Monday, September 7, 2009

Finding the Way Back to Center

In his 1937 play, Our Town, Thornton Wilder employs the endearing device of a Stage Manager who has full awareness of his audience and routinely breaks the imaginary 4th wall common in theater by directly addressing them. In that fashion I will adopt, for a moment, the Stage Manager's approach and speak directly to you, my patient and forgiving readers (trusting that it's not too presumptuous to speak of you in the plural).

This summer, in a writing workshop, folk singer Carrie Newcomer observed that "ninety percent of writing is showing up..." I haven't been showing up. I could say that I've been busy, but while true, it's nothing new. Busyness has become, I suppose, a way of life and has been for quite some time. Busyness has been less a factor than distraction -- distraction at every level of my being. Whatever effect such a centrifugal state has on my external comings and goings, as a spiritual flaw it is withering. Prayers do not rise from a soul not paying attention; neither thoughtful reflection nor words on a page or a blog. And lately I have lost my center, growing too distracted to pay attention.

But if it's true, as the title of Newcomer's workshop suggests, that writing is a spiritual discipline, perhaps I have unnecessarily taken sides in a "chicken and egg" debate. It could be, after all, that writing is less the fruit of a centered soul than the pathway leading to it, and not writing has contributed to the distraction.

Perhaps. It will be worthwhile to test the hypothesis. After all, as Lori likes to remind me of what I romantically told her on our first date, "I love words."

In the meantime I apologize to you who have been left too long with nothing but the image of tomato bottom rot to consider. I'll try to come up with something more attractive.

No comments: