Jingle Jumble

Tonight there are no words. I've been sitting at my computer for more than an hour now trying to form my nebulous thoughts into the coherent paragraphs that will hopefully become my sermon manuscript for the week, but nothing is quite coming out right. My learning style, generally, is that ideas will bounce around my brain like rubber balls, jumbling and banging into each other chaotically until, suddenly, a pattern forms. Once I have a pattern, a basic outline, the words will just start flowing onto the page and, after an hour or two usually, the first draft will be complete. Unfortunately, I have come to rely on the pressure of deadlines to help the ideas gel. Tonight, four days from the evening I'll preach this sermon, the pattern simply isn't emerging yet. Things have not yet fallen into place.

I find this frustrating. I love watching things come together. I love putting together jigsaw puzzles and seeing how the pieces fit perfectly, connecting one to another until a complete picture emerges. I love fitting words together to make beautiful, coherent statements and images. I even love crafting the flow of ideas and thoughts in a piece of writing. I enjoy the way words can take us from one idea through a transition to another idea almost seamlessly. So when things are choppy and disconnected, when the transitions don't work or the ideas don't fit or the words won't come, I get irritated.

Right now, working on this sermon is like trying to untangle Christmas lights. Somewhere in this jumble I know there's a single strand connecting all of the little bulbs that will allow the energy and power to flow through it. But just now I can't make it out in the midst of the tangle. And I have found through my history of Christmas decorating that sometimes it's just best to put down the knots of lights and go do something else. Tonight I'll sleep, tomorrow I'll look at this jumble anew.