This Journey

I've waited long enough.

The call to mysticism is no less a part of my vocation than the call to storytelling, or at least what I perceive as those calls. I hear darkly, impeded by my lack of connection to God, by my failings, by the world I live in. But I have known much longer that mysticism drew me than writing, and it's time I jumped.

The void looks rather black from this end. I'm afraid of death. I must die to myself before I can live, and yet the idea has always terrified me. I have postponed it too long. Avoided it. Rationalized it. Let the cares of the world step between me and my hearts desire.

Yet, the more I struggle with my writing vocation, the more I understand that the two are connected. How can I give what I do not have? How can I draw from depths I have not tapped? No, my writing shall remain superficial until I take the interior journey, until I brave the depths, and give myself over to God.

For too long has writing and prayer, authorship and sanctity, been made into a false dichotomy in my mind. The two go together, not against each other. Just because the mystics who write fiction are few, doesn't mean I can't be one of them.

And so, I am starting this pilgrimage, my inner camino, and to help myself stick to it, I am walking it in public, as all pilgrimages are, to hold myself accountable. I will struggle to think, to read, to pray, to meditate, and to go to mass. I will struggle to bring God into writing, into my life, into my mind and heart and soul. I will jump into the darkness, knowing that He could take it all from me, strip me of what I long for, but knowing that even if He should, the journey will be worth it.

I will lose myself, even if at the moment, the promise that afterwards I will find myself feels dim and insubstantial.