River Readings Fall 2012 September 15th

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Living the Life

This past weekend, I spoke at a writers’ conference in Fort Walton Beach with one of my publishers. Toward the end of our session, while taking questions from the audience, one of the attendees told us he had been writing for ten years and had only received rejections. He then asked us what was wrong with the publishing industry, why was it so broken it couldn’t see there was money to be made from his books, adding that he knew the only way to get published was to know somebody, to have an “in,” an unfair advantage.

At the conclusion of the session, I spent some time talking to the keynote speaker of the conference who had slipped in about half way through our presentation. He is truly a fantastic writer, a bestseller, and a great guy. He is also someone who not only teaches the craft of writing, but continually works to improve his own.

As we talked, he mentioned how, when he first started writing, he wrote four novels over ten years and couldn’t get any of them published. He shared with me how he didn’t give up, how he worked hard and learned his craft, and how it paid off with his fifth novel—the one that launched his brilliant career.

He didn’t give up, he worked hard, didn’t make excuses, and he broke through, got published, and has done very well. Unlike the angry young man that has yet to attract the attention of an agent, the successful writer didn’t blame his failure on a corrupt, nepotistic system.

I have a lot of writer friends (lots of friends working in all the arts) and not one, not a single one—was helped because they knew someone. They’ve worked hard, paid a price, and earned everything they’ve ever received.

Later in the weekend, I had the privilege of observing the work of and talking to a visual artist. She is a working artist, making a living and her way in the world by living the artists’ life. We spoke about the romantic notion some people have surrounding art and its creation. She, like the best and most productive artists I know, is living an unassuming life dedicated to creating, to improving, and to supporting her work the best way she knows how. She doesn’t have a huge studio or expensive equipment. She has a table—a dining room table. And on it, she makes amazing art. And she does this day after day, week after week, year after year.

Both artists—the bestselling writer and the successful visual artist—are living the artist’s life, one of continual creation, humility, evolution, overcoming self-doubt and drama and criticism with the dignity of discipline and dedication. They continue to produce good work because they work hard. They don’t merely strike the pose of an artist or talk about art. They work hard to create it.

Living an artistic life is like living any kind of life. There are no shortcuts. Hard work and humility are more important than appearances and connections. Imagination, creativity, and dedication are more important than talent and intelligence. And attitude and approach are more important than anything else.

River Readings 2011 Conference

Moments of Excruciating Rapture

It’s 2:58 a.m. on Saturday night (or, more accurately, Sunday morning), and I should be in bed. Everybody else in my family is—has been for hours—and though I’m always the last to succumb to sleep, I’m not often up this late. Tonight is special. I’m delighting, as Augustus McCrae would put it, in being a live human being on the earth.

This happens from time to time—most often when I’m writing, when I’m in the middle of a scene and the words are flowing well and I’m experiencing that rare intersection where purpose and pleasure come together. It happened recently when I was playing basketball. Bringing the ball in, looking at the players, I was overcome with how much fun I was having and how grateful I was to be having it. It also frequently happens when I’m alone late at night—sometimes praying and studying, other times reading, and often when I stumble upon a movie, especially one that is, I’m embarrassed to say, highly romantic, nostalgic, or sentimental—some recent flicks include It’s A Wonderful Life, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Doc Hollywood.

Tonight, after unsuccessfully trying to go to sleep around 12:30 a.m., I got up started watching the latest Spielberg/Hanks collaboration, The Terminal, and I knew what I was getting into when I put it on. So I sat back and let myself be swept up into the shallow, feel-good, sentimentality of the movie—and guess what? I began to feel good. And, around 2:00 a.m., as I went to the kitchen for a snack, I had one of those moments—those moments when I’m so happy to be alive it hurts.

Here’s how it happens: Suddenly, serendipitously I become aware of the sheer joy of a particular moment and I pause to reflect on how fine a thing it is to be alive in that single moment of space and time. Often in moments like these I’m also overcome with a heart-breaking sadness because I’m more acutely aware that I will be dead soon and these moments will be over. I realize how precious a thing this one moment is, and how I will never get it back again, and how I only have a very limited number of them, and then I will have no more.

This feeling had already happened twice this weekend—as I laughed my way through Friday night with friends and as I spent my entire Saturday with my family, glancing in the rearview mirror at Meleah and Micah and realizing that in just a few short years they will have families of their own and that what we have now will be forever gone.

These quick reflections make me grateful for the moment, reminds me to revel in it as fully as possible, not to take it for granted, to realize how rare it is.

Ultimately, it’s all I have, these brief moments in space and time, these little glimpses of God, of heaven and eternity, and I experience them as overwhelming joy and unbearable loss all in the exact same moment.

These moments are exhilarating and excruciating at the same time because they are so precious and so fleeting. Soon, too soon, suddenly and before we know it, all our moments will be over, and we don’t know when. This realization reminds us just how choice and brief these moments are and makes them all the more momentous.

Many of us believe that we will have other moments in the next life, better moments (though it’s hard to imagine sometimes), but this is a matter of faith, of trust and hope. All we can know for certain is what we have now—this very moment. Someone once said that no love is ever lost, that they are all kept in the heart of God. I hope that’s true. I hope that I’ll get to relive these moments again and again in the timelessness of eternity.

I hope. I trust. I believe. But for now I relish with great joy and deep sadness this precious, present moment I’ve been given. Right here. Right now.

I need to go to bed now so I won’t be so tired when I wake up in the morning, but I’m really enjoying this moment, and I’ll never get it back again, and it’s possible that I won’t wake up tomorrow at all, so I better make the most of it. Right here. Right now. In this present, precious moment, that is . . . gone forever.

Well, Go On, Commence

A commencement isn’t just a long, often dull ceremony associated with graduation. It’s a beginning, and since life is a series of beginnings (and endings and new beginnings), I’d like to address you, my fellow students of the U of L in a commencement speech of sorts.

In the University of Life, life itself is our teacher. Experience is the greatest educator, and education is unending. If we go to other schools, particularly college, it is merely to learn how to learn, to be made a student, so that when we graduate and commence into our “real” lives, into jobs and families and all the ambiguities of adulthood, we will be prepared for the truest, deepest learning to begin.

There’s a catch, of course. There always is.

If we are truly to learn, to grow, to become, if we are to eat the book of life, take into ourselves all it has to offer, life must find us willing students. When the student is ready, the teacher will come. Well, ready or not, life, the great teacher is upon us, but we will learn nothing if we’re not open, willing, ready to learn.

In the profound words of the brilliant Frederick Buechner, “Listen to your life.” Listen closely and listen carefully. It whispers. Life, like God who gives it, is subtle—easy to miss. Buechner goes on to say “See [your life] for the fathomless mystery that it is. Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are sacred moments and life itself is grace.”

If we are found ready, how will we learn? Not line upon line, precept upon precept, and not in any semblance of linear or vertical progression. The courses offered at U of L are circular where we wind and wander more than ascend and achieve. Life is a series of steps forward and setbacks, never quite what we imagined, never quite what we planned. The students who do best at U of L are flexible. In creating the world, God created order out of chaos, and sometimes (far more often than we would like to admit) the chaos shows through. Roll with it. Let life take you where it will. Don’t attempt to master it. It is the master, you and I, its pupils, and we must add humility to our flexibility. At U of L we learn to bend or we break.

What will we learn in our classes at U of L? Probably variations of the same curriculum, each with nuance specificity unique to us. The degree programs here are highly individualized. We learn different lessons at different times—largely up to us. Life is a Montessori institution, but I’ll share with you a little of what I’m trying to learn:

Meaning in life is more important than money (or anything else). Meaning comes from purpose, service, and love. Purpose comes from us knowing who we are and what we’re here for—finding and opening our gift and using it to serve others. Our gift will do much for us, but it’s what it does for others that is most rewarding. Loving and being loved gives our lives more meaning than any accomplishment or achievement or attainment.

Life all comes down to choices. There are always two trees. Choose life. There are always two gates. Choose the narrow one. There are always two paths. Choose the one less traveled. Character is destiny. Choices determine character. Our fates are up to us. What a gift. What a responsibility.

There are costs involved in everything, and they’re often hidden. We can pay now or we can pay later, and it’s always best to pay now.

As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than intellect.”

Depth and richness—spiritually, intellectually, creatively—need stillness, silence, and solitude. Just be. Be still. Be quiet. Be yourself. Be true. Be.

Life is difficult. There’s nothing easy about this school. The course work is rigorous, the schedule demanding. We’re not only having knowledge and wisdom put in us, but also having ego, pride, envy, selfishness, self-righteousness beaten out of us.

U of L is, or should be, a party school. As difficult and as painful as life can be, it is also fine and inspiring and awe-filling and wondrous—worthy of celebrating. We celebrate to appreciate, to savor, to honor, to cherish. Life is a gift. Gifts are given at parties. Commence the celebration.

Finally, life is short. It’s the gift none of us want, one that seems to keep on taking, but mortality is a gift. Soon we will graduate from this life, taking with us to the next only that which we learned here. Every semester change, every tick of the clock, every drop of sand, every heartbeat draws us that much closer to the commencement at which we are surrounded by flowers instead of classmates. Time is short. Life is precious. Ding. Ding. School is in. Get your ed on. Commence to living. Commence to learning. For at the U of L you’re only a student once. Commence to making the most of it.