Today is the last Sunday of February. It also happens to be my birthday, so I thought it was a good time for another edition of Through the Cracks. Welcome one and all.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the act of creating, thinking about how confusing it is and how much it hurts sometimes. Today, I’m taking a moment to think about these not-often-spoken-about parts of the creative act, to ponder the question: what does it mean when creation equals confusion, when “progress” doesn’t look like or feel as we expect.
I would love to hear your thoughts after you read my story; I have been surprised by my own reactions and would love to hear your story as well. Maybe you’ve felt the same way, maybe you’ve heard a similar story from someone else. Feel free to share the newsletter to others. And, as always, thanks for reading on!
Creation Confusion: Fear Comes First
How do you react when you start to see some spindles of light through those broken cracks of your life? Me, not so well, apparently. The current renovation project to transform my physical kitchen has taught me that truth about creating, and so many other things.
Now, you may say, what does a kitchen renovation have to do with finding the beautiful through the cracks in life. Isn’t that work all about correcting those cracks…the cracks in walls, in floors, in failing cabinetry and counters? This kind of correcting is not in a kintsugi kind of way. As I approach the end of the physical renovation, all those cracks are GONE and they are not filled with gold. No, not at all. Nothing of what was remains. The cracks have been replaced; they have not become part of this new beauty that lies before me.
I did not expect to experience fear in the face of beauty, but I have. I did not anticipate that a supposed-simple upgrade to my kitchen would scream at me in metaphors and images about the state of my soul each and every day of the process. I did not know that I had become so accustomed to ugliness that beauty would shake me to my core. I did not expect that the project would setup the siren call of transformation, that it would force me to change, my deepest sense of self, even more than I have transformed the places where I store food and dishes.
Creation Confusion: Then Comes Disorientation
Honestly, I barely know where the refrigerator is anymore. I turn the wrong direction every time I cross through the door. The kitchen is not that big — I shouldn’t be able to get lost. And yet, I do. That reality shines a bright spotlight on how the automatic takes over our lives, how we stop living with intention, with consciousness, and learn a route through space that just helps us get through without thinking, without seeing.
It took me all day last Sunday to walk into my almost-completely-renovated kitchen, open the first drawer, line it with matching shelf liner, and fill it with the cutlery and tools that had occupied the dining room table for the last couple of weeks. The next day would be the last day of the renovation project; painting, tile sealing, and a few floor repairs would happen. As of Monday evening, with the exception of the installation of one appliance, the kitchen would become my territory again. And, honestly, I was terrified.
Creation, the Alpha and the Omega
In that moment, I had no idea how to live in this new kitchen, this kitchen I have worked towards, and lovingly designed. Each and every piece of its renovation represents years of dreaming, choosing, quoting, fretting, waiting…a process full of indecision and false starts. I do not make big decisions easily, and to me, this was bigger than big.
In the end, it has been an act of creation on a major scale, for me, like planets not like poetry or prose. And, through these weeks of every fear and emotion imaginable, I have realized that I have never before thought of creation in all its human dimensions…the move from orientation (the status quo, which in my case, was a sadly ugly and dilapidated kitchen), to disorientation (or chaos, as in the case of a home renovation), to re-orientation (a state I hope to achieve some day when I can remember where the refrigerator is).1
There is a version of the Creation story crafted by Rabbi Isaac ben Luria, whose midrash on Gen 1:1-5 teaches that creation is made up of stages, first emptying, then shattering, and finally retrieving the pieces, even when G-d is doing the creating. In Luria’s mystical retelling, G-d creates the light that dispels the darkness and places it carefully in ten vessels sent forth to light the world. But those vessels shatter, the light is too strong. Then G-d creates beings (that would be us) to go forth and collect the pieces of light that are lost, as we become the new vessels for that magnificent light of creation.
Luria’s creation story is heart and soul of my understanding of life, and of the creative process. Until I read Luria, I had always thought of the act of Creation as a moment when all is made blissfully whole, the act of making a something out of nothing, an arrival at completeness and peace—the book is done, the painting is finished, the song is written. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This renovation project led me to an understanding deep in my body that destruction is at the heart of creation, and of the pain that comes with the process of that creation. I had never thought about how G-d might have felt, watching the vessels shatter. I had never considered the moments (maybe millennia) in which the Creator had to adjust their plan because the first design didn’t work. I never considered the shear terror, the massive emptiness, the deep uncertainty of it all—the holy sadness of destruction, even when you know how to build again. Not until now.
Destabilizing and Dislocation Equals Creation
Now I see that destructive power for what it is, something that cleanses, yes, but also something that creates by destabilizing and rearranging. Nothing is ever as simple, or as complete, as we believe it to be. Creating is never without discomfort and fear, even when it is beauty that we seek to find.
Thanks to the last three weeks of renovation in my physical space, I now know some truths more deeply, ideas that were just ideas before. With the realization of beauty, of wholeness, of light, comes fear and confusion, because my body, that container for my heart and my soul, no longer recognizes where it stands. I recognize the force of a new creation that is so strong that it shatters the containers created for it, I recognize the humble energy that spends its days picking up the shattered pieces and, in a second act of Creation, devotes a life to rebuilding and rearranging and recovering. And I know in my bones that we were created to sift through the cracks the broken places to find the beauty..to find and gather and magnify the light.
And so, on this, my natal day, the day of my own creation, I have a new understanding of that word, the process, the act itself. Dislocation is not the opposite of creation; it is actually a synonym. Without discomfort, with shattering, there is no creation, there is no light. Not a bad pair of birthday presents, deeper self-understanding and a new, beautiful kitchen.
Usually, in this space, I give some suggestions about other things to listen to, see, or read on the topic I’ve just offered, but honestly, I’m out of ideas at the moment.
In the next few editions of Through the Cracks, I’ll be releasing some new music recordings and beginning to consider the role of our physical senses in our transformation journeys. I hope you’ll come back! I hope you will spread the word to your friends. And thank you for reading.
I am using a trilevel analysis of human transformation given voice by biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann in The Spirituality of the Psalms (2001), or as stated by Fr. Richard Rohr in his book The Wisdom Pattern (2020) as order, disorder, and reorder. As Rohr says, “Order, by itself, normally wants to eliminate any disorder and diversity creating a narrow and cognitive rigidity in both people and systems. Disorder, by itself, closes us off from any primal union, meaning, and eventually even sanity in people and systems. Reorder, or transformation of people and systems, happens when both are seen to work together” – from the preface to the revised edition, 8.
Happy Birthday!