photo by Collyn Ware
Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and myself is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. –Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal (2013)
Written in 1946 during her time at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, 21-year-old Flannery O’Connor penned these words to God in a standard composition notebook. Years later, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published her 24 prayers for the world. O’Connor, a Christian writer, is one of my favorites, and I thought of her words last week as I walked at the nature preserve in the half-hour before dawn. The Supermoon was blindingly bright and so fully present that it consumed the world, filling each moment with incandescent glory. And I gave thanks that my self shadow couldn’t block it, that nothing could block it. I gratefully walked my miles in moonlight.
Again and again, O’Connor prays that she might accept what she perceives to be her spiritual and artistic mediocrity. She laments, If only I could hold God in my mind. If I could only always think of Him.The final prayer in her journal reveals this struggle:
My thoughts are so far away from God. He might as well not have made me. And the feeling I egg up writing here lasts approximately a half hour and seems a shame. I don’t want any of this artificial feeling stimulated by the choir Today I have proved myself a glutton–for Scotch oatmeal cookes and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.
Upon reading this prayer for the first time, I thought: Yes, this is it exactly. I was moved by her struggle with worldly appetites that separated her from God. Here, O’Connor reveals her self shadow as it blocks the whole moon. She concedes that God has given her everything, all the tools, instructions for their use, even a good brain to use them with, a creative brain to make them immediate for others. Yet, she grieves that even as God is feeding her, she lacks a healthy appetite.
O’Connor presents us with fictional characters whose self shadows have no appetite for God. Instead, they insist on feeding themselves, on being their own light, and on trusting human intelligence and understanding. For a time, some believe they’re enlightened; ultimately, however, they find themselves consumed by darkness. They fail to see the price of their own arrogance until it confronts them, often violently. That O’Connor empathized with such characters, seeing her own spiritual struggles in theirs, is evident in her prayer journal where she reveals a raw and ravenous humility. She sees that her self shadow is nothing, and she prays fervently to get out of God’s way.
Through words, art, and music, some succeed–at least for a time–in subduing their self shadows, so that they might stand–stripped of all pretense–before God. They bring us under the Supermoon of His majesty, offering us such gifts as the Psalms, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the Messiah. They make it possible for us to experience much more than a slim crescent of glory.
As I walked in moonlight last week, I recalled the photo my daughter took several years ago in which my granddaughter appears to hold the moon in her hands. An illusion, certainly, but the effect is powerful. Walking beneath the moon, I could imagine lifting it high into the sky, so my self shadow could never steal its light. I could imagine holding God where my shadow would never cast a sliver of darkness upon Him. Like O’Connor, I lament the many ways in which I get in God’s way. Too often, I find myself repeating the Apostle Paul’s words from Romans 7:15: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
There are many writers with whom I’d like to sit down over a cup of coffee. Flannery O’Connor is at the top of this list. But perhaps our time might be better spent without coffee. Perhaps we might walk together in moonlight. And perhaps, rather than converse, we might spend the time in prayer, asking God’s light to increase as our self shadows decrease.
