[spaces] – The blank page and the ear of God

Posted by Michael Biornstad on Nov 24, 2011 in Academy | 0 comments

Through creative writing I am learning the awful profundity of the Word of God, the Logos, the Word Made Flesh: each utterance, each black mark on a white page, is a participation in the Imago Dei. Though I do not yet fully understand this reality, each time I sit down with a pen in hand and a fresh page before me, I am aware that choosing to act in this way is a kind of “Amen” or “Hallelujah.” As I give precedence to my suppressed and denied faculties of creativity and intuition, I find that my faith and belief are deeply entrenched.

The page has become the ear of God and my black marks are kinds of prayers. For years I have been asking: what is faith, what do I actually believe, and what does it mean to believe what I do? Creative writing was the last place I expected to find the beginnings of answers to these questions. Writing creatively has become a way to pray in doubt, and to know what depths or breadths my faith has penetrated.

What compels me about creative writing is the same as what compels me about an empty space. A bare shelf, an open room, a table-top, windowsill, or wall all pose an irresistible challenge: to find the perfect arrangement of paraphernalia. Often taking months and several editions, little is more satisfying to me than compiling the right combination of artwork, shells, vessels, and books to evoke aesthetic pleasure, personality, and hospitality. It is how I cope with fear, stress, and insecurity; I create spaces which assuage. I create a place that coaxes honesty and vulnerability, is comfortable but does not engender laziness, a place accommodating of verve, creativity, and rigor. I create home.

Considering that every open and available space in my home includes books in its aesthetic and emotive arrangements, I should not have been surprised to find that a blank page compels my mind as an empty shelf does my eye. The page begs to be filled with perfect and accurate combinations of paragraphs, sentences, words and syllables. Deduction and argumentation are wholly unsuited to this pursuit. Creativity, intuition, and dreaming are the gateways to language engendering ideas, metaphors, images, characters, and plots.

While empty physical space appeals to my visual and tactile sensibilities, the page appeals to my spiritual sensibilities. The page and all its possibilities has become another kind of home. A place where my mind and intuition commune and where God, ever listening, is saying: come, be at rest, be yourself, be known, be safe.

Heather Dennis