A few months ago I saw Rob Bell at the Paramount Theatre on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin as part of his book tour for his recent release, Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering. Rob (@realrobbell) is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan (“cultural epicenter of all things progressive”) and may best be known as the Nooma guy.
I wrote the following review/synopsis after returning from the event; however, at the time, it didn’t see the light of day, or screen, as it were. I didn’t buy the book for myself at the event (since it’s an over-sized, highly visual coffee table book), but I did buy a copy for a friend. Before handing over the book, I wrote the following down for future consideration. However, just last week, I bought the thing at Mardel for $5 and was consequently reminded of what I’d written.
Don’t keep reading if you still want to read the book! This is a very general synopsis, but now that you’ve been warned…
Bell breaks down his thoughts into three sections, or “arts.”
I. The Art of Distraction
It occurs when life throws you a knuckle-ball that, instead of hitting the dirt, smacks you in the eye. It knocks you to the ground, takes the wind out of your lungs, and quickly, painfully, alters your worldview. Layoffs. Bankruptcy. Divorce. Death. Things that most of us never see coming. Things most of us never imagine happening to us.
There are some who never recover from a hit like this.
There are others who cannot get beyond the muddy, murky existential questions of Why me? Why now? Why God?
Then there are those, and narrow is this path, that press through the questions (whose answers, if they come, seldom help the way you think they will) and get to the place of asking What now?
II. The Art of Elimination
Taking away what is to show what could be. Michaelangelo said the statue of David cried to be freed from the stone pillar from which it was carved. Mark Twain said that if he’d have lived longer, he would have written less. Every true artist, in every true art form, knows that brilliance and genius lie in the tension between the giving and the taking away, between what is and what isn’t, between the first draft and the pared-down final copy.
If I’m to assume that my life is a work of art co-created by its Author and subject, I have been squarely placed in this point of my life for the sole purpose of editing myself – to eliminate what is to become what could be.
What should be.
What should have been.
Which never could have been, had I not been given the “opportunity” to be in this place in the first place.
I now see my recent past as chisel to stone, regardless of who’s hand was on the blade.
III. The Art of Possession
You can own something and not possess it.
You can possess something and not own it.
You’d think consumerism is all about the buyer, the consumer, but I think the word is more dastardly than that, even in its blatancy. Consumerism consumes, even like a roaring lion, looking for whom it may devour.
It will eat your life in tiny bites and make you feel thankful for it. You’ll feel thankful because, somehow, the buying gives you meaning, a reason to exist, a thing to do.
If this is the case, your story is too small, not even long enough to be a novella.
You will own much and possess woefully little. You will not be happy, not where it matters at least. You will wear the same facade you’ve seen on TV, worn by actors who are paid to lie to you. You will buy that lie, repeatedly, as many times as it takes so the effect of the drug doesn’t have enough time to wear off.
But then death calls. Or she leaves. Or the money disappears.
How much TV do you watch then? How much shopping happens then?
Facades like scales fall from your eyes.
You remember how much family means.
You recall why you made friends with your friends in the first place.
You feel God, maybe for the first time, in a long, long time.
You reach out while reaching in, and feel emotions you thought you’d buried so well.
Things become meaningless, but the world erupts with life.
You have the fleeting thought that this is how life is supposed to be, even in the pain, in strange ways because of the pain.
You were always supposed to be like this, not acting like that. That’s not who you really ever were; this is who you are – this is who you should have always been.
So your things no longer define you, and self-gratification is no longer your motivation.
You begin to own little, yet possess all.
IV: The Art of Suffering
This is not one of Rob Bell’s points, although it may have been The Point of the Book, or the point I’m supposed to do something with.
Suffering births creativity. Artists create meaning from their suffering.
This is not new information.
In my current state, on this Friday the Thirteenth of November 2009, I want to forget everything about the last year.
Lately, each day causes me to recall “What exactly was I doing on this date last year?” It’s a sinister mind game. I already know the answer, and yet I feel the need to dredge the sludge of the slums of my previous life. I wonder why my mind does this to itself. I’ve processed so much, and have come so far, yet I still wonder “Will the self-damning questions ever end?”
And I wrestle.
I wrestle with the fact that I do not want this experience to define who I am.
I do not want to use it as a crutch for the rest of my life.
And I want to forget, because that’s easiest, no matter how hard my mind tries to make it.
Yet I cannot forget it, and I will never forget it.
While it will not define me, I cannot help but to realize that it is, however, an irrevocable part of my definition.
The full definition of “me” won’t be realized for many years to come (if even in this lifetime), but I still have a very active role in writing those words.
In learning to birth creativity from this suffering, I must humble myself, pray on bent knees, pick up the shattered remains of a previous life, and piece them back together into something wholly new but still wholly me.
It’s time to start living the rest of my definition.
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