I guess I'm a writer

Over the last week I had the privilege of being part of a writing workshop put on by the Collegeville Institute. Earlier this year I set out to pursue my passion for writing and work to embrace that I already am a writer. In the midst of this personal reckoning I began to share my work a bit more and apply for opportunities to hone the craft. I’ll admit, I was surprised to be accepted to this workshop titled, “Writing Spirit, Writing Faith” led by the magnificent Mary Lane Potter. Prior to the workshop we were tasked with responding to some specific questions in order to articulate what we were seeking to do with our spiritual writing. I wanted to share some of what I wrote before the workshop began as I attempted to situate myself as a writer. 

Question #1: Where are you as a writer? 

So I guess I’m a writer… which means I can answer the first question you’ve posed: “Where are you as a writer?” Well, where am I besides the place my feet touch the ground? Or, now, I’m asking if my writing allows my spirit to be in multiple places at once. Perhaps, then, where I am as a writer is some still far off land where my words live somewhere, endearing themselves to someone, and I may never know what that means. 

I am surprised to acknowledge (to myself) I have been writing most of my life. Like many writers I have written to make sense of things (feelings, experiences, spiritual encounters, etc.), but maybe somewhere in the body of all my written work rests a beating, pumping heart rhythmically reminding me (us?) always: “You are loved.”

Where am I as a writer? Somewhere inside the mystery of my heart converging with the heart of God so we (God and I) might go forth, using “God’s language,” to remind all who stumble upon our words that they, even in their unbelief, are loved. 

To spin the jewel, one more time, of interpreting my identity as a writer, I see a light refracting through God’s embrace. I am obsessed, it seems, with bringing this image of God to bear. God as a bear hug. A tender, gentle, fluffy, but reverent (because look at the size of the Thing!) bear. This is to say I want to write about the communal nature of God, where we are forever invited to join the embrace shared among Father, Jesus, and Spirit. In this Divine hug a gift is revealed that is so mystifying it is often forgotten: We are loved and we need each other. Yet, I am not saying I want to give all my writing energy to depicting a solo embrace with the Hugging Creator, for this image is dimly lit unless we learn to meet this God, also and always, in the embrace of one another. Where am I as a writer, you ask… in search of The Embrace. 

Since I have only recently granted myself permission to acknowledge I am a writer, I realize I know little of what it means to write with pace, to unfurl my words as if caught in the smooth flow of a mountain stream. I still feel intimidated at the prospect of being a writer, and as a result, I struggle to maintain consistent writing rhythms, instead, tapping out words helter skelter. And lastly, for now, I find myself struggling to show via my words, instead I settle for telling. I want to know: How do I write with creative precision, poetic flair, fleshy imagination while producing work of praxis-centric theology? Please, help.

Question #2: Why are you writing? 

Continuing on, the next question is simple and straightforward – “Why are you writing?” – but the response is swirling and elusive, like trying to grab a stray piece of important paperwork in a gust of wind. I cannot claim I don’t know why I write, for in fact, I know I know. But in order to articulate a response I must commit to mining it from the depths of my being, and to put it bluntly, expose myself. The vulnerability is slow coming, as if I’ve stacked years of self-protective, conditioned answers on top of the truth. I have buried (gasp! alive!) my writing soul within myself. Now I must peel back the layers, chip through petrified surfaces, dig my fingernails into the cracked dirt, and find what has lived there all along.

Why do I write? Most often, and this sounds so trite (before I’ve even written it down, no less), I write because it makes me feel good. Even more at odds with what I think the answer is supposed to be, I write because I think I’m good at writing. What a strange truth to scrape away from my interior. 

Perhaps this honesty is part of coming to peace with myself. Perhaps an “audience” for my writing consists of others who, knowingly or unknowingly, desire to live at peace with themselves. Or maybe, when I write as one coming alive to myself, I have touched the pulse of why I write. Thump. Thump. Surprise! I am included in my audience… hoping we all come alive to who we are, our truest selves, our God-given identities. To be loved and free.

When I was fifteen or so, I kept a notebook of poems I was writing always close at hand. I scribbled on the cover a little four-liner, which in hindsight, lifts itself from the faux leather as an angsty illumination. And if I am willing to embrace the resurrection of my writing soul, the words might, over twenty years later, serve as a beacon ushering me to come home to who I’ve always been: 

Why do I write? / To enhance my soul / and fulfill the light / that makes me whole.

I am, as shocked at the revelation as I may be, writing to repair the world, to unveil the light within myself and shine it into the shadows so the human collective might come alive to being loved, and become liberated beings… together, radiant. What a lofty reason to write! I am inspiring myself and intimidating myself in one single swoop.

Question #3: What is “spiritual writing”?

Now, maybe I’ve already answered the final question, but let me try anyway: What is “spiritual writing”? It is writing that aims to heal and reconcile by way of the prophetic, slathered with compassion. It is a transcendent invitation, but often a muffled shout, to participate in it doesn’t have to be this way, fulfilled in both the inner and outer dimensions of our own “spirituality.” This type of writing crafts a healed world, grounded in the godly, and thus the spirit of spiritual writing is not solely therapeutic, but ongoing healing expressed in a lived reality. Spiritual writing extends an invitation to experience in mind, in body, and of course, in spirit, the Cosmic Embrace that all of life is interconnected. 

Writing in this vein means I have been injected with the words of Howard Thurman, who melds the mystical with the mental, and who posits one must join the holistic movement toward reconciliation as a “discipline of the spirit” in which all of humanity is cared for. Likewise, and to bring this to its conclusion, I am striving to follow the guidance of Frederick Buechner (“God speaks to us, I would say, much more than we realize or than we choose to realize.”), Barbara Brown Taylor (“In the absence of any sense of God, I wish I had known that it was still possible to trust God.”), James Baldwin (“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”), Robert Farrar Capon (“Nobody, in other words – not the devil, not the world, not the flesh, not even ourselves – can take us away from the Love that will not let us go.”), Will Campbell (“What you say up there in the pulpit, that’s probably the poorest way to communicate with a congregation.”) and Annie Dillard, (“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”). Here’s to another attempt to build my writing wings on the way down.