“After the final no there comes a yes”
There Comes A Yes — © Laurie Doctor
12” x 12” acrylic and graphite on wood panel
After the final no there comes a yes; And on that yes the future world depends.
— Wallace Stevens, Well-Dressed Man With a Beard
I am writing on the winter solstice, the darkest night. I have just awoke to the first snow and below freezing temperatures here in Kentucky. The bird feeder has been blown down with gusts of wind. The whole country is in this storm. It is time to plant seeds inside, to plant prayers for the coming light, for the new year.
It is time to do the thing you are afraid to do. It is time to do the thing I am afraid to do: send my book out to publishers. I am imagining that saying this aloud to you will give me courage.
Writing peels away layers, forms questions, what do I want for my readers? I see what is probably obvious, that all my writing turns toward what Robert Johnson called the numinous “slender threads” — fate, destiny, synchronicity, faith in what cannot be told, faith in the transforming ability to make a bridge between the visible and invisible world with your hands. Give your hands something to devote themselves to. Dream while you are awake. With this devotion and attention, work naturally becomes prayer. Every kind of mending is made possible.
Everything Blossoms From Within* — © Laurie Doctor
5” x 5” acrylic and graphite on canvas
Some of you have asked, what is faith? Your questions make me a better writer, make me dig deeper. It is not a query that has a final answer, or one answer. It is a good question to re-visit in winter. The poet, Wallace Stevens, saying that the yes does come, even after the final no, is a kind of faith. Reason and analysis cannot open the mystery of faith. It is trust in the opening that comes after the door has been slammed shut. It is the trust that arises when there is nothing but darkness. It is trust in the attaining power of buoyant thought. Just now I am thinking of faith as trusting my experience with my father’s ashes beneath the redbud tree — witnessing bone to blossom, how the leaves of the redbud took on a new look — how everything becomes something else. Nothing is lost. So that final no — everyone dies, and everything gets lost — has a choral response, a returning refrain; there comes a yes.
I want my readers to know, at least in moments, that there is a gift you were born with, a gift that does not expire with time, a gift that is the thing that cannot be taken from you. You are the container, the custodian of this gift, and it is awakened by your willingness to do something, however small, to share it. Claim whatever faith you have as yours, as this is what you are helping me do. I want you to know that this practice — this commitment to show up for the gift you have been given, to be yourself — with time and devotion, changes the shape of your life.
Thank you for your comments, for deepening the conversation, and many blessings on your new year.
What gives you faith, or what has taken it away? What are you afraid to do? I’d love to hear from you.
* a line from Galway Kinnell’s poem Saint Francis and the Sow