A Brief Passage on the Travails of Creation

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=250 BGCOLOR="#BBBBBB" TEXT="#080000"> <div> newsletter sign-up:  <A HREF="newsletter_sign_up.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Newsletter sign up"><U>click here</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="mailto:wmeades@gmail.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:wmeades@gmail.com"><U>EMAIL WES</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="https://practicalspirituality.wordpress.com/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="https://practicalspirituality.wordpress."><U>Wes's Practical Spirituality Blog</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.twitter.com/WMEades" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.twitter.com/WMEades"><U>Follow Wes on Twitter</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wesley-M-Eades-PhD/300696692112?ref=ts" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wesley-M-E"><U>Wes's FaceBook Page</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Practical Spirituality"><U>WMEades.com Home Page</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.counseling-waco.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.counseling-waco.com"><U>Counseling-Waco Home Page</U></A></div> <div> ___________________________</div> <div> <A HREF="aboutme.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wes Eades, PhD"><U>Wes Eades, PhD</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="paige.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Paige Cunningham, LCSW"><U>Paige Cunningham, LCSW</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="eric.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Eric Meyer, PhD"><U>Eric Meyer, PhD</U></A></div> <div> ___________________________</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id518.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Making an Appointment"><U>Making an Appointment</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="policies.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Policies"><U>Policies</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="cost.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cost of Counseling"><U>Cost of Counseling</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="helpfularticles.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Helpful Articles"><U>Helpful Articles</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="directions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Directions to Office"><U>Directions to Office</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="booksummaries.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Book Summaries"><U>Book Summaries</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="counseling.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pastoral Counseling"><U>Pastoral Counseling</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="premarriage.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Premarriage Counseling"><U>Premarriage Counseling</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="enneagram.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Enneagram"><U>The Enneagram</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="faith.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="When Faith Doesnt Work"><U>When Faith Doesn't Work</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.centexintergroup.org/schedule/schedule_local.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.centexintergroup.org/schedule"><U>Alcoholics Anonymous Mtgs</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.theravive.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.theravive.com"><U><IMG SRC="83da03c0.jpg" border=0 width="160" height="60" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#DDDDDD" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>In her novel, </I><I><U>Absolute Truths </U></I><I>, Susan Howatch offers this fascinating conversation between a minister and a sculptor as they view a recently completed work.  The sculpture is of the hands of another minister, folded in prayer.  The passage can be found on pages 376-377 of the 1994 edition of the book.</I></div> <bR> <div> This was evidently the right thing to say.  She decided to confide in me.  “I always wanted to do those hands of his,” she said, “but I could never see the right way to present them.  Then about a year ago they began to haunt me.  I dreamed about them, thought of them night and day – until finally I saw how they had to be done.”</div> <bR> <div>             “And after that did everything go smoothly?”</div> <bR> <div>             “Good God, no!  Quite the reverse.”  She sighed before adding:  “Creation has to be the greatest pleasure in the universe, but it can be pretty damned harrowing when the work’s in process.”</div> <bR> <div>             I gestured towards the hands.  “You never thought of giving up?”</div> <bR> <div>             “Don’t be ridiculous!  When things go wrong I don’t chuck in the towel,” she said, caressing the hands again with her forefinger.  “I just slave harder than ever to make everything come right.”  She ran her forefinger down the back of the left hand and around into the hidden area at the base of the palm.  “Making everything come right,” she said.  “That’s what it’s all about.  No matter how many disasters happen, no matter how many difficulties I encounter, I can’t rest until I’ve brought order out of chaos and made everything come right.”  She moved dreamily around the plinth.  The caressing hand seemed almost to impart life.  I half expected the sculpted hands to unclasp themselves in response to her touch. </div> <bR> <div>             “Of course I made a lot mistakes,” she was saying.  “I turned down various blind alleys and had to rework everything to get back on course.  But that’s normal.  You can’t create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog – you can’t create without pain.  It’s all part of the process.  It’s in the nature of things.”</div> <bR> <div>              Suddenly she swiveled to face me.  “You theologians talk a lot about creation,” she said, “but as far as I can see none of you know the first damn thing about it.  God didn’t create the world in seven days and then sit back and say:  ‘Gee whiz, that’s great!’  He created the first outlines of his project to end all projects and he said: ‘Yes, that’s got a lot of potential but how the hell do I realize it without making a first-class balls-up?’  And then the real hard work began.”</div> <bR> <div>             “And still continues.  Theologians don’t believe God withdrew from the world after the first creative blast and forgot about it.”</div> <bR> <div>             “Of course he couldn’t forget!  No creator can forget!  If the blast-off’s successful you’re hooked, and once you’re hooked you’re inside the work as well as outside it, it’s part of you, you’re welded to it, you’re enslaved, and that’s why it’s such bloody hell when things go adrift.  But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because you’re chained to the bloody thing, it’s absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess – but it’s agony, agony, agony – while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world – and that’s the creative process which so few people understand.  It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope, and indescribable sort of . . . well, it’s love, isn’t it?  There’s no other word for it.  You love the work and you suffer with it and always – always – you’re slaving away against all the odds to made everything come right.”</div> <bR> <div>             “It doesn’t matter.”  I moved to the counter to join her.  “And when the work’s finally finished,” I said, “does every step of the creation make sense?  All the pain and slog and waste and mess – how do you reconcile yourself to that?  Is every disaster finally justified?”</div> <bR> <div>             “Every step I take – every bit of clay I ever touch – they’re all there in the final work.  If they hadn’t happened, then this” – she gestured to the sculpture – “wouldn’t exist.  In fact they had to happen for the work to emerge as it is.  So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears – everything has meaning.  I give it meaning.  I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>