Many times, when I write, I feel as if I’m speaking from a voice that’s not my own. In the chapel, for example, when I pray, I occasionally pull out my notebook and more or less transcribe a message that I listen for, word by word, until some reflection on the spiritual life materializes in front of me. It’s a gift that I’m thankful for, certainly, though one that I don’t fully understand. Indeed, it’s been the source of new and simple insights for me – or, more often than not, a reminder of the lessons that I know are true but that I stubbornly refuse to learn.
But I have to admit that, in the midst of all this “transcribing,” I can feel lost in a world of abstractions. My personal journals, too, are filled with nonsensical ramblings (“Well, the tables have turned – or have we turned the tables with our own hands and arms?”) and heady meditations on slippery topics like sadness and the search for truth. It all gets a bit repetitive and rather claustrophobic; it’s the same old tight quarters, compressed with the same old thoughts.
There was a phrase I used once, in a little piece called “Portrait of a Girl.” In talking about the girl (who was simply a product of my imagination), I said: “Everything that touched her was vague and mute and on the point of flying away.” I wonder if, in describing the girl, I wasn’t in fact describing myself, or at least a perception people have of me. A girl made up of abstractions – is that who I am? Am I a mere amalgamation of intangible parts, nothing vivid or concrete or real about me? The subjects my writing tends to dwell on, and the dreamy sentiments I share, might suggest as much.
But, lo and behold, I am a real girl, and often a supremely un-lofty one. I’m a girl who woke up this morning and brushed her teeth while listening to Gladys Knight sing “Midnight Train to Georgia.” I’m a girl who, after brushing her teeth, tried to clear her sinuses by squirting a blend of horseradish and cayenne pepper up her nose (it’s not as awful as it sounds), and who then fretted over how in the heck she was going to get the dirt stains out of her white tennis shoes. I’m a girl who, as the day wore on, walked her dog, talked with her neighbors, arrived late to church for the thousandth time, got stuck in traffic, and reminisced about burning a pizza in the oven last night, all before preparing to go to work.
And sometimes, I just want to write about these ordinary things. Sometimes, I don’t want to write explicitly about the things of GOD. Not because I don’t love Him, or because I don’t ultimately want my writing to lead others to Him – I do – but, in my opinion, excessive religiosity runs the risk of feeling tedious, flat, and overly abstract. As though the writer’s personality has been buried and all the messages sound the same.
So, I trust you’ll understand that, from time to time, I just want to return to this simple voice, which is mine. There is probably less mystery and less wisdom in it; there is less in the way of escaped profundities and accidental revelations. But I’m desperate, I think, to assert my own identity – and to be connected to life and to the world. Yes, the ordinary, outside world, with its pop culture references, independent thinking, and strange collection of crazy and commonplace moments.
I hope that you can relate to this voice, and to this celebration of being merely human. And when getting tangled up in a web of abstractions becomes a little tiring, perhaps you’ll want to turn instead to a narration of life as a (relatively) normal girl from Akron, Ohio, perceives it to be.