Daily Nourishment for November 26, 2024: What Do We Choose Not to Know with Guidance from Lauren Winner
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 60 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
A Note from Lauren Winner: This week’s invitations will each consider a writer or visual artist with a late November birthday.
Pause.
Allowing your breath to slow, consider these words by novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson:
Beauty is…everywhere to be found. The pitch of a voice, the gesture of a hand, can be very beautiful. I need hardly speak of daylight, warmth, silence.
Breathe for a moment.
Now deeply inhale and then deeply exhale at every comma, as you read:
The pitch of a voice, the gesture of a hand, can be very beautiful….daylight, warmth, silence.
The pitch of a voice
the gesture of a hand
daylight
warmth
silence.
Prompt.
Today is the birthday of Robinson (1943) and of artist Kara Walker (1969). Both work in explicit conversation with American history, and both reflect on which historical narratives get told by whom, where, under what circumstances. As we approach Thanksgiving — and with apologies to writers outside the US — take a moment with:
Kara Walker, Slaughter of the Innocents (They Might be Guilty of Something) (2016)
“There is no group in history I admire more than the abolitionists, but from their example I conclude that there are two questions we must always ask ourselves – what do we choose not to know, and what do we fail to anticipate?” (Marilynne Robinson)
“The illusion is that it’s about past events…simply about a particular point in history and nothing else. It’s really part of the ruse that I tend to like to approach the complexities of my own life by distancing myself and finding a parallel in something that’s prettier, more genteel.” (Kara Walker)
Practice.
For five minutes, write in response to Robinson’s two questions, or to Walker’s meditation on illusion and distancing.
Or
Walker works in many forms, but perhaps best known are her silhouettes. She has said “The silhouette lends itself to avoidance of the subject. You know, not being able to look at it directly.”
Again, avoidance, what we choose not to know; indirection. (What is the difference between chosen not-knowing, and indirection?)
What, in your family history, has your family chosen not to know? What, in your local history, has your local community chosen not to know? What, in your individual, personal history, have you chosen not to know? Write for five minutes.
Or
Again, “The silhouette lends itself to avoidance of the subject. You know, not being able to look at it directly.” What is the verbal equivalent of a silhouette? Consider one of the family stories or local history stories most important to you (“most important” could mean beloved of you, or reviled by you, or ignored by you); write it silhouette.
Want More?
Kara Walker’s The Emancipation Approximation
Selin Thomas’s wonderful reflection on Walker
Marilynn Robinson interviewed in 2023 — the interview begins with the question “Why do you write?”
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Lauren Winner. Lauren Winner is a writer, professor, Episcopal Priest, & spiritual director.
Read Lauren’s full bio here.
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