Tess Canfield, Writer

Doing Nothing When Everything Is Everything (Sept 2020)

I had a hard time deciding what to write this month—not because I didn’t know what to say, but because lately, it feels like there’s too much. 

As an Enneagram 1 (“The Reformer” personality), my creative tendencies always lean toward what I perceive to be the most pressing issues of the moment. When our country reignited with the Black Lives Matter movement, I wrote about that. When the state of California lit on fire (still happening, btw), I spilled out everything I knew about climate change. 

This month, I was tempted to wax poetic on women’s rights. I read the *excellent* memoir Know My Name by Chanel Miller - the woman assaulted in 2015 by former Stanford student Brock Turner. In the same moment I finished reading it, I set the book down and picked up my phone, only to see that Ruth Bader Ginsberg had passed. I was rattled.

But no, this will not be a #MeToo mini-dissertation.

Instead, I’m going to talk about... nothing at all. Not fretting. Not expressing. Not even thinking. Only being. 

Earlier this year, after reading a book from Catholic Mystic Richard Rohr, I wrote a lot about Mysticism. Since then, I’ve been steadily getting through his podcast, a podcast from former Trappist Monk James Finley, and I’ve read writings from mystics Teresa of Ávila, Thomas Merton and Alan Watts.

While I have only studied the Christian and Buddhist thought, what I know for sure is that there is something that unites all major religious and philosophical traditions: contemplation. 

Generally speaking, contemplation is either being in a state of mindfulness, or mindlessness, oftentimes while doing absolutely nothing. For Catholics, there’s intentionality, for Buddhists, there’s no intentionality, although both approaches seem to have similar effects. For a big ol’ definition, see my footnote (1).

So why, when everything is literally and metaphorically on fire, am I talking about doing nothing? Am I just like the dog, enjoying coffee in the flaming room?

I don’t think so, and here’s why.

Religion aside, the powers at be want us to always be doing. The most valuable thing one can do in a capitalistic society is produce. To do and do and do and rest only as much as needed in order to recharge to keep doing. That’s why we have such a busyness problem and place so much self-worth filling up our time.

A lot of people have been waking up to the reality that this is neither practical nor true. Wellness has made its way into our everyday lexicon and we’re even starting to see things like The Nap Ministry advocating for the idea that rest can be a form of resistance. A large portion of our population (myself included) has finally begun to understand that self-worth does not rely on what you’re able to produce or earn, and that our inputs are just as valuable as outputs. 

It’s tempting to lump contemplation into wellness. But wellness and rest can mean many things, and in most cases, whether it’s nourishing food, an exercise class, or a nap on the couch, those are all forms of input. (2) Many times, there’s a need to consume when focusing on wellness—which is why, in my opinion, it has become its own industry.  

But interestingly, contemplation is neither input nor output. And that’s why it’s so crucial.

At its most secular practice, contemplation is a brief refusal to take participation in any system or activity happening around us. Alan Watts says it best:

“As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.”

My particular worldview is more spiritual and intentional, as is my writing… and writing is what this is supposed to be about. So finally, I have arrived to my thesis: that contemplation is perhaps the greatest tool for excavating Truth within a creative pursuit. 

This month, I felt especially validated after reading the 1938 book that still holds up today: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. Ueland takes this whole book to center on that ineffable & distinguishing special something inside of us. It’s been called many things over the millennia: Muse, Soul, YHWH, Imagination, Brahman, God, etc. I don’t think it matters what name you give it, nor does Ueland seem to care, but she tends to use Spirit so I’ll do the same.

In this book, she echos sentiments from the poet William Blake:

“Now Blake thought that this creative power should be kept alive in all people for all their lives. And so do I. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears.”

In other words, there’s something that ties us all of life together and the writer needs to remove their own ego and create from that. If a writer succeeds, it will resonate with the Spirit in others. Good art—as Brenda Ueland and many others have attested—is simply a mirror in which the Spirit can recognize itself. 

Ueland writes at length about “creative idleness” and how some intentional puttering can help ignite our imagination. I wholeheartedly agree, and have experienced the value of that puttering myself. I highly recommend some good ol’ creative idleness if you ever feel stuck.

But I’d like to offer a “Yes, And…” to Ueland’s puttering, and recognize that setting aside one’s own ego is not an easy task. Which brings me back to contemplation. Richard Rohr argues the only two things that can truly transform the ego is great suffering or great love. But contemplation can help us “hack” the disconnect from our ego center so that we might experience something deeper, if even for a few brief moments.

The good news: to access what we need, we need only to quiet and realize that it’s already there. It might be hard to dissolve our busy and dualistic mindset that we’ve built up over the years. It may take a lot of quiet minutes to melt away and get back to the soft and bright Spirit center we were all born with. But like Ueland says, we must, because this is not only creativity, it’s life itself.

A clarification.

I’m in no way saying it’s a bad thing to feel the world around us and use our creativity to express our pains and fears and sorrows in the moment. *waves* Hi, have we met? I do that all the time. I’m also not saying that spending a few quiet minutes will make all our problems go away. Of course not. And while this interior is accessible to everyone, I absolutely recognize my enormous privilege in having the time and safety to explore this.

All I’m saying is that I’m finally allowing myself to resign to the idea that there’s something greater that I need to pursue within my interior, and it’s possible that the exterior can take advantage of my energies. It’s a balancing act. 

I truly believe that right now, whatever evil/darkness/negativity there is—it’s trying to overwhelm us. In the past, this darkness has succeeded through mass apathy. But I do think there are more of us finally waking up. And without apathy, the other option is to overwhelm us. To press from so many angles, keeping us on the defense, simply reacting.

If you, like me, have been feeling overwhelmed by the world, finding it hard to create or only react, consider that the Spirit inside us all is an animating force. It’s a creator and the depth of that creativity does not come via external reactivity. By looking inward, we can see clearly that which is going on all around us. 

And the best news is: because this Spirit connects us to everything, it is inherently impossible to create something irrelevant. It will resonate somewhere.

It won’t be relevant to everything and everyone all at once, but the only thing that ever could be so relevant is the Spirit itself—that deepness from which we have all been brought forth, which could never be contained in an essay, poem or book, anyway. But I really believe that if we quiet our minds, we will uncover Truth—the capital T kind, the best kind, the kind that always means more than one thing. 

At the end of Chanel Miller’s victim impact statement which she published at the back of her book, she offers a quote from Anne Lamott:

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."

No matter what the results are from any trials, fires, nominations, demonstrations or elections, these next few weeks will be rife with discord and disquiet. My wish is that we not only stay connected to each other, but most importantly, that we stay connected to ourselves. 

-Tess Canfield, September 2020 via The Latest

(1) Today, we hear the most about contemplation and meditation via Mindfulness. At its most basic, mindfulness is the simple act of being in the present moment. You quiet the mind, generally with the aid of your breath, and try to focus only on the current sensations, simply noticing thoughts about other things as they arise without judgement, letting them pass by. 

Contemplation in the Catholic sense can be practiced this way, OR it could be described as (my term) Mindlessness. The goal in a seated meditation, for example, is not to connect to your senses and surroundings, rather it is to disconnect from it completely. The idea for the Catholic mystic is to connect to your interiority, or your own soul, which is the place that God/The Holy Spirit dwells. There are other contemplative practices to disconnect from the thinking mind, like chanting, Pranayama breathing, walking meditation and more.  

For Buddhism, there is no goal at all. Instead of trying to empty the mind, one must simply let go of the mind completely, because the mind is nothing to be grasped at all. In fact, trying to “obtain” enlightenment would be considered a sort of oxymoron to a Buddhist; if one has intention for enlightenment, one is stuck in egoic desires, therefore in moving away from a state of non-being.

(2) I suppose one could argue that sleep is neither input nor output as well, but the fact is, sleep is an act of rejuvenation. A biological necessity that would be more adequately defined as maintenance. Therefore, my stance is that sleep is an input for the body, which is why we’ve been able to commodify it as an industry. Contemplation can sometimes feel rejuvenating, but it can sometimes result in a specific kind of sadness, discontentment or depletion—which is another topic for another time.