Thoughts from Culhwch

From time to time I get this incredible desire to write. And I don’t mean that I just really want to write, it’s something much. much deeper. It’s like a fundamental part of who I am cries out and won’t be silenced unless I write something. It’s like if I don’t stop what I’m doing some huge part of me will atrophy or simply stop working. I’ll become paralyzed if I don’t write. Sometimes, it’s different. Sometimes I feel like my calling is to write, like I need to put some really profound message into words, to articulate it for others to hear, as if not my life depended on, but another’s. The problem is, I rarely find anything to write that’s as urgent as the urgency I feel to write. I mean, so long as I’m writing to or for a faceless other, I don’t seem to have anything to say.

Maybe this is the same thing I feel in larger groups of people. After a certain point, I just lose the ability to think of anything good to say. Or if I don’t know somebody really well, I feel like I have no grounds on which to reach out to them.

I don’t always feel like that though, like I need to say something but don’t have the content yet. Sometimes I feel ok, like I can carry on a conversation about anything and nothing and it really doesn’t make a difference at all. Not that I’m feeling un-attached when I feel that freedom for superfluous conversation, or that such conversations are superfluous, but mainly that I don’t have to think it through, and that whatever goes is somehow ok. I think most people get to know me on this level, they see me as probably rather reserved, not giving away deep parts of myself, but then occasionally get these glimpses of the absurd that are my comfortability. I have a feeling that they either think that I’m completely bizarre or am hiding something.

But then, and these are the most rare, and to be treasured, there are times I feel completely able to share myself. Completely free to talk about my experience of being human, frail, sinful, redeemed, and hopeful. I love those moments. Those are moments when I know I am with friends, brothers and sisters, family in deeper than familial ways.

I guess my challenge as a writer is to be able to do just this sort of thing, to talk about exactly what life is like, what hope is, and where all this heading, but with those whom I do not yet know that well. But in light of what I have just written, I think this kind of sharing is a little like an invitation to join a family, to be my friend, to encourage and be encouraged. That must be something important.

I too often try to write important things, and nearly always fail. But when I just try to say what’s on my mind to my friends, I find myself writing things that are really important. If I am to write beyond my circle, though, then, perhaps, I must begin to write in the form of an invitation to join my circle. What do you think?