On Art and Prayer as Journey

“…Harry struggled to his feet and knew that the only way out was through.”

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling, (emphasis mine)

These days, I have been meditating on art and prayer as places of freedom. Specifically, these are two areas of my life where I am reticent to fully lose myself because I fear losing control. I’ve never allowed myself to get drunk on alcohol for this very reason. There is a comfort and a safety in the familiar, and letting go and ceding control to the unknown is scary. When I pray, I get lost in rapture. When I’m making art, I don’t ever want to put my feet back down on the ground. I want time to slow to a still and stay in that space of creative generation forever. It truly fills me to put things into the world that weren’t there before.

And at the same time, allowing myself to arrive at that place of surrender is a scary thing. It takes a lot of courage to let go of the to-do list, the known, the tasks, the responsibilities, etc. and free fall into creation. I find prayer similarly generative; connecting my soul to the divine and communing with God is not something I can do in 5 minutes, nor do I want to rush.

I was thinking about this quote from Harry Potter because it encapsulates a recent epiphany I had about my artistic process. Many times, before I undergo an artistic undertaking, I try to assess my own energy levels, in an effort to determine if I have the strength to make the journey, as it were. Only recently did I realize that the journey for which I was counting the cost is not actually the journey I thought I was making. I always thought that the journey looked something like leaving the point of origin, sojourning somewhere, and then retracing my steps to arrive back at the same point of origin. The reason I fear these artistic delves into myself (or into prayer, which is another form of art, in my opinion, and vice versa) is that they both have the immense power to transform the destination, and to do so mid-journey. To use the same metaphor, instead of leaving from my point of origin and having to retrace my steps back, my journey continues on… through. A sharp left turn that brings into a view another path that I couldn’t have seen from my initial departure point. A slide down a rocky bank that leads to a bridge across a river. The path never circles back upon itself; like Harry found in book 7, the only way out is through.

Walking through, instead of returning back on, is a terrifying way to journey forward. It is terra incognita; it cannot be known in advance, and it cannot be promised that I as traveler will ever make it back to my point of origin at all. And part of the journey for me is being okay with that. Finding my peace with the fact that I may never see the shores of home again. Making my comfort with the prospect of discovering along the way where the path leads. And finally, channeling my energy forward into continuing through and onwards, not concerned with whether or not I have the energy to make it back. I likely won’t, and that’s okay. My energy is required to push me through and forward. The paths that I have already walked, I have already walked.

My eyes are pointed in a new direction now. I cannot know where I’ll end up next, but I’ll let you know when I get there.