Found this bit of writing today. It is from an exercise in Writing Alone and with Others by Pat Schneider. The exercise was to write about a bad writing experience. Pat Schneider says that most people suffer a bad writing experience in school and many never write after that. This is the free write from that exercise.
I started my highschool career taking AP courses, advanced placement. Why? Because I had great grades in junior highschool and everyone said that is what I should do. No thought to what I wanted to do, just the counselor noting my good grades, assuming that I was smart, intelligent and placed me on a AP track. I wasn’t smart or intelligent . . . well, I was, in a way. I had figured out that it was all a game. I figured out what the teachers wanted and gave them that. Of course, this does nothing to feed the soul, to nurture the creator in me, it just was all nonsense and I think I felt like if this was such a huge part of my life, then all of life was just nonsense. There was no sense of real purpose.
Anyway, back to the AP track. I ended up dropping out of the AP program because I couldn’t keep up with the math. I struggled in math and I couldn’t be in AP just in English and literature, I had to be in AP on both tracks. So, when I dropped out, I had already taken 3 years of advanced English/literature and I had to have another year. So, just to fulfill the requirement, I was placed in the sophomore English class during my Senior year after three years of advanced placement.
I remember that we had to write a paper describing how to do something. I cannot remember what that is called, there is a specific name for it though. I wrote about how to make a great cake. It was a stupid paper. Really, it was. But, it received an A and the teacher read it aloud. I just remember thinking how stupid it was. . . it wasn’t written from the heart, it was written to fulfill a requirement. I lost my purpose in writing that day. There it is, there is the bad experience. Writing had been relegated to just a to do . . . just something to get a grade . . . I could do that and I could do it well … but what real purpose was there? How was this going to make a difference. How was this going to change the world.
That year was a turning point for me. I didn’t write much poetry after that. I didn’t write much at all. I was tired of the game. Throughout the years, I have written very infrequently in journals . .. mostly while working through very dark and traumatic times. It really was only as I began to post on bulletin boards online that I began to be encouraged that my writing could make a difference. People would comment that I could express myself eloquently, that they loved to read what I had to say. I began to see a purpose again.
However, this is the demon that I battle. Still, I don’t see it sometimes. I don’t see the purpose. I am just writing what has already been said, I don’t have anything to say, the guidelines are not so strict, I don’t know how to fulfill the requirement here. It takes me out of myself and I have to trust in my own ability, my own gift, my own work, my own talent.
I am discovering the power of words. I am discovering how to use them to make a difference, to have an impact. I am discovering that I have something to say and it may be the same thing that someone else has to say but no one can say what I have to say like me. I have a unique voice, a unique perspective, I do have something to offer.
Wounds from the school experience. They took this wild child, this introspective individual and tried to make her something that was not, that she is not. They tried to make her fit into the crowd, to become the shape of the box, and she did because she needed the affirmation, she needed the acceptance, she was looking for something.
If there had been just one person who believed, who knew how to dream, who knew how to let the imagination run wild . . . who would I be now. But, no lamenting; lamenting comes to no good. It is just wasted time. The past is in the past and what worked for the past will not work for the future.
I am created on the image of God, the creator. I am a creator as well. Capable of creating beauty, of conveying wisdom and knowledge. I can create beauty with dance, with images, with words. There is power here, power that I never knew before.
Hold this power in your reins Lord, you guide it, you steer it, you direct it. I want it to be all for your glory, for you honor. I want you to find pleasure in me, your creation. Ultimately, all that I create is inspired by you, you are in me, you breathe in me, I breathe in you . .. you abide in me and I abide in you, everything that is within me is of you.
Even the question, even the question. The world may have tried to conform me to itself, to its definition of success but I know that I am in the will of the Lord. Questions are good. It is okay to ask the question, even the questions rise up to the Lord, not as a rebel, not in contention, but in stretching, in growing, it is the prophet, I have not learned to recognize it, to operate in it. Lord, I pray that I do. I want to be walking in fullness, in abundance in the giftings that you have given. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Immersed in the Mystery,
