Day 35 Lenten Meditation: Confession

I consider myself a mystic, but I don’t know whether I believe in the God I’ve been been presented with.

I struggle. I think of all the expectations we put on God — we pray for riches, for good health, for winning the football game. Then when we get our way, it’s a miracle, but when we don’t, it’s God’s will. It’s almost as if we apologize for God when things go badly.

I can’t imagine God as a being who goes through the minutiae of our lives — “yes, here’s your keys” and “no, your grandmother isn’t going to survive this heart attack.” Nor do I think God’s taking notes on whether we’re naughty or nice.

I can’t believe in that God. If there is a God, I imagine a force bigger than all of us, a Gestalt which contains the souls of everyone or everything who has ever lived. When we die, we go back into this vast Gestalt, and are in communion with an existence so pure our spirits laugh and cry, and we are comforted by the Gestalt. I expect there to be spirits of every religion and no religion at all.

I believe that God comforts and braces us, and gives us strength for another day. God doesn’t save our grandmother; God gives us strength to get through. God doesn’t launch my writing career; God helps me see where I need to improve.

So perhaps I believe in God, just not the God I grew up with. God pulls me out of the panic I’m feeling over the pandemic and presents me with my own strengths. God doesn’t help me find the keys; God helps me remember where I put them.

I confess, though, that I don’t know, any more than anyone else does. Even the Bible is full of allegory and conjecture and translations that obscured the holy and promoted the status quo. Not knowing, I do what humans do and make God into my own image.

Belief and Doubt

I sent the first three chapters of Apocalypse off to Tom Doherty Associates (TOR) yesterday. I have several story submissions out and the manuscript for Prodigies at DAW. I have several queries on Apocalypse out to agents.

And I am filled with doubt.

I believe I’m a good writer, or else I wouldn’t push myself to improve, and I wouldn’t try to get published. I just feel doubt every time I submit. But I keep submitting anyhow.

Doubt is just a feeling. It is not reality. Some might point out that getting all the rejections I’ve gotten is a reality and that I should just give up. But I believe the process is subjective and that, sooner or later, my work will speak to someone.

My belief and doubt coexist; I choose to act upon my belief.

Days Pass Slowly

One day feels much like another lately; the heat keeps me from doing much outside and nothing’s going on inside. I’m waiting to hear from an agent, a publisher, and a journal, and that status doesn’t seem like it will ever change. I don’t feel very inspired or very optimistic, so I feel little drive to write or revise.

Times like these, I try to cling onto the belief that I’m a writer. I dream of being published, at least in part because I fantasize about being able to say “Hey, I’m a published author!” The likely reaction from people will be an anticlimactic, “That’s nice.” But it’s a little kid fantasy, an “I’ll show you!” Not very impressive.

Maybe this lapse in writing is good for me, although it does feel like an eroding of my identity. (Why my identity as a professor is not enough puzzles me, but there it is.)

So I wait for something to happen.