A Moment that Matters
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash
I’ve heard sculptors say that, when a piece isn’t working, the best way forward isn’t to chip away at the details but rather smash it to the ground. Only devastation will make possible a new vision.
Writers do the equivalent. In The Release I relate how, when Benjamin Percy spent two years writing a novel only to have it resoundingly rejected by publishers, he trashed the manuscript. The next morning he rescued it but it had fractured in his mind’s eye until he could recognize the brilliance of the short stories it contained.
I relate these stories blithely. Living through this process, however, is anything but easy. The shards cut. Grief is immense. The work ahead seems insurmountable, and we’re already exhausted. We’re prone to despair. Many of us give up.
I’ve come to believe that the products of our creative endeavors are a joyful but extraneous benefit. As successful as it seems to form stone into sculpture or words into poetry, these results pale in comparison with the hearts that are moved by their making. “If your life is burning well,” Leonard Cohen writes, “poetry is just the ash.” Art-making keeps our lives burning brightly. And times of crisis test our commitment to this fire.
When we’re stymied, when we “fail”, when our hearts and our project smash into fragments—these are precisely the times when transformation becomes most powerfully possible. My teacher Jim Finley, a student of Thomas Merton’s, says that in moments of hardship we can despair or go deeper. Those of us engaged in creating can always “go deeper” by embracing the gifts of the process. When catastrophe seems to strike our writing, our carving, our singing, how might the artistic struggle provide precisely what’s most needed? New perspective? Resilience? The faith to carry on? Companions on the journey?
Black marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson says of the climate crisis, “It’s magnificent to be alive in a moment that matters so much.” Shattered times, in art-making and in our civic life, break us open to potential. Too much emphasis on results distracts us from the abundant gifts of practice. The trick is to cherish the process.
--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
