Work without a why

I seem to be going through a phase in my life where everything is up to question. For the past twelve years, I've been calling myself an artist. Yesterday, someone asked me what I do for a living, and I was confused. I told her I was an artist, but it seemed like a lie.

I've thought of myself as a spiritual person. I go to church regularly. I sing the hymns with gusto and recite the creed. But ask me what I think about God, and suddenly I'm unsure. I used to think of God as a friend, a cosmic energy, an eternal listener, but now, the God-buddy system doesn't compute for me any longer. I miss the relationship but the old way just doesn't work anymore.

So I stopped painting and picked up the pen and the telephone. I started to organize, cajole and persuade, around environmental issues that are important to me. But not much later, I had new doubts about it all. As the campaign season heats up to a fever pitch, I wonder whether anyone can really convince anyone else of anything.

I'm now inhabiting a writer persona, but in a culture that is drowning in information, who would want to read one more thing? At least no trees died to bring these words to light (or not more than one notebook page worth).

The good news is, I'm not depressed. I go through my appointed rounds with kind of an edgy energy. One moment I'm researching immigration policy, the next I am writing a letter to the editor, and the next I am looking for a recipe with feta cheese. Something seems to hold it all together. I've read enough of the mystics to think that the way of unknowing is what's next. The mystic's brains must not have been as cluttered as mine, though.

From Matthew Fox's rendering of Meister Eckhart:
"As long as we perform our works in order to go to heaven
we are simply on the wrong track.
And until we learn to work
without a why or wherefore,
we have not learned to to work
or live or why."