Don’t tell me, “Wait.” I do not like waiting; I don’t want to wait! I was glad when they changed it from “waiter” to “server”.
Now you’re wanting to know what brought this up. Psalm 31:14-15 reads, “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands.” And Acts 1:7 reads, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”
You’re waiting for me to drop the other sandal. I know you are. Here it is from my current fav, The Message: “You are my God! Hour by hour I place my days in your hand.” “You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business.”
And, no, I don’t know who ‘they’ were, but they’re pretty okay in my book. Speaking of which . . .
There’s a richness to my writing now that wasn’t evident when I first began getting serious about being a professional. The desire was there. The beauty, depth and resolve borne of long and sometimes embittering experience had not yet shown because it couldn’t – not because it wasn’t available; but because I wasn’t positioned in mind or spirit to know what to do with it.
A year or more ago, someone near to me wrote me a frustrated, cranky and totally understandable letter wanting to know why I wasn’t just churning out book pages. I get it. I kept wondering the same thing.
I kept watering, in some cases with real tears. But like bamboo, it seemed nothing whatsoever was happening . . . Until it started. It then grew suddenly – – and is still growing. Jack will be climbing for a l-o-n-g time.
You’ve read about bamboo’s phemoni– philenimic— phrellemipul— really impressive fast growth, right?
One reason for bamboo’s record-smashing growth rates is the plant’s rhizome, an underground network of roots connecting a cluster of canes. Like all plants, bamboo gets its energy from photosynthesis, but the rhizome enables it to distribute nutrients and water where they are most needed.
The underground roots of common running “fishpole” bamboo, which can easily reach 15 feet tall, can travel as far as 20 feet or more from the original clump. While trees grow mostly from the end of their branches, bamboo is actually a grass, so it grows very differently. A bamboo shoot is split into segments which can all host cell division (ie growth), allowing the bamboo to extend a bit like a telescope.
Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth. It has been clocked surging skyward as fast as 121 cm (47.6 inches) in a 24-hour period.[10] It can also reach maximal growth rate which exceed 1 meter (40 inches) per hour for short periods of time. When bamboo shoots emerge from the ground in the spring they reach full size in just a couple of months time. This includes the giants. It is extraordinary to see a 4 to 5 inch diameter shoot burst from the ground and reach full height (60 feet or more) in just a few weeks. You can easily see the change in height each day.
Here’s what I’m figuring out: writers write from within their own soul. It’s their own cumulative washtub of ridiculous, hilarious, disgusting, embarrassing, elated, weeping, harrowing, chilling, foreboding, ecstatic, thoughtful, relational stuff that provides the potting soil from which derives their best words – words that sway your heart, mind and spirit. Words that have the power to raise you above your own despair or send you careening into the art deco building on the right, their garish ideas all over the wall before you like a growing late-afternoon panorama of vibrantly-colorful yet unreadable graffiti.
My washtub is now filling with that Miracle-Gro comprised of where I’ve been being and what I’ve been doing. Now there is within me the stirrings, the funk intro to ‘The Jazz’ to begin the true writing that will produce what readers will devour, then reread, then wonder when the next one will sneak out from the shadows of every day’s regularity.
God’s timing is everything. As a favorite writer of mine was wont to say, “Readiness is all.” So as I learn more how to use my literary superpowers, I am practicing what someone calls, “passionate patience.” Feel free to join me.
I should warn you, though. Don’t expect me to mimic bamboo.
I won’t grow any taller, and I wrinkle when left in water too long.
© D. Dean Boone, August 2015