls of self-protection.
While chatting with a favorite friend of mine, I was reminded of one of my favorite books, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeleine L’Engle. I realized I have read this book each summer for the past 3 years. I started reading it again today since I hate to break tradition!
When I read this book, my holy imagination ignites; my heart burns within me. Stories spring up like tender new blades of grass in my mind, and I suddenly feel braver than usual. Each time I find things that are new to me although I’ve read them before. I am reading through the newest version of myself, the me who’s had a few more layers peeled back since the last time I read, the me who has grown a few more inches and understands differently.
This time, I am reading through the lens of a woman who has been a mother 16 years, but has only recently been convinced she never really learned to be a child. I hardly know how to play, and I have trouble resting. These are hallmarks of childhood: play and rest.
And then there is the issue of trust. Children trust. If only we had the “faith of a child.” And I am now parenting a child whose faith and trust have so been violated that he cannot trust even trustworthy people. But I am finding that I am like him in this. I have difficulty trusting. I need to learn to trust before I can teach him to do it.
I have never connected this to my creativity and my writing. I have longed to create. I love to dance, sew, draw, paint, play and sing music, knit….but most of all, write. And deeper than that, write STORIES. I have written articles, reviews, blog posts, research papers, even poems. I have filled journals, but I freeze when I come to write the stories that fill my mind.
And then, today, I read this from Madeleine:
The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort toward wholeness.
There is much that the artist must trust. He must trust himself. He must trust his work. He must open himself to revelation, and that is an act of trust. The artist must never lose the trust of the child for the parent….Jesus told us to call the Lord and Creator of us all Abba….the small child’s name for Father.
But how can we trust an Abba who has let the world come to all the grief of the past centuries? Who has given us the terrible gift of free willl with which we seem to be determined to destroy oursellves?
We trust the one we call Abba as a child does, knowing that what seems unreasonable now will be seen to have reason later. We trust as Lady Julian of Norwich trusted, knowing that despite all the pain and horror of the world, ultimately God’s loving purpose will be fulfilled and ‘all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’
And this all-wellness underlies true art (Christian art) in all disciplines, an all-wellness that does not come to us because we are clever or virtuous, but which is a gift of grace.
It is all so ironic, so poetically just. I’ve put up walls to protect myself and those very walls are the ones keeping me from what I really want. I really want to write. I really want to stop being anxious and afraid. I really want to parent in freedom without resentment or control. I really want to walk on water.
The answer to it all: Abba.
Brennan Manning advocates a simple but life-changing solution. He says to sit quietly and breathe in the word “Abba” and breathe out the words “I belong to you.” He says to do it for a month of mornings and see if it doesn’t change everything. I heard him say this in chapel at JBU over 20 years ago. I don’t know why I didn’t do it, except maybe it has taken me all this time to believe I really needed it.
I’m starting today.
And if you think this is something you need, too, this prayer, here’s a great little something to get us started.
Number My Days Aright 