When the Student is Ready

My prayer has been answered. I've been wandering around in the dark for so long, I've grown accustomed to it - writing-wise, I mean. I haven't known what I was doing wrong or even doing right. I was just doing what felt right to me. And that doesn't good writing always make.

So, I've finally found a guide - two guides really - two mentors to show me what's what in my writing, to separate the trees from the forest and help me "find my way" out of the thicket of my own voice. I've just completed my first week of residency in my low-residency MFA program at Western CT State University. It was incredible - meeting new, young, up-and-coming writers and old, seasoned, been-there-still-doing-it writers. I attended workshops and lectures, presentations and one-on-one sessions.

If you're an aspiring writer and all you want, what you ache to do, is write, then I HIGHLY recommend this program. The faculty are down-to-earth and very generous. They are working writers, not academicians. There is very little ego there - just writers writing and wanting to help and mentor other writers. I feel like I stumbled on my Brigadoon.

Okay, slow down, enthusiastic former cultist! I still have to do the work but so far, both Don J. Snyder and Danial Asa Rose, successful and award-winning writers, have e-mailed me responses to my writing within one day of finishing the residency. If this is any indication of what the semester is going to be like, I'd better hold onto my hat. Still, I know I need to pace myself for the marathon ahead of me. This is not a sprint even though I feel like a Thoroughbred sprung out of the box. At last I have two trainers.

"When the student is ready, the teacher arrives" as the old saying goes. Last September, long before I considered entering this program, I made the following entry in my journal:

"I think I need to be shown how to write the next chapters of my life - that I need a blueprint for the journey - two experts who will guide me."

Don't ask me why I said "two experts" but I guess dreamed them into being. This, too, is grace. An answer to prayer. Thank you, God.

In Praise of Imperfection

Yesterday, I mailed off a bundle of Christmas cards, finished the last of my Christmas shopping, came home and wrapped presents while "Scrooge" was playing on the TV. A perfect holiday-prep day, all around. And yet I felt like garbage inside.

I had done all the right things. Not in the order of Mother Teresa, mind you. I wasn't collecting money for the poor or passing out Toys for Tots but I hadn't murdered anyone or stolen anything. Now why is it that every time I do something decent, maybe even good, I feel so bad?

I have a cantankerous mind. It misbehaves in all sorts of ways but the most annoying aspect is this inclination to cut myself to shreds when I have tried to be good. I guess the Apostle Paul called that our sinful nature (see Romans 7.) But I no longer believe in sin. Then again, I might rethink this.

I no longer believe in a personal savior either though I might rethink that, too. I'm certainly in need of one. But whenever I call upon the name of God or Jesus, it's as if someone shouted "Incoming" and I feel like diving under the nearest table for cover. No offense on the Almighty. It's not Her fault. It's a residual effect of the cult.

So, I pick myself up and dust myself off, a daily experience. I've gotten to the point that I pray to God just to help me not be afraid to pray to God. If that makes sense. The last sentence in Paul Tillich's incredible book The Courage to Be goes something like this: "The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God disappears in the anxiety of doubt."

This God that's bigger than God is the God of imperfection, the God of what is. This God does not condemn. This God lives with, grows with, falls with, suffers with me. Sounds suspiciously like the little child born in Bethlehem. Maybe I do believe after all. Believing through self- doubt like mine is like trying to see in a monsoon. But I'll give it a whirl and when I do, I'll remember that I'm allowed to be imperfect. There's a word for that, too. Grace.

Merry Christmas.