THE BLACKBIRD LETTERS #2: WRITING AS IMITATION of GOD
Inspired by Wallace Stevens’ poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” writer-friends Lore Ferguson Wilbert and Aarik Danielsen write The Blackbird Letters. This series of letters, penned to each other but opened for anyone to read, will look at thirteen aims or angles of writing. Letters will appear every other week, alternating between Lore and Aarik’s websites. This is the second dispatch.
Dear Aarik,
Last week was Holy Week, and while the world heaved and groaned, and echoed the halls of hallowed places with shouts of “He is risen,” and “Indeed,” Nate and I hauled wood posts and pierced our hands with an acre of wire fencing. Our Easter best was sweat and grime and we have the scars to prove it. It felt hollow, in some ways, to spend the whole weekend outside, building a fence. But there is holy in the ordinary, too, I know you know this.
I am tasked with penning this letter to you about writing as imitation of God, as in the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It is one thing to come and another to become. A coming king doesn’t change who he is, he shouts it. He proclaims it. He sends a dispatch throughout the kingdom so the people can prepare. Not Jesus though, Jesus became. Made like us, as we were once made like him. No hurrah, no fanfare, no royal proclamations.
The essential work of the writer, I think, is to become. It is not to announce or to proclaim or to even convince. It is to settle down in sameness, to put on the flesh of the reader, hear with their ears, see with their eyes, to take on the weights that bear them down, and suffer with them in their sadness and grief. It is incarnate work, putting flesh on syllables and grammar and words with very little meaning on their own.
You know our home is on a river and because of the layout of our land, our front yard is essentially the front yard of two of our neighbors, too. I’ve been fussing and fretting for months now that once we put this fence in, we’d be obstructing their view.
Our work is two-fold: one, to care for our neighbors, and two, to live on the land we own, to work within its boundaries, establish it, tend it, and cause it to flourish. And these two aims seem in direct conflict with one another. Leaving our land untouched keeps the neighbors’ view unobstructed. Planting or tilling or fencing it at all obstructs their view by degrees.
In Wendell Berry’s poem titled, How to be a Poet, he penned the words, “Stay away from anything / that obscures the place it is in.” This is the incarnational work of the writer. And, as it turns out, the landowner.
Our work, if we will accept it and all it brings, is to so fully vest ourselves into the work that when it is finished, we, the writer, become nearly invisible. The work is the art, not the artist. Jesus did this when he took on flesh and became like us. Only three years of public ministry on earth and then he left, leaving the Church to continue the work he began. He, the whole point of the gospel, did not obscure the place he came to. He enhanced it. He made it better. He began its work to completion. It would not have worked without him, he was and is essential to it, but the real work is the work of love: Creation imitating God with love, God loving creation, an endless cycle of love on display. Real artistry. Real art.
My great hope for our yard is to plant river birches and red twig dogwoods, a few low-lying evergreens, tall grasses, and wild bursts of perennials all season long. Climbing roses on the trellises and perhaps a swing from one of the giant willows along the riverside. My aim is to frame the view beyond our yard with structure from our yard. This is me imitating Jesus who came incarnate into the world and left it better than he found it.
This is the work of the writer, too, when we come to a blank page or open assignment, to ask the question: How do I become not the one the world needs to see, but the one who makes a way for them to see something greater than I’ll ever be? You do this every Friday when you share your Friday Five when you share beauty with your readers. Or every time a new column goes up on Fathom or elsewhere. You become invisible, the writing almost effortless, so easy to read, so full of taste and rhythm and cadence, the reader can’t help but be compelled by what you say. But then you get out of the way of the work, so that the real glory can be experienced. You know that it’s not about you, not ultimately, but about the reader and the world and God and creation and love.
I’m glad we’re doing this, friend. I need regular reminders of why we do what we do and this helps.
Talk soon,
Lore