Wandering through the Words

Why do I write? This is a question I have asked myself with varying degrees of urgency over the past few years. Now is one of those heightened moments. I suppose when I spend the majority of my day writing at work and a good chunk of my free time writing stories on my own, I want to think that there is some value in the exercise. Some greater purpose that will justify the hours.

The value of creative writing is not as immediately discernible as other forms of writing that function primary to convey information. In my case, the ulitity is less clear, and, I think, less important. In any case, it's not ulitity as we typically think of it.

I’ve noticed that Jesus did not speak very often in didactic statements or theologizing or the mere recitation of facts. I’m sure he did on occasion—such words are a necessity at times—but these are not then the words that his followers remembered, that they found imperative to record. What they wrote down were stories. Stories and metaphors. This is how Jesus communicated with the crowds, and this is how the crowds learned.

“There once was a landowner who planted a vineyard,” Jesus said. Here we see a picture in our mind’s eye—a man and his vineyard and the hot sun beating down on the grapes—and this is an image that has shape, that we can metaphorically touch and participate in. And then Jesus goes on with the story, and even if the people on those dry mountain slopes did not understand the meaning of it, as it is clear they often did not, they could still remember it, and they could repeat it to their friends back home, and they could puzzle over it together. And later, perhaps years later, an incident would happen in their life that would bring to mind this story which they did not realize they still remembered and suddenly something would fall into place and their eyes would be opened and it would all finally make sense.

Jesus was a smart man. Stories stick. Stories give words and ideas a handle, so that people can find a point of entry.

But parables for the purpose of teaching are one thing—novels and short stories and memoirs quite another. What’s the point of fiction? some people ask. It’s not real anyway. It never happened. It’s just an escape from the world, an excuse not to engage in what’s happening right in front of you. I admit, I ask myself this question sometimes too. It is a good question to ask, I think: What is the point of fiction? Why have I spent so many hours of my life bent over a book or dreaming up characters to set free in a world of my own creating? I like to think the answer is deeper, more involved, than “it’s fun.” Though it most assuredly is. Sometimes.

The truth is, there are some things that can only be communicated in a round-about way because they are too harsh or brilliant to face head-on. Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about this: “Tell the truth but tell it slant—/Success in circuit lies,” she writes. “Too bright for our infirm Delight/The Truth’s superb surprise.” In stories—and in some other forms of writing—truth slips in through the back door of the mind, almost unnoticed. We couldn’t handle it otherwise; we’d fight it off. But stories—you can’t argue with them. They are what they are.

C.S. Lewis once said that nearly everything of importance he ever learned was communicated through metaphor. He certainly was a master of it himself. Who can forget, having read it, that image of the “ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea”? Everyone can certainly imagine such a scene—and themselves in it. Less people will remember the words, “we are too easily pleased by the world.” Although this communicates essentially the same message, it lacks the heart, and it lacks the handle.

Good writing is like a perfect piece of glass or the stillest, clearest body of water. You look in and you see something so pure and vibrant that you wonder how you never saw it before. And yet, you also realize this is not the first time you’ve caught a glimpse. You see it is something that you’ve always known but have never brought into perfect focus. These are the treasures that metaphor and imagery and story can bring us.

I am no C.S. Lewis. I am a lowly twenty-something with no published works and no Oxford education. My words are not read by many people and may never be. But I still want to weave the web of story that may in the end be the only way to understand the world in all its shades of grey. I write to understand, to elucidate, as I am doing now writing this essay, seeking an answer to my original question. But I also write to confound, to confuse and scramble-up, so that I may know—and others may know it too—that nothing in life is straight-forward and no answers are easy.

We are called to emulate Jesus, and I guess this is the way that makes the most sense to me.

The Death of the White Stag

I realized today that I no longer feel in a stage of transition. It’s taken me a year and half, but I have finally come to define my life as it—not as where it is going or where it has come from. I not just a post-grad, looking back at and feeling nostalgic for my college experience. And I am not merely straining towards the future, single-mindedly pursuing that elusive “career” we all seem to be hunting. I’m beginning to wonder if the creature even exists in all its mythic glory.

This place—it’s a nice place to be.