Creative Isolation

by Donna Poole

Why do we choose someone as a friend?

Friendship is a funny thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t easily dissect or diagram. I don’t really understand what draws one person to another, but I know this: if you love God and others, I admire you. If you make me smile; you’re my friend. If you make me chuckle, you’re my dear friend, and if you make me laugh out loud, I’ll love you forever and like you for always.

Not only do I love friends who make me laugh, I also have a soft spot in my heart for ones who are a bit different, quirky even. There’s nothing like a long walk down a country road and a good talk with an out-of-the-ordinary friend.

Take W. Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923) for example. He’s one of my many dead friends. I keep him on a shelf in our bedroom. No, silly, I don’t keep his ashes. He’s a book friend. His name makes me smile, chuckle, and laugh out loud. And he was definitely a bit quirky.

I would have liked nothing better than a good talk and a long walk with Nicoll, but his health wouldn’t have permitted it. He began his career as a young pastor in Scotland, but poor health forced him from the pastorate. Once out of the pulpit, he admitted he didn’t miss it. He became a great writer and editor.

This is what makes me laugh: W. Robertson Nicoll did some of his best work in bed, and not just in bed, but in a cluttered, messy one.

T. H. Darlow, Nicoll’s biographer, wrote, “It was weird to watch him as he lay there, amid a medley of newspapers and books and pipes and cigarette ashes, and to know that his brain was busy absorbing knowledge and incubating ideas all the time.”

Nicoll had weak lungs, but not only did he smoke, he kept a fire in the fireplace year around and refused to open any windows. Fresh air, he insisted, was an invention of the devil. See? Quirky. Don’t call him stupid; they didn’t know then the things about good health we know now.

From his bed that man accomplished an amazing amount of work. Nicoll read two books a day. He edited journals and several magazines, wrote over forty books, and managed to “compile, edit, or supervise the publication of over 250 more titles. . .. He was undoubtedly the most prolific and respected religious journalist in the English-speaking world from 1886 to his death in 1923” (Wiersbe, Walking with the Giants, Baker).

All from that messy bed, strewn with newspapers, book, pipes, and cigarette ashes! That makes me laugh, but if my husband did it, it wouldn’t be so funny.

I like something else about Nicoll; he loved cats and collecting books. He owned 25,000 books, and 5,000 of those were biographies. I don’t know how many cats he had; I know it was more than one, and I hope his poor wife didn’t have to dust, because I know from experience how cat hair drifts and settles on a library of books. Cat hair, dusty books, cigarettes, pipes, no fresh air; it’s a miracle that man lived as long as he did!

If I could talk with Nicoll, I wouldn’t have to ask how he accomplished so much from his bed. I know the answer; he loved his work. He was passionate about it.

If you love something, an isolated setting doesn’t stop you from pursuing it. Sometimes isolation produces creativity.

Amy Carmichael, one of my favorite authors, fell, injured her back, and spent her last twenty years in bed. Without her injury, we never would have had her beautiful writings.

John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress from prison.

Paul the apostle penned much of the New Testament while under house arrest in Rome.

When Cambridge closed because of the plague they sent the students home to self-quarantine. Isaac Newton went home and invented calculus.

During the bubonic plague almost one-third of the people in London died. When the death toll exceeded thirty a week, they shut down the Elizabethan theaters. Sometimes the theaters were closed more than they were open. During one plague, Shakespeare wrote poetry, during another, he took advantage of the time to write more of his popular plays.

Emily Dickinson, for whatever reason, shut herself in her room at around age thirty. Some say she wouldn’t come out even for her own father’s funeral but just cracked the door open a little to listen. Would we have her writing without her self-imposed isolation?

We’re all isolated now. I’m not suggesting we write a classic or invent a sequel to calculus, but we can renew our creativity.

Dig out those old balls of yarn; put together puzzles; read like there’s no tomorrow; dust off your bike and see if you can still ride, or try a new recipe. Just challenge yourself in some way. Do something to make a friend laugh, because we need that, especially now. Pray creatively; try writing out prayers, or praying scripture, or taking a prayer walk.

What creative thing am I doing? Well, I’m writing to you, of course. Where am I writing? I’m writing from bed, I can’t think in a messy setting, and I like to breathe, so my bed doesn’t have any pipes, newspapers, or cigarette ashes. I do have cats and books, lots of books. I’m missing my live friends terribly, especially the ones who make me laugh, but some of these dead ones are pretty funny.

I’m okay, and I hope you are too.