I used to think my words were so precious. I mean, I write a
lot, so I know that statistically, they won’t always be great, but in the
moment, when I’m writing, every word seems important, like only this
combination of letters and symbols and spaces will be able to convey with any
kind of accuracy this deep emotion that I’m feeling or this vital thought that
I’m thinking. I type quickly, aggressively, loudly, because if I don’t, if I
don’t feel the clicking of the keyboard underneath my fingers, the words will
run away and this experience, or this construction of an experience, will go
undocumented, unremembered. It will be lost. And after all the typing and the
thinking, I do actually read it aloud to myself again, to tweak sentence
structure and fix some grammar, but I don’t alter the ideas. They came out through
my fingers all on their own and there’s no tweaking them once they’re in the
world. All I do is straighten their ties or dust off their shoulders.
This is not to say that I don’t think about what I’m writing
(though I myself have looked back over previous posts and wondered if that wasn’t
indeed the case). An idea will pop into my brain or an event or a conversation
with a friend will spark a thought and I’ll kick it around for a few days or
weeks in the back of my mind until it’s more or less shaped and then I’ll sit
down at the keyboard and have a go. It’s not a particularly efficient system
and it means that the posts that I write when I’ve set a deadline for myself
(or the papers that I write) can be hit or miss, or not as fully explored as
they should be. When all the honing of a thought takes place in the back of
your mind or in placing the words on a page, all you’re doing is presenting
some gussied up observations. I know that. I never claim to be rigorous. But in
putting them down on paper, I’ve saved them. I’ve preserved something that once
was… ephemeral? I’ve captured something that was once a combination of
sensations and electrical impulses and whatever else thoughts are made of and I’ve
given it a shape that someone else can hold onto, can observe, can use to build
another thing. It is not a useless thing, what I do, and in the moment, it
feels essential. Crucial.
But I’ve sat here at the keyboard for multiple days, looking
at the outline for my sermon, and I must've deleted two thousand words as I’ve
worked. The page is once again empty and I’m so frustrated at all the ideas I’ve
killed seconds after they’ve left me. Because I know what I want to say. I even
know how I want to say it. I know what I’m going to use to back up my points, I
know how I want to connect the dots, I know what I want people to take away. But
I can’t make it happen.
Because what if I’m wrong? What if I mislead people? What if
the way I understand the information I’m going to share is not the way anyone
else puts these things together in their mind? What if I’m confusing? What if I
wander? What if I piss someone off in the first sentence and they don’t hear anything
else that I’m saying? What if I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the
topic at hand and everyone will either walk away with a misconception or a
reason to dismiss me, laugh at me? It would be fascinating to me, this dual
nervousness about leading people astray and also about being mocked, if I wasn’t
so paralyzed by both aspects at the same time.
I’ve done hundreds of planetarium shows. Give me a dome and
an audience and the better part of an hour and you will walk away with an
appreciation for the night sky or space or your place in the cosmos. I can
answer questions, explain difficult concepts, unpack history, and do it all
with a genuine enthusiasm for the subject matter that shows, even after having
done this same presentation over and over and over again. I have yet to tire of
explaining how to find planets in the sky and how to tell the difference
between Mars and Antares or why the Moon changes phase or how we know what
galaxies are and where they’re at in space. Goodness, but I love that job.
But this job is not that job. I mean, every thought system
can be abused. We don’t really need a thought system to hurt each other; we
just use it to justify the hurt we want to cause, or feel that we need to
cause, or want to avoid responsibility for having caused. I know how problematic
the space race was. I understand how an exclusive focus on Enlightenment
appeals to rationality and empiricism have the potential to problematically
hamper our lives. I get human hubris and self-absorption and pride and how virtues
that are extolled can also be part of domineering power structures that are antithetical
to the care for the least of these that is so key to how I think life should be
organized. I get how careless enthusiasm for anything comes with problems. But I
am much more nervous about the problems that I can cause on Sunday morning.
Because this is my gospel, right? This is the thing that I know to be true. These are the ideas,
the hopes, the promises, the stories that have set me free and given me new
life and I need you to know that. I
need us to have a conversation around forgiveness and reconciliation. I need
you to see that you are loved. I need you to love. I need to share this
wonderful, weighty gift with you and I don’t think I can do it. I don’t know
that you’ll hear it. I know I’m standing in the way and I don’t know where to
move but I absolutely understand that I need to. I don’t know that I can afford
to do this wrong.
Guess we’ll try again tomorrow.
