Writing has a tendency to clarify my thoughts on a subject. Yet it does so only after throwing my thoughts into chaos. Two things seem to be happening. In the first place, my mind, as I begin to compose, begins to make all sorts of connections that it has never made before. In the second place, I find that the way I express myself makes far less sense on the page than it did in my mind. Or rather, I find myself with the links and connections that had seemed to make sense suddenly seeming to have very little weight. 

The movement into greater clarity through writing is hard fought. 

Clarity is gained first through a kind of disciplined focus that respects and values the new connections that seem to burst forth in writing and yet also knows how to put those new connections to the side. The goal is clarity about the topic itself. 

Clarity is gained in the second and harder place by that self-knowledge that is able to admit how little I know, and how many were the platitudes that seemed so powerful. It is this second movement that is also the profound spiritual movement of leaning into the darkness. There is a kind of human and intellectual trust that says that the darkness is a place of fruitfulness and not a place of death. This is an important, if feeble imitation of the great active and passive nights of the senses and of the spirit, which are such a part of the spiritual journey.