When the work starts to rhyme

Beckwourth, CA

There comes a moment in doing your reading where new work begins to rhyme. When you start to see the connections. When you understand who influenced the person you’re engaging with right now.

That’s the moment to begin shipping your work and making your own assertions.

- Seth Godin

To confess, I’ve grown a bit bored of my work here lately. It’s not my first rodeo when it comes to creative slumps. But it’s never a good feeling.  

I started recognizing it just before I took a break for the holidays. And then omicron hit and Rory’s school closed again for a week, so I took more time away. And now that I have no good excuse to be away from the blog, I just… haven’t been feeling it. I’ve been more creatively congested than I have in a long time. Most every time I hit publish, I cringe a little¹. 

Upon some reflection, I think I’m starting to see what’s going on... And maybe you can see some parallels in your life in regards to whatever it is you’re learning or working on… 

Since I started seminary three years ago, I’ve been in ‘student’ mode. I didn’t grow up with Christianity in my home. I went to Catholic mass occasionally with my mom, but all I got there was a good whiff of incense and some lovely choir music (I tuned out and slept during the sermons and Bible readings). I knew when I entered this new vocational field of study in midlife, I’d be up in my head a lot because I was starting from square one. And I was right. 

I mean, it’s been great. And necessary. I’ve learned so (!) much and have been crazy inspired by my forebears in this world of Lutheran theology and Christianity. But because I’ve been strictly in student mode, a lot of my writing (though not all) has been a regurgitation of what I’ve been learning. 

And not that this is bad! This is part of the process. When we’re learning new things, we have to steal for at least a little while. I assure you, the stuff I’ve been regurgitating has been delicious going down. I’ve selected only the best stuff to chew on here. But nothing is as good coming out as it was going down (okay, I’ll stop the 🤮 metaphor now).

I hope it’s been good stuff, but it hasn’t really been… Mine. I haven’t yet embodied it.

Good writing comes from living in the world. It comes through living in your body, not so much your head. And this jaunt through seminary is a very heady part of this pastoral journey.

Along the way, I’ve lost my voice a bit. I’ve intentionally set my personal perspective down in order to make room for other perspectives. 

One of my favorite thinkers, Seth Godin, wrote the quote above a little while back and it really struck me.

As a seminarian, I’ve been doing my reading. (A ton... TON... of reading.) Now I’m seeing the connections a lot more than I did three years ago. And it’s amazing. 

I’ve trudged through the wisdom of the elders for a while (and will, of course, continue doing so), and I think I’m ready to take what I’ve gathered, get out of my head so much, and begin, as Seth suggested, making my own assertions.

For a few years, I’ve spent most of my time looking AT the thing I’ve been studying (pastoral theology). Now I’m being pulled to turn around and look out at my life FROM the thing I’ve been studying. 

In the beginning stages of anything - learning the piano, a new language, or how to click into your mountain bike pedals on a steep trail in South Lake Tahoe (yes, this one almost turned me into a paraplegic) - we begin in our heads. As we’re around the thing and we live with the thing and fail in the thing, it moves into our bodies (it becomes embodied) and eventually, we don’t even think about it. It just… Is. And we are changed.

Just writing this, I feel things start to move again.
We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll share more about this in the coming days. Until then…

Grace + Godspeed,
Jonas

1. Now, maybe you’ve been enjoying my work lately. I realize that a lot of this is just me. But I write this publicly to show that being a creative of any sort is hard emotional labor.