{"id":2811,"date":"2016-01-08T12:54:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T19:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/carynriswold\/?p=2811"},"modified":"2016-01-08T12:57:45","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T19:57:45","slug":"a-big-magic-believer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/carynriswold\/2016\/01\/a-big-magic-believer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Big Magic Believer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"caryn<\/a>Some people would say that because I\u2019m a theologian I already embrace magical thinking (i.e., all religion = magical thinking).<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert has me embracing big magic in a whole new way this year.<\/p>\n

I got her newest book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear<\/a><\/em>, for Christmas and have made it part of my morning reading and writing routine a few times in the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a key paragraph from pages 34-35:<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas<\/strong>. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us<\/strong> \u2013 albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest.<\/strong> And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human\u2019s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gilbert embeds this in a story she tells about an idea she had for a book, one that she was deeply working on, that she had to abandon for the year she travelled internationally with Felipe (about which she writes in Committed<\/a><\/em>.) When she returned to the book, the idea was \u201cgone.\u201d Not long after, she met Ann Patchett, who described her newest book, based on a remarkably similar idea coming to her around the time Gilbert found it \u201cgone\u201d from her.<\/p>\n

Many creative people talk this way about ideas. Even Eddie Van Halen, which I learned from a speaker at a conference I attended in October; in an interview with Esquire Magazine<\/a><\/em> in 2012, Van Halen said about the song-writing process:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you can do is what comes through you. I can\u2019t even personally claim to be responsible for what comes out of me because it comes through me from somewhere else<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I keep being reminded of how this is true. A couple of weeks ago, I was musing about writing a new op-ed on Black Lives Matter issues to submit somewhere. I\u2019ve written about this topic locally<\/a>, and am working on getting my op-ed writing in larger publications (see the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/a><\/em> this week!). When I have stuff on my mind, it takes me a while to fall asleep, so I suppose I was musing on this as I was dosing one night, and a phrase came to mind: Holy interruptions. Or, (Un)holy interruptions. Or some combination thereof. I do this tossing-and-thinking enough that I keep a notepad beside my bed so I wrote it down, along with a few other jumbled thoughts of what I might write about.<\/p>\n

(Actually, when I\u2019m in the throes of a busy semester I have to write down \u201cto-do\u201d items to get them out of my head before I fall asleep. A lovely feature of sabbatical life is that these days I\u2019m having to write down cool ideas to get them out of my head instead of tedious reminders to follow-up on tasks and meetings.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I eventually wrote the piece, submitted a draft to a mentor-editor<\/a>, did a light revision after feedback, and submitted it to a national newspaper. The editor soon replied, kindly declining to publish, and said: \u201cThis reads like it should have been published two weeks ago.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course. Because THAT\u2019S WHEN THE IDEA SHOWED UP!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sending it elsewhere, undeterred, because it will eventually be published somewhere. But to me it\u2019s an example of what Gilbert talks about. It\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve had these Van Halen-esque moments of ideas coming to me \u201cfrom somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in the drive-through at an In-n-Out Burger in Upland, California, reading Martin Luther\u2019s essay on \u201cThe Babylonian Captivity of the Church\u201d (because there was always a long line), I was seized by the idea that Luther and radical feminist philosopher Mary Daly had stunning similarities. That was around 1994, and in 2007 I finally published Two Reformers: Martin Luther and Mary Daly as Political Theologians<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In May 2010, somewhere between home, feeding my friend\u2019s cat, and the Walmart parking lot one day, I was seized by the idea of a professor finding something while taking her students on a field trip to Nauvoo. By the end of that summer I had drafted a novel around that idea and am currently working on getting it published (after oodles of substantial revisions and lots of research). Don\u2019t worry, idea. I\u2019m not giving up. You\u2019ll eventually be published too.<\/em><\/p>\n

I also love the \u201ctheology\u201d behind Gilbert\u2019s description of ideas collaborating with us, depending on our work, commitment, and discipline.<\/p>\n

We are co-creators.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m a Big Magic believer.<\/p>\n

Image mine.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people would say that because I\u2019m a theologian I already embrace magical thinking (i.e., all religion = magical thinking). Elizabeth Gilbert has me embracing big magic in a whole new way this year. 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