Puzzling With Purpose

Puzzling With Purpose

By Jane Tawel

November 14, 2020

These past months as I have been reading and circling through the deep treasures in books by Victor Frankel, Abraham Joshua Herschel, Shane Claiborne, Gary Wills, A.W. Tozer, and Chief Joseph Riverwind, I have been filled with the paradoxes of longing/knowing, seeking/ remembering, learning/ yearning, and wondering/wandering. I have also felt myself taking spiritual baby-steps, and as another favorite of mine, C.S. Lewis wrote, heading a bit “further up and further in”.

My readings led me to rough-draft through a slight meditative acrostic. As the old adage goes, “writing is never finished, it is only due”; and maybe if we thought more that way about each day, each life, each person, we’d be a bit more joyful, caring, kind, and hopeful in our life’s journeys toward meaning. Aren’t writing and communication always really just today’s rough draft in expressing who I think I am, what I think the Big Themes are? Isn’t each day of life, just a bit of a second draft on yesterday, and another rough draft today, with hopes for perfection, or at least a passing grade, for tomorrow?

I enjoy word puzzles, but then I think that everything we human beings say or do or write are chock- full of puzzles — puzzles of intent, puzzles of consequences, puzzles of meaning. We are after all the species who speaks, the critters who communicate; we are the beings who are perhaps, just a little lower than the angels, but constantly fighting our own worst demons.

In general, I adhere to the wisdom that in writing, function should always come first and come first from the heart and later the head. But sometimes it is useful to start with form, and then find function in the very strictures imposed. I thought perhaps that was an especially interesting philosophy to play around with when looking at some of what we call the issues and ideas I have about “Life’s Meaning”. So, I started with the form of an acrostic to see where it led me about the function of expressing thoughts on what “it all” means, this Life. I also liked this idea since a form of acrostic is a form of poetry that was used in some of the Psalms of Judaism and the ancient Hebrews; and those are poems I have long loved, because they express still the universal human longings for meaning that all people have.

When we look for meaning, as all humans do, we are unaware of how the puzzle pieces will all fit together. We see only the edge of today, the bent pieces we messed-up yesterday, the corner of the puzzle we have almost, not quite put together, perhaps because we fear we are missing a piece. Then there is the fact that the Table holds lots of people’s puzzles and some of us are working on our own deciphering as well as the ciphers of several others’. Sometimes we try to put together the puzzle with someone else, but each person isn’t necessarily working on the same part of the puzzle, or even the same type of puzzle that we are. While I am working on this part of the jigsaw, someone I love may be working on another part, and so our communication with each other may end up frustrating or confusing us both; like someone trying to communicate with Morse Code while the other one is using JavaScript. Perhaps the greatest life mystery is how we ever manage to communicate at all in a truly meaningful way with another human being.

We are constantly in the rough draft stage of writing our own life story. But we are never meant to go it alone. We may look inwards, outwards, upwards, and beyond for hints and clues. We will have good and bad “teachers”, fans of our story, critics and foes; helpful and harmful life-story editors, sacrificial helpers, guides and mentors, promoters and beneficiaries. It is, always, however, at the end of each page, my story to write. And it must be my decision about who and what I will keep in, and what I will edit out, in order to form the great themes in my own life-story.

Every life-story is looking for meaning and each is the same as all the others, and each is completely unique and separate from anyone else’s. This is the paradoxical puzzle of You and We and I.

So back to acrostics and writing one. In all writing, we may start with form and hope function follows. Or we might embrace function and trust the form will naturally evolve. I think it more likely, though, when all is said and done, that every story, like every life, is a patchwork of form and function, not seamless, but beautiful in its complexity. Maybe when we are most in touch with our search for meaning, we ebb and flow between form and function, perpetually and poetically in motion. Like a river. Like a breeze. Like a baby being rocked in the arms of a Loving Parent. Like the whole world circling towards Tomorrow and coming back around to Now. Like a Story that will have no End.

I think it is important however an individual chooses to do it, that he chooses intentionally, purposefully, with great wells of deep hope — to work on the puzzle of his own life’s meaning. By searching for and finding my own meaning, I find The Meaning of all human quest and all human concern. In this way, my part of The Puzzle, is connected to all the parts of The Puzzle, and I am connected to all others in time and space in this great experiment God has granted us. The earth experiment that we are part of, we participate as subjects of it. At the same time, it is the experiment we humans on Earth are researching and overseeing, supervising, hypothesizing about, and reaching conclusions by which to live. We are both the supervisors and the substance of The Grand Experiment of Creating a Meaningful Life.

Find your puzzle today, whether it is a book whose themes you wrestle with to decipher; a relationship with someone you try to understand better; or a task that makes your brain sting and sing. Formulate your questions, and don’t rush the answers. Enjoy each day as a rough draft, that will only get better in tomorrow’s version. But for today be content to sit awhile with the great mysteries in the heartbeats of your very own little puzzle of a life.

And whenever possible, as The Good Parents always advise their children to do: Whenever you are puzzling out meaning? Try to use your words.

© Jane Tawel 2020

An Acrostic

By Jane Tawel

L ove first — The Creator and the Created.

I can, I must, I Will myself to do it.

F ollow the Leaders of Light and Servants of Hope.

E mbrace Mystery. She is Wisdom’s Helpmeet.

’ Pause and Punctuate the Moments.

S eek Eternal Values found outside the temporary storehouses.

M ates and moments are more precious than money.

E njoy the journey. Take one step at a time; look around at everything; look ahead with imagination; look behind with forgiveness.

A gain and Again, Time is our Current. Time is the Tide flowing backwards and forwards, until it becomes The Circle, covering over, revealing; an endless ebb and flow of the Big Questions, and the Last Mysteries.

N ice-ness in narcissism is a fool’s paradise; but Truth in Love is heaven seeking earth.

I n the care of the soul, perfect calling meets greatest need.

N othing can separate us from The Love without our permission. Grant Love permission to have the last say and the ultimate power.

G od asks only for enough faith to do Good.

S halom; and in Wholeness is Beginning and Ending.

© Jane Tawel 2020