Bittersweet

One of those words you hear often- it refers to chocolate, Project Runway contestants use it to describe their experiences on the show, and paradoxically, it's two different meanings wrapped up in one word.

Reading Shauna Niequist's newest book, Bittersweet, I realized how much life echoes this sentiment. Things are bitter- nothing will ever always be going the way that we want it to- but things will also be sweet- better than we could have imagined or beyond our wildest dreams. It's the bitter sip of coffee with the hyped rush of caffeine afterwards. I'll have more schoolwork than I can ever complete but that will be the moment when I feel the most creative and into whatever I'm creating at the moment.

It's a matter of expectation, what we think should happen when. It reminds me of Caitlin's and my jaunt to the beach yesterday, a holiday from our lives that lasted a Sunday afternoon. How we talked about writing a children's book together that will actually give the message that life is hard, but how you have to find the things that will make you give you life (a Bittersweet version for kids, if you will). How I need to create in order to feel like me again- the day that I spent going to SCRAP and working on my science fair project and my Ms. Frizzle costume last week (I know Kate, I'm actually 13 years old) was my favorite day of vacation. It was life-giving in the midst of getting everything done that I needed to do. It made me think that I'm in a different season of life now- one that I don't need to be the social coordinator or know what's going on when- that is not going to give me peace. What is will be creating something. That's why I'm applying to an arts and arts education program at Columbia.

And that's why this particular passage from the "love song for fall" chapter in Shauna's book resonates with me.

We create because we were made to create, having been made in the image of God, whose first role was Creator. He was and is a million different things, but in the beginning, he was a creator. That means something for us, I think. We were made to be the things that he is: forgivers, redeemers, second chance-givers, truth-tellers, hope-bringers. And we were certainly, absolutely, made to be creators.

If you were made to create, you won't feel whole and healthy and alive until you do. My husband is a pianist and songwriter, and you can set a timer by his need to play and create. If it's been too long, I can feel it in our house, like something gone bad in the refrigerator or a dead mouse in the walls. He was made to play, to sing, to create with sounds and notes and words, and when he doesn't, he's not himself.

I know there are some artists who create around the clock, who feel art coursing through their very veins, who can go without sleep and food and human interaction for days while they revel in the rich universe of their own minds. But I think those artists are very rare, or maybe that they're fibbing. I think for most of us, it's hard work, fraught with fear and self-consciousness, and that it's much easier to make dinner or mow the lawn or reply to emails...

And we do it (create) because it makes us feel aware and alive and created for a purpose more than almost anything else in our lives. There are a zillion things I don't do well, a thousand things I do just because I'm human and I have to, and when I do them I certainly don't feel any spark of having been created for something very specific and tender. I don't feel anything when I do the dishes or when I drive or when I buy groceries.

But every once in a while, when I write, I feel that feeling of a thousand slender threads coming together, strands of who I've been and who I'm becoming, the long moments at the computer and the tiny bits of courage, the middle of the night prayers and the exact way God made me, not wrong or right, just me. I feel like I'm doing what I came to do, in the biggest sense. That's why I write, because sometimes every once in a while, I feel entirely at home in the universe, a welcome and wonderful feeling. I could cry at that feeling, because it happens so rarely. Doing the hard work of writing makes me feel like I'm paying my rent on a cosmic level, doing the thing that I can do to make the world a little better decorated. Writing wakes me up, lights me on fire, opens my eyes to the things that I can never see and feel when I'm hiding under the covers, cowering and consumed with my own failures and fears...

Get up. Create like you're training for a marathon, methodically, day by day. Learn your tricks, find a friend, leave the dirty dishes in the sink for a while. This is your chance to become what you believe deep in your secret heart you might be. You are an artist, a guide, a prophet. You are a storyteller, a visionary, the Pied Piper himself. Do the work, learn the skills, and make art, because of what the act of creation will create in you.

So, you made it this far. Read Shauna's book, which will further ignite the spark of creativity that you've been hiding dormant. Tell me what your creative work you hope to undertake in the comments section of the blog (within the next week by midnight, 11/8) and I'll consider your entry for a giveaway of the book (signed too!). Hope to hear from you soon!