When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.
― Jane Austen

This afternoon, I sit in my room near Saratoga, Wyoming watching the snow fall on the mountains outside my window. For the next three weeks, I will have the privilege of working in the company of two other writers, three artists, and one composer at the Brush Creek Ranch and Foundation for the Arts. Each resident is provided with a private room and studio, along with hours and hours of unstructured time. When I contemplate the splendor of the scene outside my window and the hours of solitude before me, I confess to feeling as though I may be carried out of myself.

Jane Austen understood one of the greatest desires of my heart: to be genuinely carried out of myself, to be pried from the choke hold that self-consciousness and reason have on my soul, to become untethered, loosed into creative spaces that I have imagined but not yet visited. How often I have conjured an image of simply stepping out of my self, shedding its brittle shell like a locust, and emerging as something quite different, quite unaffected. Too often, however, I’ve retreated back into my shell where I can navigate life comfortably and safely. And because I’ve lived here for so long and cluttered up the place with all sorts of things, I haven’t exactly created the best conditions for contemplation.

American Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton writes:

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance to a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.      

Herein lies the rub: the death part. This knowledge that one must in a certain sense die is precisely why I’ve danced around the edges of contemplation. Oh, there have been times when I’ve tooled around the contemplative dance floor. Holding a sleeping baby in the middle of the night, listening to the sound of running water in a creek, watching the waxy leaves of cottonwood trees as they move in the wind. In these moments, I was truly carried out of my self. But these were brief jaunts. In the world of Trappist monks like Merton, these jaunts wouldn’t qualify as any real type of contemplation. Still, for precious moments, I died to something wondrous and profound.

Photographer Dorothea Lange argues that the contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention. I think that too often I’ve regarded contemplation as a means of invention, as a mental and spiritual field to be gleaned. Contemplate a little, harvest a lot–or something like this. But Lange’s argument that we must contemplate things as they are is surely a strong one. It is a first–and essential–step towards any prospect of invention. When I think of those I admire most–writers, philosophers, artists, theologians, and good human beings–I am moved by how they stand in wonder before the world as they contemplate all sorts of things, just as they are. Their willingness and ability to do so has given the world the most magnificent harvest of invention.

In “From the Garden”, poet Anne Sexton writes:

 Put your mouthful of words away
 and come with me to watch
 the lilies open in such a field,
 growing there like yachts,
 slowly steering their petals
 without nurses or clocks.

Maybe this is my biggest impediment to contemplation: putting my mouthful of words away. Words–spoken and unspoken–budge in with bluster and bravado. They steal the show before there really is a show. Lest there be too much silence and too little creative harvest, they swoop in with good intentions and take the stage. My own words sometimes sicken me. I’d much rather they stop swooping in and, like lilies in a field, content themselves with steering their petals/ without nurses or clocks.

I have no contemplation excuse for the next three weeks. I’ll have no Netflix, no errands to run or meetings to attend–just uninterrupted hours of solitude in a stunningly beautiful place. I hope to write, of course, but I hope to spend time in contemplation first. I hope to sideline any words or conscious thoughts that might want to get into the game too quickly. For there is a lot of sitting the bench when it comes to contemplation, and I intend to spend some good time there.