What is a Wild Specific Tangent?

Set me free, O God,

to go off with you today

on one wild, specific tangent after another,

immersed and amazed

in the wonder

and even terror

of your immense

creative beauty.

- From Earth Gospel, A Guide to Prayer for God's Creation (Sam Hamilton-Poore, p 62)

For a Type A personality immersed in the American can-do and must-have culture, the freedom to go off on a "wild, specific tanget" seems to dance just out of reach, yet I recently began to sense that I had to have that freedom or start gasping for air.

Most of my life I have lived linearly: followed the rules, planned for success to follow effort, and left the margins blank. A few years ago, the margins blurred and I started coloring life outside the lines. Just a hint, an aura, not a full-fledged rebellion. To be sure, full-time motherhood of three children and a life in middle-class suburbia does not leave an immense amount of room for healthy rebellion, but the need for creative freedom began to percolate.

The phrase "wild specific tangent" in the prayer above actually comes from a Reflection by Annie Dillard, which is quoted on the same page in Earth Gospel. Dillard writes, "The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, or millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font." Witness that exuberance in the flaming leaves of autumn, the red glow of late peaches, the crazed bees preparing for winter. The world is not logical, not always connected in ways that we can see (though always connected) and not controllable. I pray for the ability to relax my need for control, to see the beauty around me, and to explore the wild, specific tangents that cross my path.

Hopefully this blog will give me the opportunity to do so, with partnership and support from like-minded others.