I said something on Twitter the other day that made me stop and think. And made others stop and think. It was this: “Write bravely. Use up all those good ideas now, don’t save them. There will be more. Art comes from abundance.”
The idea came in response to Glennon Doyle Melton’s post on “Forever Tries“; she writes about being present either with her family or her writing and: “ninety percent of the time I have to ignore these insistent ideas and allow them to slip away and pass on to someone more available.” She emphasizes that we can’t hoard ideas for the “perfect” time and need to be fully present where we are now. It’s a great help to those of us pulled in creative and domestic directions.
Glennon’s message fights against our modus operandi, which is to hoard ideas, worried that we won’t have enough for “next time” or that someone else will come and say the same thing in a smarter, cooler, hipper way and we’ll be left creating mediocre work in a little corner. Art dies in empty corners.
But hoarding is always a symptom of inner scarcity.
Afraid of insignificance, we live lives grasping after creativity, chasing beauty, trying to catch up with it. We focus on beauty as an end rather than a means. We’re afraid that if we were really generous with our art (or talent or time — insert here whatever you give to the world) that someone else will get the credit. Someone else will profit. Someone else will run away with the show or hurt us because we’ve been vulnerable and already given so much away.
We’ve given ourselves away and there is nothing left.
But art comes from abundance.
Art is overflow. It cannot be the end in itself, or we’ll find ourselves burnt out, used up and chasing trends. And in the process we’ll not only lose beauty, we’ll lose ourselves.
There are plenty of metaphors: Sarah Mae writes about returning to a well, Ann Voskamp writes about exhaling and relief (things that only happen when you’re filled up) and Kara Tippetts, even as she was dying, writes about the Big Love of Jesus that always brings back a return as we are poured out.
Where’s your well? Do you run to be filled up from God and others? Do you know how to rest? Or do you have so many holes in your bucket that any water poured in just leaks right out? Do you carve out time to create in response to this great big, beautiful, mysterious world that we get to be a part of? Or do you run around using productivity and To Do lists as an indicator of your worth?
I’ll have nothing to offer others if I demand that beauty is meant to satisfy only me.
My words will not bring relief or hope to the weary and broken if I’m focused on myself. So I’m reminding myself, along with you, art comes from abundance. It’s a pouring out what’s been poured in.
Part of being “scary brave” means giving up and pouring yourself out. It means not knowing. See, scary, huh?
So today, I’m choosing to be brave. I’m choosing to be countercultural in little daily ways: by being filled up and resting; by reminding myself that creation in response to Beauty is enough in itself. Here’s what that looks like for me as a writer:
- I might not know if the words will come when I sit down to write. But I’ll do it anyway.
- I may not know if my generosity is received well or is used against me. But I’ll do it anyway.
- The stories I tell may falter and flail and no one may listen. But I’ll do it anyway.
- I may never write something as well or that resonates as deeply as I’ve done before. But I’ll do it anyway.
- I may never make it big or publish books. But that doesn’t mean what I do today has no value. I’ll do it anyway.
I’ll help others tell their messy, beautiful stories. It might not make the difference I hope for. But I’ll do it anyway.
Because beauty was never supposed to be about you or me. C. S. Lewis captures it so succinctly:
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.” –The Weight of Glory
Beauty and art are vessels for longing, for desire, and ultimately, for glory. But we keep turning them into the goal or trying to swallow up glory, as if it were a food that could actually satisfy our deep, deep hunger for meaning. Art comes from abundance.
Today, I’m choosing abundance: to make habits of those things that are restorative. I’ll let you in on a little secret: abundance comes from very mundane disciplines, not in the lightning strike of inspiration. For me that means: more reading, more laughing around the table with good friends and good wine, more discipline in cleaning my house and reading the Word that brings life. It means treasuring little moments of inspiration but not serving the Muse like my taskmaster. It means knowing that I can rest because ultimately this beauty is not about me or what I can create.
And my words are only a vessel through which glory might perhaps deign to travel, pointing back to its source. I can only create to the extent that I’m filled from a well that never dries up, where there is always more and more grace — even in and against my striving. What would it take for you to live an abundant life? What would abundance look like with the freedom to stretch and exhale and know that it’s all okay: the hard, the good, the “shitty first draft”*? *Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird