One of the things I miss most about Dad is being able to talk to him about writing. Twyla Tharp has written a book called The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, and I think he would have enjoyed it. As part of the creative autobiography exercise in the book, I remembered him helping me with a history fair project in 2nd grade. It was a suffragette newspaper a la Susan B. Anthony, complete with typed articles and pictures, and a ballot box which was a shoebox covered in brown butcher paper with a slot cut in the top. I was really proud of that project and I wish I still had it.

Twyla Tharp goes on at length about the need for a disciplined ritual that one does each day in order to keep the creative muscles limber. Hers involves working out at 5:30 every single morning of her life. This seems like one of those "shoulds" that haunt me every so often. I should work out more than a couple of times a week, I should be more intentional about my spiritual life, I should carve out time for creative pursuits, I should I should I should... Should is the single greatest enemy of self-acceptance. I would like to have a schedule that is mundane enough to allow for all the shoulds, the things that are good for me, but that just ain't the way it is right now, and I have to trust that exercising a couple of times a week and meditating in short snatches of time and writing in irregular bursts is enough for now.

I've been working on a series of sermons for some weeks now. You probably wouldn't know it to look at me on the surface--I'm watching TV, knitting, having a conversation, giving the little one a bath--but things are cooking, constantly simmering in the crock pot. There's an initial burst of activity, throwing a bunch of ingredients in there, but then it's time to wait for the stew to happen. This waiting stage cannot be rushed. Every now and then I'll open the lid, throw in a few more items and give things a stir, but if I do this too much I start to get antsy about the final product, and if I'm not careful, I'll have myself convinced that my own anxious fretting is the most important ingredient, rather than the simple passage of time.

If I can tame the anxiety, then it never fails that sooner or later I'll open the lid to do some poking around and find that everything has come together like magic. I can never predict when that will be, but it's an awesome feeling. Then it's time to pull everything together, with this great (or at least completed) idea as the main course. This usually takes much less time (thank God, because Sunday approaches quickly!). There are definitely still challenges along the way, but I almost always trust that the product of those weeks of simmering will be what nourishes people, not the nit-picky stuff I did at the end.

I'm not sure what a daily writing ritual would add to this process at this stage of my life. Perhaps I can just let things be for now.