Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering

Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering Rob Bell Rob Bell’s extraordinary and provocative Drops Like Stars, published as part of the Rob Bell Classics relaunch, explores the relationship between suffering and creativity, and the transformative power of pain.‘We plot. We plan. We assume things are going to go a certain way. And when they don’t, we find ourselves in a new place - a place we haven’t been before; a place we never would have imagined on our own. It is the difficult and the unexpected, and maybe even the tragic, that opens us up and frees us to see things in new ways.‘Many of the most significant moments in our lives come not because it all went right but because it all fell apart. Suffering does that. It hurts, but it also creates. This book is an exploration of the complex relationship between suffering and creativity, driven by the belief that there is art in the agony.’ Rob Bell Drops Like Stars A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering ROB BELL Contents Cover (#ue53b3edc-9210-5c78-9f0b-344b06478308) Title Page (#u6931b509-190c-5a56-9ceb-e26be70613a6) Chapter 1 - The Art of Disruption (#ulink_a2c140f7-bbbe-589b-a2bf-84e54742efc1) Chapter 2 - The Art of Honesty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 3 - The Art of the Ache (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 4 - The Art of Solidarity (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 5 - The Art of Elimination (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 6 - The Art of Failure (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Endnotes (#litres_trial_promo) Credits (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher CHAPTER 1 The Art of Disruption (#ulink_2d735065-7050-5e09-910c-7ccc18250881) I know a man who has two sons. Both of his sons are married, and both their wives became pregnant in the same year. Out of the two pregnancies, one ended in a miscarriage, the other in a healthy baby boy. And so twice in that year this man I know went to the same hospital, walked down the same hallways with his same family members—the first time to grieve and mourn, the second time to rejoice and celebrate. We live in the hallways, don’t we? In the hallways. We’ve left one room and gone to the other. We’ve sat outside, waiting. We’ve felt that kind of pain and been overwhelmed by that kind of joy. We’ve all been in the hallways in one way or another, haven’t we? Maybe not in the same family, in the same hospital, in the same hallways, but this man with two sons— we know his story, because his story is our story. Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons. The story begins with the younger son asking for his share of the inheritance, which in first-century Jewish culture was a deeply offensive request, the equivalent of saying, “Dad, I wish you were dead.” What an odd way to begin a story. What’s even more unusual is that the father grants his request. The son leaves with the money and eventually spends it all. In his humiliation and poverty, the son decides to head home, where he hopes to get work as one of his father’s servants. But when he arrives home, he isn’t shunned or punished or treated as a servant. His father rushes out to welcome and embrace him and then throws a party for him. Normally, on an occasion like this, a lamb would be sacrificed for the meal, which would be enough for a family. But the father in this story has a calf prepared, which would be enough for the whole village. Apparently, the consequences of the son’s departure were so destructive that he needed to be reconciled to the whole community. This celebration infuriates the older brother. He refuses to join the party and instead argues the injustice of it all to their father, who responds, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” The older brother then has a moment of profound enlightenment. He puts his arm around his father and says, “You’re right, Dad. I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass. Can I get you a beer?” Uh . . . actually, that’s not how the story ends. The story ends with the father’s words about how everything he has belongs to his son and how they have to celebrate because his son “was dead and is alive again.” That’s it. That’s how the story ends. The father’s words hanging in the air . . . And we never learn what the elder brother decides to do. What an odd way to end a story. If this story was a film, it would end with the father’s words, and then the camera would pan back, showing the party in the background. You’d hear the clinking of silverware and laughter and the thump of the bass drum on the dance floor and then the screen would fade to black and the credits would roll. Jesus leaves the story unresolved. We never find out what the older brother decides to do. Jesus doesn’t give the story the proper Hollywood ending we’ve all come to expect. You can picture one more scene, can’t you? The older brother enters the party and the younger brother is surrounded by people who want to talk to him but he sees his brother and so he says to them “just a minute, please” as he starts walking toward his brother and the orchestra music in the background gets louder and louder as they get closer and closer until they embrace and everybody at the party circles around them and starts clapping and then the camera pans over to that one last shot—the one of the father holding a glass of Champagne with a smile on his face and a tear in his eye. But that’s not how it always goes, is it? Some elder brothers never join the party. Some fathers never throw one. Some brothers never come back. Some things never get resolved. Lots of parties are missing somebody. And when we try to resolve things too quickly or pretend that everyone is there when they aren’t or offer hollow, superficial explanations . . . it’s not honest and it’s not right and it’s not real. It’s not how life is. I’ve heard people trying to be helpful in the midst of a tragedy or accident or death by saying, “That’s just how God planned it,” while I’m thinking, “The god who planned THAT is not a god I want anything to do with.” Others with far more wisdom and experience than me have tackled the “why” questions of suffering. Here, in these pages, I’m interested in another question . . . Not “Why this?” but “What now?” This is a standard question on undergrad applications: “In order for the admissions staff of our college to get to know you, the applicant, better, we ask that you answer the following question: Are there any significant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?” An applicant named Hugh Gallagher sent this response to NYU: I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I’ve been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees. I write award-winning operas. I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations with the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. But I have not yet gone to college. Brilliant, isn’t it? What is it that makes the essay so . . . enjoyable? Clearly the content is striking itself—it’s weird and smart and imaginative (full-contact origami?) and random (touring New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration?) and oddly poetic all at once. But it isn’t just about the “what”—the content; it’s also about the “where.” It’s on a college application, which is generally where people are at their most serious, trying to impress the admissions staff with their eloquence and achievement, not boasting of how they “woo women” with their “sensuous and godlike trombone playing.” There’s a phrase we use when we’re describing something we consider new and fresh and unexpected. We say it’s “out of the box.” The problem with the phrase is that when something or someone is judged to be in or out of “the box,” it reveals that “the box” is still our primary point of reference. We’re still operating within the prescribed boundaries and assumptions of how things are supposed to be. “Out of the box” is sometimes merely another way of being “in the box.” And then there are those, like this applicant, who come from a totally different place. They ask another kind of question: “There’s a box?” In 1941, in a village in Nazi-controlled Poland, a young man came home to discover that his father had died while he was at work. What made his father’s death exceedingly more unbearable was that several years earlier, both this young man’s sister and mother had died. As he held his father’s dead body in his arms, he lamented, “I’m all alone. “At twenty, I’ve already lost all the people I’ve loved.” One writer described it like this: “Ripped out of the soil of his background, his life could no longer be what it used to be. He now began a journey to deeper communion with God. “But it didn’t come without tears, and it didn’t come without what seems to have been a certain existential horror.” Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/rob-bell/drops-like-stars-a-few-thoughts-on-creativity-and-suffering/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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