the way without footsteps—creating without being the creator

In the quiet morning, there are words to be written. I must catch them as they fly about my house. First, the past, the ancient story, lands. The breath takes over to allow the body to write. Next, the silence takes the pen. The silence is not talking or writing. It’s arising from the quiet. What the silence is saying is revealed in my writing.

How do I know what is to be written? How do I translate a voice coming through silence? I have no doubt. I have heard the words over and over again throughout my life. You have probably heard the same messages of wisdom. And yet, the words must be repeated century after century. All wisdom is from the earth. I connect to the earth by observing it, communing with it as it speaks. First it may be the mind chattering. Next the interpretation of the chatter. Then the confusion, then the not knowing. Next, silence and more silence. Then, finally a silence that I could have never imagined. We must find a way to the voice of life’s mysteries—if not through silence, then through whatever means call to us.

I remember once when a stone sculptor from Zimbabwe arrived to teach in Oakland. He was from the Shona tribe, which sculpts serpentine stone found in the region. Their way to the mystery of life is through stone. There’s a way of the stone and he has come to share it with us.

After greeting us—a group of students and my sculpting teacher, who invited him—the guest sculptor talked briefly of his life. Then he raised his left hand, which was holding a mallet. He said in a beautiful, thick English mixed with his mother tongue, “This is the artist.” Then he raised his right hand and said, “This is the assistant.” There was silence. No one asked a question or said anything. In a few words, the teacher rendered himself invisible of his creations. In the way of the stone, he only offered his hands, his body as a conduit for the spirit of the stone to come through.

He is not the sculptor, his words said. He is not his work. His living body is a pathway for what exists beyond his working body. His body is not the image used to produce the faces, the arms, the legs, and the body of his sculptures. What seeps in and sculpts its own face?

We are not sculptors. We are open bodies of water by which the source of creations can come alive. Our left hand and our right hand, if connected to the source, will be directed to shape the stone, to solve the mystery. Discovering we have nothing to do with what gives birth, we students ask no questions. We are portals. If we are prepared through meditation, or anything that brings a state of consciousness for receiving, all that’s supposed to come through will come.

The first piece of stone I choose to sculpt is strawberry alabaster. Its white and red swirls appear delicious. I intend to sculpt three faces out of its eighty pounds. Mallet and chisel in hand, I tap to see if the stone is integral, meaning, whether it’s weak or might crack. I begin to chisel away the pieces not needed, not wanted. Soon, the nose appears, but it’s taking up space from the other imagined faces. Next, the forehead takes its space. It’s big too. The lips are gigantic. I walk away for a few days. When I return, I close my eyes and feel the face, the huge nose and lips, the full cheeks. I begin to love this huge person. I let go of the other two faces and allow this gigantic face to exist. Next come huge hair, eyes, and ears. Throughout the months, with my eyes closed, I take time to feel the strawberry alabaster face come into being. Nearing completion, while I smooth out the rough edges, I walk around the heavy stone many times. One day, I walk around slowly and something astonishing comes into view. I notice three different faces in the one face—on the left appeared one look, on the right side another, and straight forward another. The three faces intended emerged on their own in the one face in the way they wanted to exist. I had nothing to do with it.

True creativity has no creator. It’s the radiant one, as Jalal al-din Muhammad Balkhi, also known as Rumi, the ancient poet and teacher from Afghanistan (formerly Persia), calls the source of all things that have appeared in the world. The radiant one doesn’t speak but can be heard. My soul knows this. At home, outside the front door, there are low cacti with tall purple blooms. Cacti don’t create purple flowers. Their roots don’t create cacti. The earth doesn’t create roots for the cacti. The flowers, the roots, the earth, are created by the indescribable quiet creator that is silent—be it God, spirit, Tunkashila (Grandfather Sky in Lakota), creator, moon, Earth, the unnameable, or whatever has brought us into this life and continues to breathe us. It’s not in our hands. This is peace.

I sit near a window to write. In the beginning it’s because I want to see out. As a child I needed to see trees and plants as I wrote. It made me feel good. As I sit this morning in the window, I realize it’s not so much about seeing out and feeling a particular way. I sit in the window so the mountains can come in. So the cottonwood tree can cross the illusory barrier and join in the creativity. It’s so poetry can climb through the window and make itself known.

I offer to the radiant silence my left hand and my right hand—the artist and the assistant. I still the body for the manifestation that is not owned by me. The body breathes in and out. It’s a dynamic exchange between what can be felt but not touched, heard but not said, seen but not described. The unknown is met and is speaking this very moment. It’s not God in the personified sense. It speaks, but that doesn’t mean it’s a man, woman, animal, or the spirit of a person. It’s not solid or fluid, superior or inferior. It’s not embodied. It’s not transcendent. It’s not anything that has to do with anything we know.

And yet I have spent time, yours and mine, speaking of what can barely be expressed. I bow and return to silence.