Writing life

Is That Me On Your Universe’s Big Screen?

January 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

Experienced creators know that they are not fully in control of their creations. The general consensus I hear from novelists is that their characters are real, and the writer’s job is to tell a true story, in which the characters act consistently with their own personalities.

I know something about this from the work of writing songs. My best work has directed me in its own making – drawing me forward to the place where it already exists (David Wilcox talked like this at a house concert I attended once, and I knew precisely what he meant . . . uh, more or less).

As I was falling asleep the other night, I dreamily wondered if I am a character in the story that is the cosmos in which I exist; and if whatever we call God is the creator of this story.

Ideas are the center of reality, says Jim Holt in Radiolab’s recent podcast “Solid as a Rock.” My romantic religious heart swells to this notion.

In my little mind, art and science and religion gracefully fuse in the postulation of string theory – a place where multiple dimensions, even multiple universes, are accepted as highly plausible. I envision a universe where the Doctor really is flying around in his TARDIS, simply because people from my universe have created him. And of course I speculate about the artists who have created my world. Am I a character in another universe’s movie?

Don’t fret about my addled brain. I’m currently reading Lee Smolin’s book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. I’ve only just begun Smolin’s book, but it promises to be a push-back against the academic community’s enthusiasm over string theory. Perhaps he will bring balance to the force.

(Although it is sad to think that there may not actually be any Skywalkers out there, anywhere . . .)

Matryoshka Doll

October 2, 2012 — 5 Comments

Here’s a poem I wrote last year, about my multilayered identity of recovering good girl, wife, mother, and aspiring artist.

Matryoshka Doll

When they drop by the house
I am in my apron in the kitchen.
In their eyes I see a glimmer of worship
At sighting a domestic angel.
My young son is building superstructures in the living room
And I am baking bread
So I am a stay-at-home mom
(Apparently).

Once, remarking on my unpainted face,
Someone asked for counsel
About wifely submission.

They find me writing at the coffee shop
And praise my husband for giving me time off
From what (apparently) is my real work.

A little girl within
Believes them
Craves their favor.

A woman deeper still
Knows more
Feels lonely feisty misunderstood
Amused
Angry stuck sad useless.

At her heart is a human
Being
Living
Gestating
Faith hope love.

The heart of her heart
Throbs with the secret
And the strength
Of labor
The grip of death
That releases life
And, once more,
She breathes.

Hail Britannia

September 25, 2012 — Leave a comment

What? It’s September already? Here at The More I Learn the More I Wonder, we are doing more wondering and wandering than writing these days.

But also writing and recording more music. This videosong is our tribute to British imaginations and their lifelike creations.

There are lots more songs in the works and a full-length album getting near the end of gestation too. So, though the blog is taking it easy, it doesn’t mean I am!

Introductions

July 19, 2012 — 14 Comments

Note: This post was originally on a now-defunct blog of mine, called faithedout. I closed that blog and imported all of the posts to this one.

What’s This Blog?

Some of us know what it’s like to reach out through the darkness at the end of a day, begin a habitual bedtime prayer, and for the first time admit that it’s been a long time since we’ve sensed anyone or anything there.

Some of us have burned with devotion for our particular theological construct, only to watch it irreparably crumble under the weight of reality.

Some of us are hiding our true thoughts and feelings from everyone, including ourselves.

Some of us would rather have a root canal than go (back) to church (and some of us keep doing it every week anyway).

Some of us have been badly bruised by religion. Some of us are tired of theological debates in any shape or form, and yet still drawn to pursue God, whoever or whatever or if-ever that may be.

Some of us are faithed out, and this is a place for us to talk about it, to “out” ourselves, to own both our faith and our doubts.

Only some of us are faithed out. Many – probably most – of the people in my life are confident and fairly certain about their particular take on faith. Many of them are evangelical or post-evangelical Christians, and some are non-religious. They are people I respect and love, and they  inspire, encourage, and teach me, regardless of our agreement on any particular point. They are welcome here.

But I want to be very clear up front that this is not a place for those who feel certain about religion to try to convince the rest of us. I’m speaking to both believers and non-believers. There are plenty of other places for that to happen, and this is not one of them. Honesty and respectful debate are welcome here, but not propaganda or one-sided diatribes. This is a place to think out loud, not shout out loud.

This is a place for those who are worn out on religion, whatever their particular experience has been with it; but who still hope or at least consider that there may yet be some meaning, intelligence, information, being, presence . . . something – beyond, behind, within, underlying, throughout . . . somewhere . . . somehow.

How’s that for a defining statement?

Who’s This Blogger?

My name is Julia, and I grew up a conservative Christian, in independent fundamental Baptist (IFB) churches throughout the Eastern and Midwest United States. My father worked in various pastoral and Bible college positions, while my mother worked office jobs to help fill in the always-meager income of a husband in “full-time Christian ministry.” (Then she steeled herself for the yearly Mother’s Day sermon where she was reminded that truly godly women stayed at home with their children.)

So much about my life at home and in church and Christian schools was very good. I’m grateful for the positive values that were modeled for me, faithfulness to spouse and children being high on that list. I didn’t experience physical, verbal, or sexual abuse; compared with so many people, religious or not, my childhood was truly charmed.

I attended three different Christian colleges and graduated from the last one with a degree in music. I met my husband Nathan in a Bible study and married him in 1998. I’m a singer/songwriter and he’s an engineer and multi-instrumentalist who arranges, produces and records the music we make together. We have two school-age children. Over the course of our 14-year marriage, we have researched and discussed and changed our minds on all sorts of issues, including gender equality, political and economic ideologies, environmental issues, theology, evolution, and gay rights. We don’t agree about everything, but we share a common background in conservative Christianity and a common vision for “human flourishing.” Nathan holds onto a hope in the kingdom of God as ultimately redemptive of all creation, and I have my doubts. (I suppose he does too – they just surface more often for me.)

My adult life has largely been about healing from the major abuse I did suffer in my childhood – what some have labeled “spiritual abuse.” I learned early on that my destiny was in the hands of a “loving” but apparently capricious and violent God, one who loved me so much he killed his son for me (because my sin made me detestable in God’s sight, and only a perfect human sacrifice could appease God’s wrath); and that if I didn’t accept this “free gift” of the dead but risen son, I would suffer in torment in hell for all eternity. I learned that especially as a female, it was important for me to learn and follow the rules in whatever context I happened to be at the moment, to do my best to please everyone around me. I mostly succeeded at doing this, but discovered in my young adult years, especially early in my marriage, that I was miserable, afraid and ashamed of sex, and barely aware of my own personhood. I recognized that it could kill my marriage and maybe me if I continued to live this way.

For most of my life, I’ve held on to a belief in God. The past couple years, I’ve tried to hold my beliefs and ideas with a lighter grip, trusting that the best life will be found in the solid light of reality, not in complicated attempts to deny the plain truth. I am grateful for my current faith community (a small group that honors and draws from the Christian faith tradition), where I can be open with my doubts and questions, and where no one feels compelled to provide solutions or fix me.

I’ve endured some restless dark nights of the soul, but these days I am feeling more at peace with my loss of certainty about God and “eternal life,” and more inspired to live the life I have been given for all its worth. I am still amazed every day by the intensity of beauty and tragedy that exists everywhere life exists. Though I barely resemble the “believer” I was at one time, I often find the teachings of Jesus to resonate more deeply with me than they did in my days of religious fervor.

Some of my evolving faith-and-doubt journey can be traced through the “faith and doubt” blog posts at my other blog, juliabloom.wordpress.com.

Who Are You?

Now, tell us about you. And please, share this blog with others you think may be interested. It’s my hope that we can build a safe place here for conversation. Maybe your story has some commonalities with mine, maybe not (though I come from and know best the conservative Christian tradition, this blog is open to people from any – or no – faith tradition). Maybe you’re at a similar place in your journey, or maybe you’ve arrived at a very different place. It’s your story, and you are welcome here.

If you want to join in but are afraid of “going public,” feel free to make up names and email addresses when you submit comments. This “coming out” process is not easy, I know.

Of course, you’re welcome to simply read and keep your thoughts to yourself, if you prefer.

Peace to you. And thanks for visiting here.

Failure and Love

June 18, 2012 — 3 Comments

About eight years ago I decided to try gardening. There were raspberries growing in the back yard of our Minneapolis city lot, in a fenced-in area with a brick path down the center. (Previous owners of the house had done some quality landscaping.) On one side of the path where no raspberries were growing, I tilled the ground and planted rows of vegetables. The refreshing spring breeze, the earthy fragrance of the soil, my own enthusiasm and hopes of fresh food from my yard combined to skyrocket my mood into bliss.

Well, that season – and a few seasons afterwards – I was the very model of a “three-day monk.” It may have crossed my mind to water my seeds or pull up weeds, but after a few days, I mostly neglected my garden. My enthusiasm was sapped and I had no habits in place to keep me going.

Needless to say, I failed at gardening in those seasons. But I did learn a few things the first season – mainly, that a sunny spot is imperative for a vegetable garden (my spot was not sunny enough), and so is regular watering and weeding.

Each successive spring, fresh enthusiasm compelled me to plan and plant again; and each year, I had a bit more knowledge and experience and willingness to work at gardening. This spring, thanks to my work over the past few years, we have already been eating asparagus, black raspberries, currants, mulberries, rhubarb, peas, greens, and various fresh herbs from our yard, with plenty more to come throughout the growing season.

I tried and failed at something else once. I wanted to learn pottery. How cool to be able to create something beautiful yet functional! I loved the idea. I took one community education pottery class and made some decent pieces, but overall, I didn’t learn well (the teacher even lost patience with me for my failure to understand how to use the wheel!), and while I had loved the idea, I couldn’t really connect with the activity itself.

Like gardening, I could continue working at pottery, gaining knowledge and experience, until I have attained some basic mastery of the field. But taking that one class was enough for me to know that pottery was not for me.

What was the difference? Both gardening and pottery are creative and useful endeavors that must be learned and practiced to be mastered. I failed at both (actually, I failed more at my first attempt at gardening than my first attempt at pottery). And yet, I have kept gardening but never given pottery another serious thought.

The obvious but important answer is that I really want to garden – I really enjoy it – and I don’t enjoy pottery. In other words, for the love of the thing. Each growing season, I get excited to grow things! But I’ve never wanted to try pottery again.

I couldn’t be sure I loved gardening and not pottery until I had tried them both. When pottery was just an idea in my head, I loved it. When it became an experience I was actively learning and practicing, I couldn’t find any love for the actuality of pottery in my life. But although I mostly failed in my early attempts at learning and practicing gardening, I actually enjoyed the activity, and my love for it only grew.

I think these ideas are important as we think about who we are and what we want to do with our lives. We’ve heard that failure is useful for learning, and is actually necessary for ultimate success (I like this “Accidental Creative” podcast on the topic), but probably equally important is a basic drive, a fundamental love of the thing itself.

And I don’t think this love will always feel positive. Failure is real and sometimes devastating. By some measures, I have only ever “failed” as a singer/songwriter. For fifteen years, I’ve been writing songs, performing and recording them, trying to sell albums and get gigs. And for all that, my “harvest” feels a bit like my early gardening attempts – a handful of pea pods, maybe some undergrown spinach leaves, a couple raspberries.

But I keep doing it. Sometimes “the love of the thing” feels more like banging my head against a wall than gleefully chasing something I adore. But it’s love all the same. No matter the outcome, I must sing and I must write, if only just for my own emotional health and enjoyment.

As with my gardening experience, I am finding there is plenty more experience and skill to be gained as a singer/songwriter.

I’m also learning that my initial starry-eyed definitions of “success” have a way of changing as I work hard at any activity. With gardening, I envisioned myself growing and preserving most of my family’s food supply. As I have learned and worked, however, I’ve discovered this isn’t even something I want anymore. I’ve gained a reasonable understanding of my own capabilities as well as my own interest level and drive, and the place I want gardening to have in my life balanced with all my other commitments and activities.

The same is true of songwriting. I no longer hold vague dreams of stardom. The more I work at my craft, the more realistic I have become about my own capabilities and my own interest level. Through purposefully thinking about and working at this activity, I have better clarified a vision for “success” as it would look in my own real life.

In her book 168 Hours, Laura Vanderkam encourages readers to make a “List of 100 Dreams,” sort-of a “bucket list” – things you want to do or try at some point in your life – and then start making plans to accomplish these dreams. She notes that the very act of trying something may be all you need to discover that you really don’t want to go any further with that activity after all. But if you’d never tried, you may always regret (needlessly) having never done it.

So, I’m glad I tried pottery, fine with failing at it, equally fine with discovering I had no real love for it and laying it aside forever. I’m also glad I tried gardening, fine having failed at it, grateful to discover I loved it and was willing to keep putting in the work – so that today, I can enjoy the fruits of my labors!

What have you learned from failure? Does “love of the thing” keep you going in spite of failure, and do you give yourself permission to quit when you discover you have no love for a certain activity?