My kitchen counters are absolutely strewn with the ingredients from dinner. There are bowls and whisks and smears of black bean goo on my laminate countertop. I take something hot off the stove and I have nowhere--absolutely nowhere-- to put the hot pan. I leave it on the stovetop.
In the back of my mind I begin the shame talk. "You are the only person on planet earth who can create this much mess making dinner."
I lick the spoon of the black bean goo. I tried a new recipe. Gluten Free Black Bean Burgers. They're absolutely fantastic. I wince at the mess and swoon at the taste. The chipotle peppers in adobo sauce absolutely make this recipe. I avert my eyes from the lack of countertop space in my kitchen to enjoy the new burgers I have made. I sit in the moment of it all.
I have been an artist all my life. I have letters which I wrote to my sister when I was six or eight years old begging her to create things with me. It's in my blood. I can't not create.
In fact, the one area of the gospel where I never--not ever-- struggle with is creation. God created. I believe it with all my heart. I know I couldn't bring a single iota of this earth to some semblance of order and he did.
But tonight as I stood in my sweet-mercy-could-this-kitchen-be-any-messier-mayhem, I was struck with this thought: Creation always involves mess.
I like to avoid the mess. I neglect any sound which might sound like something bursting forth with liquid. Or mud. Don't even say the word "squirt" around me.
And yet: As a creator, I know that I have never created something without a mess. The mess might not be tangible... it might take the form of mental chaos, but it often involves things being out of order while something else is formed.
Anyone who has witnessed a birth of some kind will probably not talk about it, but very much remember everything which accompanied the birth. When I delivered my first daughter I squirmed a little at the first gooey sight of her. But my second delivery was totally different. I scooped up Eve into my arms, goop and all, and kissed her head. When the nurse asked to take her away to bathe her I told her no, held onto her more tightly and continued to marvel at the beauty of my daughter. I recognized the work it took to bring her into this world and I appreciated the whole package.
Why am I talking about mess and creation?
Because this: We live in a world which sanitizes the creative experience. We receive magazines in the mail which show us finished products of homes and projects. We watch food shows which tell us that cooking dinner can be done neatly, without interruptions and with great ease. We see people drive cars that look shiny and assume that their job must be shiny as well. We bow at the feet of authors in English Lit class and assume that the muse gave them a double helping of inspiration without any rejections or failures.
Though I consider myself an intelligent individual, I have fallen for the lie over and over.
The lie is this:
You are the only messy person.
Everyone else has it together.
Which makes me feel like I forgot to take a class in high school or something.
In the Bible there is a really weird story about mess. There's a man who is blind and Jesus decides to heal him by making a mess. It's kind of gross, actually: Jesus mixed his spit with dirt to make mud and then smeared the mixture on the blind man's face, covering his sockets with globs of clay. A man who is ALREADY in darkness is being given less light. It's a situation where a very responsible person should have piped up, "Perhaps you don't understand... he would like to see more, not less."
If we dig way, way back into the story of Creation, we recall another story about clay. That all flesh, in fact, was made from clay drawn from the earth. That until God spoke and breathed life into the soil it was just dirt but when he gave the word it became creature. You can almost imagine him smirking as people start to gag while he whispers to the blind man, his hand dripping with mud, "Trust me. I've done this lots of times. This stuff really works."
Maybe making dinner is like that, too. We're hungry and we're given basic ingredients to become healers. To make people unhungry.
It's bok choy and carrots and a can of chicken broth until you say, "Come together. Mix. Bubble. Be soup." And then, suddenly it's not separate, dull ingredients. It's dinner. The kitchen looks like a crazed hyena tore barking mad through it, but, by jove, we're eating. We're finding life in the midst of the mess.
Sometimes it involves mud or paintbrushes or kitchens of mayhem, but we're creating life.
The mess is just evidence of the creation.