Why do you write?

May 16, 2017 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Women's Voice & Power, Writing

“Why do you write?” was a question recently asked of me. 

Here’s my answer:

I write because it is the space in which I feel most creative, most challenged, and most
compelling. Here on the page – whether literally with paper and pen or document open and cursor ashing – everything that swirls within me finds a place to land.

I write because at least for these minutes and sometimes hours, I feel calm and sane.

I write because I have something to say, lots to say. My thoughts are my own, but I long for them to take shape and form that will make their way into the world on others’ behalf, on behalf of the women’s stories I tell and love, and yes, on behalf of me.

I write because the craft of choosing particular, perfect words and then deleting them in favor of others thrills me. To realize that paragraph five is really paragraph two, that the sentence with which I started is actually my ending, that seemingly disparate threads can weave themselves together under my care, time, and attention; this is delight beyond
compare.

I write because sometimes magic descends, ascends, enters in and I become a channel, a vessel, a conduit of something other, something more. It’s of me, to be sure, and not. It’s a voice that mirrors mine, but knows and says things in ways that bypass my ever-processing mind and sometimes even my inner critic.

I write because it feels like, no, is, the place in which I feel capable and strong, wise and certain, creative and alive. All heart. Less head. All together. Less disparate. All me. Less less.

I write to name, to not ignore that which is true. I need this: my ego’s skill at disguising my every proclivity and pathology as normal and logical, convinces me it is unnecessary to do anything of the kind. When my words – my words – show up on paper, or pristine screen, I see my soul; it is grateful to finally be seen and heard, acknowledged and loved.

I write because it is a space that is bigger than me. No one asks me for money. No rides are needed. No lunches must be packed or dinners cooked. No demands are made. And all I hear is “yes.” I am allowed – all of me. My tears, my rage, my fantasies, my frustrations, my desires, my doubts, my big and brilliant thoughts, my expansive heart, my heartbreak, my strong love. There is no one I have to convince or cajole, no one for whom I have to dumb myself down, no one who can’t handle me. It is rare: this space, this respite that restores.

I write because somehow, no matter how much pours forth, there is always more. It offers me the miraculous glimpse of what the best relationship could potentially be: complete honesty, no hiding, and days, weeks, months, years, centuries needed to ever exhaust every word/thought/idea/feeling that is there to be expressed, invited, and loved out of me.

I write because it is the felt and known-with-certainty place in which I discover the discrepancies between who I truly am and who I sometimes become; between the me who stays strong, soars high, dances seductively, loves passionately, speaks boldly and the me who does not a whit of this. Writing brings me back to myself – over and over again. It stands tall, bows low and winks mischievously, then opens its arms, draws me in, holds me tight, promises me everything and means it. I am home.

Mmmm. That’s at least a start to my answer.

And you? Why do you write? 

My Proclivity for Lists

Jul 31, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

I’m a list-maker, I admit it. I not only make them, I complete them. I can have multiple lists running at the same time: work, home,
parenting, the grocery store, yard work, future vacation itineraries – both fantasized and real. Whether fortunate or not, my brain has the capacity to hold all of these at once, determine which one(s) to work on at a particular time, and still recall the others.

My parents would say I should enjoy this while I can because that now-taken-for-granted-capacity will begin to fail as my age increases. I know what they mean but at least right now I’m not sure it’s a gift that’s all that great.

Lists somehow regiment life. They add order. And though both of these may be good things, I only want lists informing my life, not defining my reality.

Lists have a strange and mysterious power to become the determiner of what was, is, and should be – in many realms, but perhaps most profoundly for a religious person who lives within a text that is filled with more lists than we know what to do with.

I was looking at some passages in 1st and 2nd Timothy last week that had to do with Elders: their role, the qualities of such, etc. And I found myself incredibly frustrated. Too many to-do’s. True, the order thing is there – in spades, but for me, they felt like they’d lost their goodness and moved to something dangerous, something life-draining vs. life-giving. I struggled to think of a way to breathe life into these texts; to offer a larger perspective on how I/we might understand them. I wanted to find and invite something, anything different. I didn’t have much luck.

As I’ve spent some more time reflecting on the palpable tension I experienced in this context I wondered how it might speak to a larger reality in my life these days:

My list-making, or at least my previous understanding of what would provide me order, security, boundaries, safety, and even answers, stopped working the way it used to.

Surely, I used to think, the Biblical text – the mandates, the commandments, the lists (and those who’ve interpreted it) could offer me a rubric through which to understand my life and how to live it: a simple step-by-step process that would make sense of the increasing complexity I found myself in. I went back to the books that lined my shelves, most written by reputable Christians, hoping to find that framework.

They let me down – through no fault of their own. Somehow, between the time I bought the books and read them the first, second, or even third time and now my life no longer fit. The rules and how-to’s don’t make sense at all. I need something that offers freedom, something that gives me life.

Not surprisingly really, I found it in the Biblical text when I went to the stories – especially the women, who didn’t live by the rules and were (still) deeply loved by God. I found story after story that literally drips in freedom, that offers life. I’m incredibly grateful.

Still, what to do with the lists – my own and those in Scripture? At least for now, I choose to understand them in the larger context of the Biblical narrative, in the larger context of a God who desires and promises life above all else. For now, I wonder how the lists themselves, the do’s and don’ts, the thou shalts and thou shalt nots might limit both freedom and life.

For now, I’m fine to just wonder – not worry, about making the lists, completing the lists, crossing off every item.

If nothing else (though I believe there’s more) I’m glad I can remember what I need at the grocery store while simultaneously typing on my cellphone a list of to-do’s for work the next day as I’m waiting in the checkout line, looking at my watch, and thinking about how many things I need to get done before the next alarm sounds on my calendar/phone indicating what’s next on my list…

Enough typing. I’ve got to get on to the next thing on my list!