Wendell Berry's Creative Process in CancerLand

I have a quote from Wendell Berry taped inside my day planner. When he wrote this he was trying to articulate the creative process. But I also believe that his words are equally true for those of us discovering a cancer process.

Caregiving is a deeply creative process, and it has many of the same stages as writing poetry and making art. 

Wendell Berry writes:

“Form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

I love that.

 “The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

But most of the time in making art, and in CancerLand, we don’t want the impediments, the boulders, the rapids.

If he is right, then I am singing. I feel impeded often. Deadlines and doctors. Finding the right words and the right materials. Finding the right prayers and the right moments to pray.

“When we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work.”

Going down that river feet first, tumbling, laughing, praying, singing.