There is a French saying ne pas être dans son assiete, which roughly translates as ‘to not
be fully in one’s own plate’, as when pasta, badly served, overspills onto the
table. It’s a great way of describing the general sense of being all over the
place which I think many of us experience from time to time. It is not
something we can easily ‘snap out of’, as sufferers of anxiety and depression, in
all its manifestations, will know. Not being fully in one’s plate is a debilitating
state of mind, especially if you are a writer, teacher, or someone tasked with
preaching sermons or providing leadership.
There are other names for this state of mind, like ‘writer’s
block’ or ‘black dog’, not that the two are identical, but they invariably
feed on each other. I find they do the same in the course of the average day,
since all days are potentially creative, whatever kind of work we do. Things get put off when we are blocked. We feel
tired. We live for that cup of coffee, or something worse. We are not fully in
control. There is something random and anarchic about the way we go about the
day and the way we apply our thinking, if we are able to think at all. At the
same time, we are absolutely static, inwardly ‘blocked’, so that there is not
even the dubious thrill of the roller coaster effect, teetering on the creative
high before plummeting to the depths.
The way we are feeling prevents us from doing anything specific.
It paralyses, and makes it impossible to do what, theoretically, we should do in
order to get back on track and motor forward. There are different methods for achieving
this forward momentum. Personally, I find that methods only work for a while,
and that when they no longer work you are back on your own, dealing with the
black dog, or with writer’s block, or with the inability to dream up a sermon
if that is what is required of you.
I have slowly learned that what is needed in all of these
situations is a deep and inexhaustible energy in which we can trust, something
which we can draw on simply by owning our desire and need for it. Whatever work
we do, but especially if it is creative work, we must continually return to its
creative source.
But this is impossible if we have not first learned to accept
and believe in ourselves as gifted, or fruitful, full of life and hope even if,
right now, it feels that we have ground to a complete halt. Knowing ourselves
as fruitful is not the same as feeling reassured by relative success. Success will
often come at the price of the work itself, because to be sure of success means
being willing to think of one’s work as a commodity designed to satisfy consumers
and fit the mood of the moment. This is as true in the context of preaching sermons
as it is in any other creative work. In
our own low moments it is tempting to simply generate the kind of work, or
preach the kind of sermons, which will satisfy the criteria for success or
popularity. But we may end up hating ourselves for doing so, and then hate the
work.
We are only fruitful when we write or say what gives
people permission to flourish as the persons they were created to be. We are
fruitful when we free others into their gifts so that they can use those gifts,
and their lives, in the service of the truth which makes us free. For this to
be possible, we have to trust our own giftedness enough to wait on it, even in
the depths of depression and self doubt, because it is often there that we meet
people and offer them hope in their own dark depths. We offer them hope because
we have visited the depths ourselves. We
have learned to forgive and accept ourselves there, so we are in a position to
help others do the same.
A good way to begin this process of self acceptance is to
get into the habit of returning to any period, or even a single moment, in our life
when we knew ourselves to be utterly valued, that our very existence was a
blessing to someone else. It is important to re-own such moments without
feeling guilty that we are doing so, because guilt is itself a denial of love.
Loving and forgiving one’s self is the hardest kind of
loving there is, especially if you have not been equipped for it in early life.
It is often much easier to remain in the depths of depression and self doubt,
simply because they are familiar depths, whereas acceptance and forgiveness
open up new horizons, new roads to travel into the unknown. The unknown is
frightening because discovering it will inevitably involve getting to know
ourselves as we really are, and accept our giftedness. We are gifted in and
through the love of God from whom all energy for creative work, and life
itself, proceeds.
