Just a Draft

It’s just a draft. It’s finished, but not completed. Someone once said of art that a piece is never done, it just ends at an interesting moment. Looking at the draft, I see a piece that’s reached an interesting moment, but there’s so much more to do.

The draft has a beginning, middle and end. It has characters, a plot, and many themes. I should celebrate all of that, but there’s more to the characters than what I’ve written, the plot has more twists and turns than I understand, and I think I know what the story is about, but themes keep showing up and demanding my attention.

I guess this draft has more to teach me than just how to write. Like it, I have a life story that I think I understand. It’s one with twists and turns that leave me questioning my life’s purpose and whether it has a theme at all. There are specific moments in my story when I can look back and see myself as if a character in a novel, but, like those in the draft, I realize there’s more to each of those characters than I’ll ever fully understand - there’s the boy driving away from the hospital with all his father’s possessions in a tied-up garbage bag who wonders how to be a man, the young man who has his son on his lap and no idea what it means to be a father, and the boy putting on a plastic collar in the mirror before his ordination shaking his head in disbelief, and the successful chaplain tripping over his academic robes in England wondering if he’ll ever find his home, to name a few of my characters. You, I’m sure, have many characters of your own. 

Doing the work is not easy. Whether creating a novel or a life, it’s a continuous effort that never ends. It requires showing up, or getting your ass in the chair, as one writer colorfully describes it. We also need a willingness to go where the story and characters lead. There will be interesting moments that allow us to pause , but then there will be more work to do. We’re all works-in-progress, and that can be as frustrating as it can be comforting. 

As I crawl from my therapist’s office, I can at least take comfort in one thing: I’m just a draft. We all are.

Not Much of a Carpenter

I awakened with the giddiness of a child on his first day of summer vacation. Filled with memories of playing in my brother’s workshop when I was young, I went to the hardware store to purchase all I would need to construct a trash container at our mountain house. Over coffee, I made my plans and figured out what I needed and the order in which things should be done. Now, I just needed to pull it off. That fact is, I’m not much of a carpenter, but that’s not the point.

I set up a workstation on the deck and stumbled my way through cutting the supports. After correcting some measurements, I attached the supports, then put on the siding. Building things is harder than I remembered, and I marveled at my friends who are accomplished carpenters throughout the project. By the time I got to the lid, I was eager to finish the project and rushed through the final stages. In the end, I pulled it off. Anyone who looks closely could see countless mistakes. As I put away my tools, it was clear I wasn’t much of a carpenter, but that’s not the point.

My experience building the container is not unlike my efforts to live a life of faith. I awaken every morning with high hopes and spend time “getting ready” before beginning my day. I make plans, but either the day itself or my scattered heart usually gets in the way. Mistakes are made and I need to correct them, it seems, by the minute. Determined, I push on. Some days I make it through because of sheer stubbornness.  Some days take less effort. Whether a day feels like a disaster and isn’t so bad, I’m can always see I’m not much of a carpenter, but that’s not the point. 

I can get lost in comparing my work to those who are accomplished, those who seem to be able to live a spiritual life effortlessly, but that never helps. I can look closely and only see my mistakes, but that will just make me want to give up. Instead, I need to see that I showed up, cared enough to try. Even though I’m not be much of a carpenter, that’s the point.

Split Logs

He was a friend of a friend, but, after years of meeting on Friday mornings in a men’s spiritual support group, he became a friend of my own. Well-traveled, he spoke of terrain I had not yet reached, described views I had not yet seen. As if standing on the side of the trail clapping his hands, he encouraged me to travel on, to see within what I couldn’t see on my own. 

“You can do this.”

“You can rise up and carry on.”

           “God loves you more than you know.”

                        “If you don’t believe me, read the Bible.”

Today, I received word he died, and my thoughts are not only of my appreciation for his friendship but my dismay over letting our opposing political views come between us. Like a wedge in a log, his love and my hatred for the same person spit us apart, and I sit here this morning mourning not only his death but the lost days of friendship. 

The things which divide us seem to have overtaken the things which unite us - as neighbors, as Christians, as Americans, as citizens of the world. How you choose to respond to the pandemic, which news channel you watch, how you worship, if you worship, what state or region of the country you come from, what school or team you root for . . . the wedges to split us apart seem endless. Maybe it’s always been this way, but it seems worse than ever. 

Now, in all my self-righteous indignation, I sit on a Friday morning alone. It must be that way this morning, but it didn’t have to be for the last two years. What a silly and unnecessary loss.