Prelude: To those new and those who have been following my blog, my emails, my newsletters over the years—welcome to this new way of releasing my words. Going forward, my emails and my blog posts will look like this. I will be sharing a mix of musings on creativity, culture, community, and Christ. I will also be using this space as a sort of digitized diary, sharing audio and video messages, candid photographs, poems, and anything else I find myself creating. If you no longer wish to receive emails from me, please feel free to unsubscribe. I’ll miss you! But, no hard feelings. If you’re ready to keep walking this road with me, read on to hear my heart behind this new letter, as well as to hear about the last three years of walking through the pandemic, pregnancy, and publishing my first book.
I’ve written this letter one million times in my mind. I wrote it last fall when I turned in my manuscript, and the fall before that when I first signed with Revell Books. Now, three years later and six weeks shy from the release of my book, I am writing this letter for real, all daring and drawing you into the deep and dark of my journey, my story.
I started blogging (that is, writing publicly) back when MySpace and Xanga were a thing. Then came Tumblr and Blogger, the days of Chasing Kite Tails, The Leaky Pen, and The Diary of Rae. Does this ring a bell for any of you? Some of you walked with me as I wrote my way through creating Ink & Parchment and Indelible Ink Writers, all the way to what it’s become (and will remain) today—The Fallow House.
In and through each of these ventures, I sought to explore particular parts of me. The curious, creative, and compassionate parts of me. Naturally, it has taken over ten years, two kids, and too many expired domains to discover how to write from and for all of me. For all of you.
This new publication, The Black Letter, is my attempt at just that.
I suppose the pandemic has had much to do with this shift, this solidification. Over the last three years, I have lost much and I have left much. In all of this, though, I have also learned much. I’ve come to acknowledge and accept the parts of me that, I think, for so long I’ve marked and, thus marred, as too deep and too dark.
Maybe you have this too? Parts of you where sorrow swirls, questions and curiosities curate. Maybe you hold deep dreams like I do, visions that stretch beyond the strength of your life’s breath. Maybe you have a pulse on other people’s pain. Maybe you think about things like tragedy, trauma, and time.
More and more, in all that I pen and publish, I am coming to believe:
I am not too dark or too deep. I am not a colossal cause of damage and destruction. I am that candle in a crowd of one thousand flames, all bright and burning, turning eyes towards eternity.
This is light, this is life. And I will make—create, sing, say, pray, paint, write, record, release—stepping bravely into the shadow to shine.
On pregnancy and publishing my first book:
Many of you know this, but most of you don’t. I got signed when I wasn’t seeking it out. I was pregnant in the middle of the pandemic with my second son. There was a decision to make. Do we wait through time for Covid to come to an end? Do we try now, right now in the middle of this crumbling world?
That summer, the raging summer of 2020, we prepared our hearts and our home for Aaro Sky, who would come in February 2021. I traded the book to bring a baby along, the dream for diapers. Then, just as soon as I set aside the dream, a writer friend tells me she’s shared some of my writing with her editor.
“I’m not sure if anything will come of this,” she said. Weeks later, I’d submit a proposal for the book that would become Let There Be Art.
In the beginning of my book, I write:
“The idea for this book came in the dark of night while nursing my newborn and crying into my shoulder from sheer exhaustion. The pitching of this book came while pregnant in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, while all the world was cradling a collective trauma—the shared sorrows that came in the moments and months following the unjust death of George Floyd. The writing of this book came in the endless weeks spent oscillating from doctor to doctor, swimming in a sea of unseen symptoms caused by a nodule in my neck, wreaking havoc on my health” (Let There Be Art, 13).
There’s this myth, I think, that in order to write a book—or, for that matter, to partake in any kind of making, working, giving—the world has to be unbroken. The myth boasts of balance, of unbothered time, and of unburdened tasks, beckoning us to believe that making, working, and giving can only rise up and out of fortunate circumstances.
Which, sometimes this might be the case. But, it is not always true.
It was the hardest thing in the world—physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and socially—to write a book in the middle of such brokenness, both within and around me.
And, yet, hard as it was (and still is), I am here for it all. Here for every rise and fall. I am here for every calamity and every cascade. I will create through it all, calling others out to the same.
“When you finally find yourself ready to sit down at your desk to write, or in that studio to paint, or in that sanctuary to speak, or at that sunrise wedding to photograph, or on that stage to dance, or in that shed to make, or in your living room to play piano, or in that classroom to theorize, or in your kitchen to chop thyme or cilantro or parsley or any other herb you need to make that recipe from your grandmother’s treasured cookbook, or wherever it is that you stand or kneel or walk or sit to create and cause beauty to be and beam from the hollow of your hands—you will find that everything, and I mean everything, will rise up against you. Every holy, hard, and impossible thing will rise up to greet you, will shake hands with you, will remind you of the painful truth that has been true of every beautifully created being since the beginning of time. The truth is that none of this is easy—none of our living, none of our loving, and certainly none of our longing to create. For whatever reason, however inconspicuously the thoughts came seeping in, there is a deeply embedded string of beliefs that you, that we all—collectively—have come to accept as truth. We’ve come to believe that meaningful things come easy and that beautiful things can only come from an elite few. That pretty poems can only come from the pens of published poets. That a ballerina can only practice pliés for the sake of perfection but not for sheer pleasure. That breathtaking concertos can only come from Brahms and Bach but not from the skilled hands of contemporary composers. I see the many ways that we sketch, self-publish books, try new recipes, create costumes from scratch, and build businesses with our bare hands. All of this, while simultaneously tending to children, tending to careers, and tending to lists and needs and aches and ailments that pull at us from every which way. When I see these chaotic collisions, I cannot help but say that this is how it’s meant to be. It’s never going to be one or the other. It’s never going to be easy without the hard, joyful without the grief, magical without the mundane, light without the dark, or art without the struggle. In your creating, even in your enjoyment of what others create, there will always be wars to wage and work to do—fears to fend off, children or communities to care for, lies to unlearn, and evil to overcome…This is a kaleidoscopic call, a wild and messy welcome for you to let light break forth from every darkest corner, for a new dawn to rise over any shadow of darkness in your heart, in your home, in your life, and in this world. For the sake of irresistible pleasure and irrevocable purpose, create with me and come with me to heed and hear the call to let there be art” (Let There Be Art, 13-16).
P.S. I’d love to hear from you as I start over in this new space. How has your creative journey been? What dreams have died or have been deferred? What has been hard and what has been hopeful? How does the quote about resonate with where you are in life—share in the comments below.
I love it all.
And oh how I wish it would just be a convenient, easy, simple, obvious time to do the thing.
I’m inspired because I’m called out.
This is right. There's more intense stuff going on in this season than ever in life and it's also when the call is in me to pull the words out of me like... Well, the image that comes to mind is pulling something out of a dog's mouth against his will. Ha!
Anyway, I love what your write and I'm here for it. Keep it up, Rachel.