Marking the White (repost)

(Originally posted 6/11/09)

Excerpt from Duma Key by Stephen King:

How to Draw a Picture (I)

Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember.

How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have the mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that remakes the world is heroic, or so I've come to believe.

I have on occasion referred to myself as an artist. Reluctantly so if I'm being honest - and I usually am. (Honest, that is.) I am not an artist in the classic sense. I seldom create something from nothing. Rather I find myself reproducing something I've seen before and taking it one or two steps further, or subtracting something. The term I'm most comfortable with is painter. Simple, descriptive, accurate.

I have always been interested in pursuits I would later learn are in the field of Creative Arts. Music, literature, painting, creating things with my hands. Some might refer to the latter as Arts and Crafts. But I would not necessarily fit some of the things I have made into that category. (Perhaps I'll share more of that on another post.)

What has caught me completely off guard is my desire to write.

I have always loved to sing, but it was not until I was inspired by the company of talented vocalists and musicians that I considered creating music - specifically creating music for the express purpose of praising God - as an art form. What was once a very special friendship with music has now become a passion.

So, it seems, it is with writing. The first blog I ever read was my friend and pastor Jeff Hogan's blog, Convergence. He has a gift for both the spoken and written word. He set the bar fairly high.

Next, there was Stuff Christians Like . After reading two posts, I was absolutely hooked. You had me at Rob Bell, Jon. You had me at Rob Bell. I think that's when the writer in me began to stir.

I am in unfamiliar territory here, but because many of my readers and fellow bloggers are such incredibly talented writers and storytellers, they have given me the courage to get out of my comfort zone. Funny, irreverent, sarcastic, downright ridiculous - that's my A-game. And while I have always tried to write from the heart, I want you to know that there will be times here when I will write from parts of my heart that you are not accustomed to seeing.

Hope that's okay with you.