Writing without a subject

Writing without a Subject

By Dan McDonald

 

            I am writing without a subject because I have reached a point where I want to write, but haven’t a subject ready in mind. I am still recovering from a season of long work hours. I am looking over what I haven’t accomplished and the list is so much greater than what I have.  I suppose I often write to flee the responsibilities I feel I so completely fail. Writing sometimes is the escape from responsibility. At other times it is the beginning of a recovery from a season of failure.

            I have thought of great subjects for which I need to do more research. What does it mean for us as Christians to live a common life? How do we best run a nation which builds a shared life while encouraging each and every individual life so that we rise in freedom and not march in monolithic compulsion? How does a corporation composed of investors become that which drives an economy, while a union of workers threatens that economy? Does possession of money enlighten the one, while the very act of seeking a more equitable distribution make the one offering sweat and skills thugs? How should a Christian view money? Is what is ours, ours so no one else will have a say? Or have we nothing but what God has given to us as stewards to do in accord with his will? I know however I answer, all the more questions will abound. I think about these things but I cannot wisely address them.

            As a writer I sometimes think that the things I write are part of who I am. But mostly I write of shadowy forms imagining who I would like to be. Who I am is different. I try to express grand, glorious, beautiful, and exciting things. Mostly my life inhabits the mundane. Perhaps your life does also. Perhaps that is part of what St. Paul understood about Jesus’ life. We speak of the majestic terms that were and are surely great truths. We say that he is “Fully God and fully man.” St. Paul thought of this truth and spoke of how while it was not robbery for him to contemplate himself equal to God, yet He emptied himself into the weakness of our humanity, even to the point of death.” There were miracles. There were moments when he beheld surprising responses of faith that led him to marvel. But how much of his each and every day, in his years upon this earth, were filled with the mundane and the unremarkable? Remember him wondering at the twelves’ inability to understand some of his foundational teachings? He knows our frames that we are but dust, but sometimes he felt the depth of the contradiction of him, the holy one being surrounded by the sinners for whom he came. Yet we speak of such things without understanding of either the fullness of such a contradiction or the greatness of such a love which sought to span the gap of such a contradiction. There are times when a faithful life is given no new exciting truth to recite, no new breakthroughs to pursue, no excitement - we are instead given a plow and told to look ahead and not back. We are given the mundane and perhaps it is the greatest work we will be given.

            Tomorrow is Ascension Day in the Church Calendar. His forty days of lingering came to an end. He told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem. He disappeared into the heavens. Ten days later, the disciples huddling in the Upper Room were moved by as the Holy Spirit appeared as wind in tongues of fire. Had the Spirit come to make even the mundane exciting, or did He more come to fill the mundane, the grievous, and the exciting that in each we might be given the strength to be faithful whether much or little?

            A child died this week from a tumor. One day the little girl was playing and excited to be going to be able to partake of communion. Illness kept her from the Communion. Soon the family was saying to her their good-byes. A family, a church, a community that knew her are saddened and filled with grief. Believers, as well as those without faith, feel the heart breaking loss. The Spirit who has come into our lives does not make everything excitement and pleasure. Still He comforts. He fills the emptiness of grief, and the boredom of the mundane as He fills the wonderful, the exciting, and the triumphant victory. The plowman looks forward. He is tempted to look back. His plowing isn't fun or exciting. By sheer grace, He asks for constancy to be faithful in his assigned task. On the great day when the men and women who have done great things receive their reward, they will then celebrate with the awe of opened eyes, as they behold how our Lord blesses that one unnoticed soul whose only accomplishment was to do that little thing.

            Perhaps now I go to bed. Perhaps in my sleep the Lord will give me something to write.