On the Need to be Known
Contemplate and Create
By Alex Sosler
Trappist Monks of the Abbey of Gethsemani. Photo: Don Sniegowski
I am a striver. This is a confession more than a brag. Call it Type-A or an Enneagram *whatever.* I’m disciplined, regimented, passionate to create something good. And I want whatever good thing I create to go out into the world and do something. I want my work to be known. I want to be known.
Some of that is natural. Would I rather have people buy something of mine or ignore it? Buy, please. I work hard on a book or article, so I want people to read it. It’s only right. Thanks for being here.
Some of that is naturally self-centered. The thing I want people to be reading is my book, the person I want them to know is me, the sales I want to be mine.
I’ve found that most self-aware artists wrestle with this tension—not wanting to be forgotten and, also, not wanting to be a self-promotion-y, sales-y dweeb.
I recently had a stay at the Abbey of Gethsemani, monastic home of Thomas Merton—better known there as Father Louie. There’s something about a break in the “grind” to enter the silence that elicits reflection. It had been a busy year of writing for me, and things have been going decently well. I’m not famous by any means. I am not a known or desired entity. I am no brand. But I got published in a few new places, won awards I never thought I’d win. My striving was paying off.
One morning, I went to browse the small library and saw a book that caught my attention. It was a collection of Merton’s writing to and on writing called Echoing Silence. Seemed fitting.
One afternoon, I sat outside in the Kentucky heat underneath the shade of an oak tree and flipped through it. I was about thirty feet from Fr. Louis’ grave, so I figured the proximity would bring powerful insight.
In Merton’s self-reflection, he wrote things like, “So too, in my writing, my persistent desire to be somebody, which is really so stupid. I know I don't really need it or want it, and yet I keep going after it. Not that I should stop writing or publishing—but I should not let myself be flattered and cajoled into the business, letting myself be used, making statements and declarations, ‘being there,’ ‘appearing.’”
So stupid. And like he’s reading my diary.
Or, “If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men—you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.”
Convicting. True. I was reflecting on a few proposals that were turned down by bigger publishers, because they weren’t “popular” enough. It wasn’t written for the “right” audience. I don’t even know what that means. I was thinking about what it means to “sell” a book, and I couldn’t distinguish the difference between selling myself to make a watered-down, kitschy book and writing one that was “authentically me.” I guess the question was all wrong. The question that should drive my writing is one of audience—that’s true. It just turns out I was approaching the question with the wrong audiences in mind.
One more that caught my attention:
This then is what it means to seek God perfectly: to withdraw from illusion and pleasure, from worldly anxieties and desires, from the works that God does not want, from a glory that is only human display; to keep my mind free from confusion in order that my liberty may be always at the disposal of His will; to entertain silence in my heart and listen for the voice of God; to cultivate an intellectual freedom from the images of created things in order to receive the secret contact of God in obscure love; to love all men as myself; to rest in humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition with other men; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions that I have no obligation to carry; to have a will that is always ready to fold back within itself and draw all the powers of the soul down from its deepest center to rest in silent expectancy for the coming of God, poised in tranquil and effortless concentration upon the point of my dependence on Him; to gather all that I am, and have all that I can possibly suffer or do or be, and abandon them all to God in the resignation of a perfect love and blind faith and pure trust in God, to do His will.
And then to wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion of all things.
Bonum est prestolari cum silentio salutare Dei.
("It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of God.")
Here I realized what I was missing: creativity starts in contemplation. I often sit at my computer and strive—I work, I reason, I read, I conjure, I edit. It’s my work done my way. And I’m efficient at it.
And that’s actually the problem. I think creativity is my doing, my work, my time.
But in reality, God invites a different way of creativity that starts in silence. Another contemplative, Teresa of Avila, described prayer as staying beside God, with all our thoughts stilled. “We should occupy ourselves, if we can, by gazing at Him who is gazing at us…” Gaze at him who is gazing at us. A beautiful line—and at the heart of creativity.
At the end of my creative process, I want to share what I’ve seen. But I forget that I am seen at the same time. That I am beloved. That I should stay a while. Too often, I’m rushed to share when I should stay. The good portion is sitting and staying.
Sharing after staying is how I can write for God—not for others or myself, not to be known or for sales. Just staying with God, sharing what I see. Sometimes, refraining from sharing, because sharing isn’t the point.
Merton gives me a posture of receptivity and gratitude. “What do we have that we have not received?” the apostle Paul wrote (1 Cor 4.7). The answer, rhetorically, is nothing. I don’t have a damn thing. I receive in everything. Everything is gift. So, I shouldn’t hoard what’s been received, either. Just share—with openness and thankfulness. My insights and words aren’t mine to begin with. Your poetry or pottery, painting or prints are not yours either. It’s God’s to share. I don’t need to be anxious about it. I can be concerned with the gaze on me. Let God do what He wants to do with me and my creations.
Contemplate and create. Contemplate and create. Share and be silent.
Alex Sosler is an Associate Professor of Bible and Ministry at Montreat College and an Assisting Priest at Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville. He is the author of A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation and Learning to Love, as well as co-author of The Artistic Vision and editor of Theology and the Avett Brothers.