"With each new book we must dare failure, or worse: mediocrity."

--Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, winner of the Newberry Medal and Jacob Have I Loved, winner of the National Book Award.

Recent conversations and bits of reading have all converged on this theme of mediocrity. It seems we artists would rather sell the brushes, toss the manuscripts, and burn the house before submitting ourselves to mediocrity. But we'll never know if our work is mediocre until the investment is made, and the work is completed. So we terrorize ourselves, paralyze our work for fear of mediocrity.

Steven Pressfield advocates an almost maniacal pursuit of excellence in our craft. But at the same time, he holds up his (and our) fear of mediocrity, and calls it what it is: laziness, cowardice, pride, and (his favorite term) "resistance."

"Do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. [Who says,] 'Give the act to me, purged of hope and ego.' " --from The War of Art

The essence of Pressfield's chapter: do your art, humbly and faithfully and leave the results to God. It is supreme arrogance to demand a certain outcome for sacrificial labor. It is the realm of the gods to give blessing and withhold it.

What if we try? What if we dare risk mediocrity? And what if we attain it? What if I (or you) produce a piece of absolutely pedestrian drivel? Or worse, what if we turn out to be mediocre?

"In the providence of God, some people who hope to become artists never reach their desired goal. This may be for reasons of practical necessity, or because they never reach the level of excellence required to sustain a career in the arts. In such cases it is important not to focus on the frustration of not achieving one's ambitions, but to recognize that there are other meaningful ways to participate in the arts. A full understanding of the arts recognizes both the unique vocation of the professional artist and the value of other forms of artistic expression. Even if our art must become an avocation rather than a vocation, it should still be pursued with deep joy and a strong sense of purpose." --Philip Graham Ryken in Art for God's Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts

Somehow, this isn't comforting. It ought to be, but it isn't. I don't want to pursue a hobby (or an "avocation," as Ryken exalts it). I don't want there to be even the possibility of a hobby. A friend of mine recently said, "I don't see why those people at the back of the race even bother running. I wouldn't try unless I knew I could be up front, doing something." When it comes to art, those are my sentiments exactly.

Art is communication. The better the art, the more clearly we convey ideas, emotions, philosophy, and ultimately, truth. If we're only mediocre, then what's the point of even trying? Shouldn't we pursue something that will communicate the truth more effectively than half-baked novels, shoddy rhymes, Kincaidian painting?

It's a question to which I'd never heard anyone, Christian or non, give a convincing answer.

Until Edith Schaeffer. I'm in the last chapter of her book The Hidden Art of Homemaking. I picked it up reluctantly, and, as I feared, every chapter has been convicting, but nothing more so than her thoughts on not-so-great artists.

"One area of art inspires another area of art, but also one person's expression of art stimulates another person and brings about growth in understanding, sensitivity and appreciation. One active artist gives courage and incentive, and germinates ideas in others for producing more art. Hence a very poor, humble or unknown artist might easily provide the spark which kindles the fire of a great artist."

Art as an act of service to others. Art for the express purpose of inspiring others to use their God-given creativity. I may not be a Rembrandt. I may never encapsulate truth as C.S. Lewis did. No matter. My job is to be an *active* artist, one that is inspiring others to pursue and express truth to the best of their abilities.

Here is the "deep joy and a strong sense of purpose" that Ryken hinted at. Here is Pressfield's humility and courage. Herein lies the daring: daring to be mediocre, to be anything, for the sake of service. Service to others. Service to art. Service to Truth. Service, ultimately, to God.

I was just told, again, that

1. wanting to "do something" with life was a pernicious form of pride,
and that
2. the best way to serve Christ is to sacrifice all ambitions or dreams.

It's all about sacrifice, this person said. Serving. Suffering. Especially for women, like me. We have to sacrifice everything to serve our home. This is our God-given ministry.

It's hard to refute these arguments from pastors and fellow Christians. There is scriptural truth in what they say. Yes, life is about service. Life is about "take up your cross and follow me." It's about suffering and death. And yes, moms are called to be "keepers at home." But suffering and death and sacrifice and stuck-at-home-ness is not the POINT of life.

Sacrifice isn't something you put on like a sweater or a motto. It isn't something you seek out with a divining rod. Sacrifice will find you; you won't be able to avoid it. But sacrifice will only come when you are in hard pursuit of something else. Think of Christ, our ultimate example, he didn't say, "I'll go to earth so that I can suffer. Won't that make me a better person." He came to earth to obey his Father and redeem his people. Sacrifice found him. Suffering came to him because he was in pursuit, and he wouldn't give up.

But we mortals, or at least, we American mortals, we get confused. We start pursuing something big or hard or important, something we feel God wants us to do, and then the suffering comes. Instead of rejoicing, like I Peter or James would have us, "Yes! This suffering is here to refine me! to purify and chasten and test and strengthen me!" instead of that, we think: "The suffering is here, now it is my time to sacrifice, like Christ. I hereby lay down my goal/ambition/dream/pursuit. That is the point of life: to be like Christ and sacrifice."

And THEN, with our dream/goal/ambition properly and spiritually put to the death, we stop pursuing. We settle down into a suburban routine because life is about sacrifice, and we shouldn't want anything more. To pursue something more, now that would be pride. Selfish ambition.

But that's not what Christ did. Christ never lost sight of his mission. Not once. Not when He was threatened with stoning. Not when He was beaten. Not when He was accused of insanity or gluttony or drunkenness. Not when He was homeless or hungry or even when He was the only one pursuing the goal. Christ suffered more than any man, because He pursued more than any man. And he did not quit suffering or pursuing until the goal was achieved.

Because it is relevant to my own pursuit, I've been reading a lot about art and creativity lately. The funny thing is, the secular authors I've read on the topic (most notably Steven Pressfield and Julia Cameron), these authors understand that suffering must come to those who pursue, and that the point of suffering (at least for mortals) is to refine us, so that the pursuit can continue with greater purity and passion. These authors even go so far as to realize that the act of pursuit/suffering/perseverance is a spiritual act.

But like I said, those are secular authors, and it's hard to combat prevalent Christian thought with secular books. So this morning, after being informed again of the inherent pride of ambition, I was discouraged to the point of "laying my Isaac on the altar" (another handy story that's often referenced for the sort of sacrifice we must make)--this morning, by sovereign design, I stumbled across this sermon delivered over a year ago on the opposite end of the country. It's a sermon about cynicism and ambition and stories, and I desperately needed to hear it. Maybe you do, too.

The speaker is Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz, and he delivered this sermon to Imago Dei Community, a church that (from what little I can see on the website) knows a thing or two about pursuit: of Christlikeness, of social justice, and of art.

Ingmar Bergman, the writer and director of film classics The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, was often asked to defend, or at least explain, what he intended these films to accomplish. His answer surprised me. Perhaps, if I were a better student of film, it would not have.

"People ask what are my intentions with my films--my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be.

"There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed--master builders, artists, laborers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.

"Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility.

"Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest idea.

"Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil--or perhaps a saint--out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts. Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral."

--Ingmar Bergman, in the introduction to Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman.

in which a tall child is ridiculed to the point of being "in pain," but delivers himself by rescuing his tormentor from a tall tree:

The End
(of your stiff neck)

{insert illustrations of cute little red birds}

Perhaps it is a joke? The book comes from a Canadian author/publisher, and maybe there's something I'm missing from the climate or culture. Either way, I don't think I'd read that last line to a child who has just been listening and agonizing over the tall boy's situation. It feels too much like a punch in the stomach--and after all that good, hard hoping you did for the story, too!

an excerpt from Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

"I was somehow unaware that no one lived that way any longer--that is, in circumstances that encouraged and facilitated the telling of long stories."

"In an era in which air travelers compare notes on how best to prevent their seatmates from making casual conversation (the eyeshade! the open earplugs! the open magazine!) it seems far less likely that one passenger would tell another (as happens in Tolstoy's 'The Kreutzer Sonata') a long, tormented account of how sexual jealousy ruined his marriage and his life. Perversely, it's more likely that someone might 'share' this confession with a national TV audience. Now that anyone who talks for more than a few seconds--that is, anyone who prevents us from talking for more than a few seconds--is generally regarded as a bore, what are the chances that a group of gentlemen will gather before a fire to exchange the detailed histories of long-past love affairs, as they do in Checkhov's 'On Love'?"

While I can (and do) utter a hearty "amen!" I am not guiltless. I can't count the number of times I've nodded, "yes, yes, mmm. Sure. Right. Really?" But all the while, I'm waiting for the slightest chance to silence the bore with my own two bits. Do we really love stories? Or just our own?

My most recent character, one Beulah Tanner by name, curses once in the course of a 20 page story, and I've spent the last three months trying to wrestle her to the ground and wash her mouth out with soap. I've tried rewriting. I've tried cutting scenes. It isn't working. In order for the resolution to occur, Beulah Tanner must open her mouth and utter the word "damn." To be honest, that has troubled me.

Such a melodramatic display of authorial force may seem foreign or falsely pious for those of you who have not grown up in conservative Christian circles. But for those of us who do live primarily within the realm of orthodox Christendom, we write under the constant threat of black-marker-edits and Baptist boycotts. And then there is the ever-present (and I would say healthy) concern that if so many of our respected leaders and mentors shudder at the mere mention of sin, are we not in spiritual danger for representing it on the page?

While I have not formulated all of my thoughts on the matter, the following passage from Flannery O'Connor's "Catholic Novelists and Their Readers" has been encouraging and thought-provoking.

I would like, if possible, to open a (gracious) discussion on the topic.

"If [the Catholic novelist] is going to show the supernatural taking place, he has nowhere to do it except on the literal level of natural events, and that if he doesn't make these natural things believable in themselves, he can't make them believable in any of their spiritual extensions.

"The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees. Now this is the first point at which the novelist who is a Catholic may feel some friction between what he is supposed to do as a novelist and what he is supposed to do as a Catholic, for what he sees at all times is fallen man perverted by false philosophies. Is he to reproduce this? Or is he to change what he sees and make it, instead of what it is, what in the light of faith he thinks it ought to be? Is he, as Baron von Hugel has said, supposed to 'tidy up reality'? . . .

"There is no reason why fixed dogma should fix anything that the writer sees in the world. On the contrary, dogma is an instrument for penetrating reality. . . .The Catholic fiction writer is entirely free to observe. He feels no call to take on the duties of God or to create another universe. He feels perfectly free to look at the one we already have and to show exactly what he sees. He feels no need to apologize for the ways of God to man or to avoid looking at the ways of man to
God. For him, to 'tidy up reality' is certainly to succumb to the sin of pride. Open and free observation is founded on our ultimate faith that the universe is meaningful."

Last month, Will Gray called my writing "lovely." It was a horrible thing to say, as I knew the inevitable big "BUT" was sure to follow. My writing was lovely, BUT it was hard to understand in a place or two. The month before that, Will and his wife Alison had both said a piece of mine was "poetic." BUT it was, they had to concede, difficult to understand . . . in places. They even debated whether my last sentence was too beautiful to cut--even though it made absolutely no sense in the story. Thanks to their delightful encouragement, I have stopped writing altogether.

My husband is no longer finding plot ideas in the piles of half-folded laundry. He's not picking up baby toys and uncovering a wad of character names. These days he's finding books--books about how to write. And rather than listening to excerpts of my work, he's being treated to précis of Dr. Horton's Critical Writing lectures.

What have I learned in all my study? Tim Tomlinson (The Portable MFA in Creative Writing) says it best. He accuses writing students and teachers of "advancing the scintillating sentence over the ambitious story. One shudders to think what this emphasis would have done to Tolstoy."

I have "lovely" writing, "poetic" writing, AND I have always found Tolstoy difficult to read. His sentences are drab.

Here is more from Tomlinson:

This type of lyrical writing produce[s] stories recognizable for their shimmering surfaces, their elegant lines, and their completely unmemorable characters set in completely unconvincing narratives, since they are really only about shimmering surfaces and elegant lines, and not at all about anything that matters to people other than other students of shimmering surfaces and elegant lines. When the virtuoso voice or the quirky vision (both by definition rare) are elevated so above the well-told story, you wind up with perfectly made nothings.

So what do I, a chronic scintillator, do? How do I grow ambitious in my storytelling? (I am not asking about how to find ambitious stories. I have those. I want to know how to tell those stories with the ambition they deserve.)

I need to arrest my unwarranted scintillations. Now, even here, see how I snicker at the double meaning in "unwarranted." See how I change "address" to "arrest," another word with double meaninng. I should have opened this paragraph with Dr. Horton's advice: "Be bold to say it simply." But I did not. I started to dabble in scintillation. I say "started to dabble" because normally I would have spent another 15 minutes reading and rereading this paragraph to be sure it "sounded" just right. But my focus on sound over story (or, as Tomlinson would have it, sentence over story) takes away the force of the very story I'm trying to tell. To illustrate, Dr. Horton would probably hold up my sentence:

"Our mother lifted up her voice in a furious howl, twining her song with Jael's and the coyote's--a strangling braid of supplication."

and compare it with the simple force of

"Jesus wept."

Now you must admit that "strangling braid of supplication" has a nice sound. But what does it mean? Only one of the three voices is actually asking for anything, so there is no supplication. To make matters worse, there is no strangling either. Not even a little-bitty figurative strangling. That leaves me with braid. It's a nice image. Maybe I could have reworked it. Maybe. Maybe not. Dr. Horton would most likely tell me that to keep such an empty phrase is wasteful at best, and arrogant at the worst.

To be honest, part of me rebels at the thought of "neglecting" my sound. Part of me thinks that writing simply won't help me tell ambitious stories, but I am reminded of what happened at the last writer's meeting I attended.

I received the usual "poetic" remarks, but then, toward the end of my piece, people got excited. They got interested. There in the last section, just when everyone was about to be strangled by too much scintillation, my character got off his duff did something. In fact, he did something quite shocking. I recognize it now as brief moment of ambitious story, and I notice that when I finally got around to telling it, my language was sparse, my syntax was plain, and my story was interesting . . . in places.