“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.” – William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Too dark, too serious, too intense. Depressing, melancholy, grey. A deficit of delight. Not smiley enough. Quiet. Concerned. Missing the fruity flavor of the mass market appetite. It’s taken me twenty years to accept that I can’t write what I don’t feel. Twenty years of dodging my demons only to realize that it’s the demons that played the critical part in me becoming who I am.
Faith with feeling.
Deep feeling. The kind that makes some people squirm. When our inner beefs and outer blues bubble over with genuine loss, longing, passion, dreams, regret, discouragement, and at last the exorcism that finally frees us from them. I’ve read that God is jealous, He’s gotten angry, He’s even cried a couple of times. And in His deepest artistic expression, passed it all directly to us. If our eternal DNA is created in His image, why do we feel so guilty when suffering the same disappointment, sadness, and rejection that Christ felt during his brief but brutal time with us?
As writers, artists, and peculiar co-creatures living out our unique purpose in this fallen world, I refuse to disengage my heart. I won’t apologize for it or pretend it doesn’t bother me. I can’t rise until I descend. My own art and education as my Father’s fledgling spirit relies on my blackest days as well as the intermittent flashes of God’s brilliant light.
To disregard and snuff out the flame of painful endurance is to douse the fading flicker that keeps us united in Christ. Our unified demonstration of love in our fleeting breath of life.
Be the truest incarnation…
… of God’s creative expression.
Bleeding In Black and White 