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Thoughts on Spirituality and the Vocation of Creative Writing J 26 “To the imagination, the sacred is self-evident”: Thoughts on Spirituality and the Vocation of Creative Writing J. Matthew Boyleston In 1630, a man of many gifts with a bright future at court donned the cloth and summarily disappeared into the English landscape. He lived quietly as a country parson with a desire to write poetry. Three centuries later another gifted man, recently ordained, walked into the wilds of north Wales to serve as a priest to the barren terrain and a hostile population – and, in doing so, to write out his great argument with the deus absconditus, the absent god. The first was George Herbert; the second, R.S. Thomas. Although so different, Herbert the great poet of the affirmation of God, Thomas the great poet of God’s negation, both poets, as so many before and after them, felt the Spirit’s dual call to the word – in priesthood as in poetry. My own starting thesis is built upon the profound pronouncement in the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10). I believe that poetry and fiction are ways that the Spirit searches all things, on earth and in heaven, regardless of whether the author is aware of the Spirit or not. I wish to explore this dual vocation: the great dance between the Spirit and the creative writer. Although few of the writers discussed in this essay actually took holy orders, the interplay between the worlds of religion and literature have produced much of what we consider the best and most moving poetry and fiction: The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, The Brothers Karamazov, the poetry of Chaucer, Donne, and Eliot, and the stories of Flannery O’Connor and G.K. Chesterton to name but a few. A Companion to Creative Writing, First Edition. Edited by Graeme Harper. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (c) 2013 Kogan Page Ltd. All Rights Reserved 394 J. Matthew Boyleston At the outset, I would like to be clear: this essay does not address writing whose sole purpose is to actively evangelize or convert, except to warn of the danger to which literature of this type is prone, the artistic death trap of propaganda. Rather, I am concerned with literature that understands that one may address, be led by, and con- front the Spirit through the unique position that makes literature what it is. This is not a scholarly treatise, nor a literary history of the influence of religion on literature; rather, I take the title of this volume literally – this essay should be a companion, a friend for those writers beginning to trust the Spirit in their own writings. Consider the Latin roots of companion, com, with and panis, bread. This essay should serve then as a bread-fellow: as I eat, I share my bread. In my own communion, the bread, the body of Christ, is the central act of our Spiritual devotion. It is the place where the eternal, the divine, becomes real in the flesh of this world. But perhaps messmate is an even better translation, for in this essay one will see much that is messy in the pursuit through literature of the Spiritual life. It is more of a grab bag of pointers I have found through my own reading and writing. I intend to build upon C.S. Lewis’s assertion that “to believe in the Incarnation at all is to believe that every mode of human excellence is implicit in His historical human character: poethood, of course, included” (3). Although I do not wish to doubt that direct poetic vision may be given by the Spirit – say in the manner of Blake – this essay will focus more deeply on the common experience the writer of creative work may feel when it comes to Spir- itual questions: what J.D. McClatchy, in a review of the work of Charles Wright, calls his poetry’s “double purpose: to describe those things not of which this world is made but by which it is seen, and then to use them to return to his beginnings” (Buckley 61). Because literature leads us deeper into the ultimate Spiritual reality, it is life- affirming and expresses its own belief in transcendence. After all, if nihilism and extreme renunciation of life truly afflicted a writer, would anything ever be written? The fact that there are books written, good and bad, true and untrue, is itself a miracle of the human capacity to heed the Spirit’s call. In a very real sense then, all literature is Spiritual. Spiritual literature should never be marginalized or ghettoized. In the best of regional literature, the very engagement with a particular place in a particular time is the key by which writers engage the universal. Spirituality is similar. It is personal and particular, but also orthodox and universal. Otherwise, we would all exist in our own solipsistic Spiritual bubbles in which no one would connect with our own personal Spiritual travels. Literature as a life-affirming action is a direct stay against the nihilism that tempts us. Auden is useful here: “In literature, vulgarity is preferable to nullity, just as grocer’s port is preferable to distilled water” (Dyers Hand, 5).When writers embrace nihilism in their poems, they work in direct contrast against the very nature of literature as well as their better interests. In this essay, I will not give particular ways to call the Spirit – after all, the Spirit comes at its own bidding; however, I present different (c) 2013 Kogan Page Ltd. All Rights Reserved Spirituality and the Vocation of Creative Writing 395 methods for the discipline required for the Spirit to manifest. In order to see this most clearly, I frame these methods using the Ten Commandments. I do not intend to produce a ten commandments of writing Spiritual poems and stories; rather, I use these ancient parameters to give us perspective and clarity and to help to keep us from casting the Spirit in our own image. I write this essay as I write my poems: trusting the Spirit, my ear, and the power of association. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” For all of its Spiritual trappings, literature is not an alternative scripture. Literature must be continually in service of the Spirit; however, long this inspiration (inspirare – breath; et spiritu sancti – the holy spirit) takes. However, as in so many aspects of the Spiritual life, being in service means mutual and subordinate “I/thou” relationship, to use Martin Buber’s phrase (56). The power of a poem such as “Song of Myself” comes from the way Whitman resists the poem’s reification as an alternative or secu- larized scripture. His message of Spiritual democracy is imparted through the received rhythms of the King James Bible: “and what I assume/ you shall assume/ or every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (Whitman 28). This is the main thrust behind T.S. Eliot’s proclamation that true art is not per- sonality. Too often young poets and novelists win awards and publish books because of a particular distinctiveness of voice. Voice is important, but only if it is supported on a foundation of craft and works within the inherent rhythms of one’s own language structure. One thinks of John the Baptist’s startling statement: He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30). Ultimately, the final goal of good art should be this. Through the direct recreation of an imaginative experience of the author, artistically told, one hopes for the reader to have his own experiences in relation to one’s art – not the exact experiences of the author. An author should wish that her work leads the Spirit to visit each reader individually, privately and personally. The key to avoiding an egocentric, false art is rooted in the theological doctrine of the Incarnation. Of all theological doctrines, none is as important to the issue of Spirituality and creative writing as is this. Religions which do not believe in an Incarnation have, at a deeply foundational level, an entirely different idea of the potential of art in this world. Simply put, the Incarnation allows us to believe that the Spirit and matter can exist within each other. God became man. The Spirit became flesh. In a real sense, the incarnation allows us to view the world as holy and as having deep Spiritual significance because God chose the matter he created in which to manifest himself. The stuff of art, words, colors, shapes and sounds, vibrate with the holiness of the Spiritual realm, as do we ourselves. As Rev. R.C. Moberly beautifully explains in the transformative volume Lux Mundi (1889): “The religion, which attempts to be rid of the bodily side of things spiritual, sooner or later loses hold of all reality. Pure spiritualism, however noble the aspiration, however living the energy (c) 2013 Kogan Page Ltd. All Rights Reserved 396 J. Matthew Boyleston with which it starts, always has ended at last, and will always end, in evanescence” (200). How then does a writer write in relation to God without creating a false idol out of his own creation? Creative writing should be an act of naming the order that God made. In this action, writers fulfill our original calling to be namers of the world created by God: whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof (Gen. 2:19). However, writers are not limited to naming created order.
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