This Writing Lake - a Motivational Post

 

Originally, I'd planned this post for January, but I got carried away with my reading, and wanted to reflect on it more. But maybe February is better anyway. By now resolutions have worn thin, if not fizzled out altogether. Maybe now is a good time to reflect on who we are, what we do, and why we do it?

 

 I've known Madeline L'Engle's work since my children were young and we read A Wrinkle in Time. I confess, I always associated her with those books, and I never thought much more about her work. That changed last November.

I was attending a Zoom workshop, and the presenter mentioned a quote that intrigued me. He couldn't remember the source of it. One of the beauties of Zoom workshops is that you're already at the computer and Google is right at hand. A quick search resulted in Madeline L'Engle as the source.

Close, but no banana.*

A closer reading revealed it was Madeline L'Engle quoting Jean Rhys.

I'll come to the quote in a moment, but first I want to share the book that my Googling produced - Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeline L'Engle

 

 

This is the blurb from Amazon:

In this classic book, Madeleine L'Engle addresses the questions, What makes art Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L'Engle's beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation through one's own art.

 

 I found it an interesting read. It made me think of my art in ways I don't usually - particularly as service.

 

This is the quote:

“If the work comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, serve me,' then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, 'Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake'.”

 There are multiple ways to interpret that quote. My takeaway, I suspect, was not what Ms. L'Engle intended, so I'll save that for the end.

That passage is followed by this: "To feed the lake is to serve, to be a servant."

Sometimes we talk about writing for God, our audience of One. But I wonder, as you are sitting at your keyboard, are you thinking of your work as service? Should you be? Who or what are you serving? Just some questions to ponder.

I particularly liked what I discovered following that "lake" quote.  It referred to the discipline necessarily inherent in our service And one of the things I have learned is the importance of discipline in my writing. How many times have we been told that if we want to be writers, we must take our calling seriously, we must work diligently?

Ms. L'Engle  addressed that necessary discipline with this quote:

"Someone wrote, 'The principal part of faith is patience,' and this applies, too, to art of all disciplines. We must work every day, whether we feel like it or not, otherwise when it comes time to go out of the way and listen to work, we will not be able to heed it."

 

 

Back to the quote and my workshop -  I would like to offer another interpretation, probably not the intended one, but one that resonated with me. When these words were quoted in the workshop, they were completely out of context:

All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake'.”

 

The sections in bold were what captured me - that sense of community, of being a part of something so much bigger than my small self.  They made me feel, in some ineffable way, to be part of a grander existence, a community of writers, all feeding the lake of story. It was only in researching the original context of the quote, and reading from the book, that I learned so much more about that idea of creation as service to which Ms. L'Engle referred.

But maybe we can have it as both - because acting as partners in service allows us to be more productive, more    attentive, and the results just might amaze us.

So, when your discipline is flagging, when your words are halting rather than flowing, when you're feeling more like a trickle than a great river, try thinking of yourself as part of that larger community of creatives, a servant sharing an important message, a part of a lake that allows all to float.

And find the faith to keep trying.

Photos from Pixabay
 

 *I decided to Google that phrase too, just to make sure it wasn't  insensitive slang. Turns out it's an Australian phase. Who knew, Mate?