Skip to main content

pilgrimage

One of the things I hate about writing (okay, maybe dislike is a more accurate word) is the number of drafts and edits it takes to come up with something that resembles a coherent and thoughtful piece of work. Another discouraging factor is the amount of time I spend spinning my mental wheels before I come up with an idea that is worth writing about. Hamster time is that period when I go 'round and 'round, trying a thousand different stories in my head, sifting through endless scenarios and possible themes before one of them actually appears feasible as well as interesting. It seems like time wasted, but it is, for the most part, the necessary process to arrive at the one idea that works.

This weekend, I have been working on a writing project. I had some inspiration on Friday night while I was talking about it with some of my friends, and I thought it would be a simple thing to put a few lines on paper. I did put some words on paper on Saturday, but after a page of scribbling, I realized that it was not going where it needed to go. And I seemed to have lost the spark of inspiration I had the night before. Argh! Tonight, I gave it another go. I took a different approach and came up with another page of phrases. But they, too, were lifeless. Not what I wanted at all.

I hate this part of writing. It is so demotivating, this part where I fail 2 or 3 or even 5 times before I get on the right track. But there is no shortcut. Aside from the rare occasion, I need this failing, de-cluttering process. These fails are the weeds that I need to cut down in order to see the flowers clearly. Yes, today I wish I could skip right to the beautiful, precise prose I want to write instead of wading through the swamp of fails, but the fails are part of the cost of good writing (of which this is not really a good example if you consider the mixed metaphors).

This morning, our faith community went on a mini pilgrimage together. Our goal was to trek to the lookout at the top of Mont-Royal. We took 1.5 hours to get there, and along the way we laughed, prayed, stopped and marveled, talked about life's challenges, walked in silent contemplation, listened, and journeyed together. By the time we reached our destination, we were already rich with what had transpired along the way. Pilgrimage, like writing, is a complete package. Path and destination cannot be separated from each other. Stairs must be climbed, winding roads plodded along, switchbacks made at times, steps retraced when necessary. Sometimes we have to wait. Sometimes we find ourselves hurrying. At all times we try to accommodate and help our fellow travelers. And in the process, we get closer to where we are going.

Right now, I am two fails closer to a good piece of writing. Time to try again.

This is a busy squirrel we saw on the trek up Mont-Royal.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more