InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
Today we welcome Inez Tan, a writer with MFA training and experience with the Augustine Collective, a student-led movement of Christian journals on college campuses. Inez talks about journaling as part of her spiritual life. Read other entries in the Writing As a Spiritual Discipline series here. [Read more…] about Journaling to Practice Honesty (Writing As a Spiritual Discipline Series)
Tamarie Macon continues our spring series on Writing As a Spiritual Discipline with reflections on the writing process—including some in poetry. Read Tamarie’s other ESN reflections here, on Navigating the Rapids and how to Plan Long and Prosper. To see other posts in the Writing As a Spiritual Discipline series, click here.
Writing . . .
Having to write one word—one letter—at a time forces me to focus. On one idea. In the moment. Writing slows my thoughts to one idea at a time. It’s like photography. For the object to be captured in focus it must be still for at least a moment; otherwise the image is blurry and indistinct at the edges. So it is with ideas: taking time to record a thought encourages a stillness, a pausing to dwell with that thought, allowing it to mature and develop.
Recording ideas, reminders, and tasks as they come in unplanned moments and scribing interesting but tangential ideas, concerns, and things to do while working on the main task at hand—clears the mind and makes room for creativity to flourish. This may be particularly helpful upon awakening. Writing out what is in the mind clears the mind so that we can engage in purposeful work in a fuller, freer, more focused way.
Yes, emotion plays a powerful role in cementing long-lasting memories, but we are an inherently forgetful people. I write down those experiences in which God and His beautiful truths have been especially real to me. Recording my journey with God helps me remember—now having the memory of the actual experience, as well as the memory of writing about it—and helps me when I don’t remember—as long as I remember to go back and read about it!
Through writing, I struggle to articulate inchoate or nebulous feelings within. Oswald Chambers wrote: “If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can.†Why? Because otherwise we are robbing our brothers and sisters of the strength and encouragement that our unique expression could bring them. We speak into others’ hearts with the wisdom God imparts to us, wisdom that can be fashioned and better remembered when we take the time to write them. I’ve found myself articulating Biblical truths to those who do not yet believe in God in a form that they can relate to, and even agree with—because I had written about it. God prepared me beforehand through the discipline of writing. Struggling in the discipline of writing helps others, and it helps us, too. Writing brings worries and wrong mindsets that might otherwise stay in the darkness of our minds to the light of the page (Ephesians 5:13-14).
feelings are a newborn babe
that has yet to age
tempted to keep them in the mind’s cradle
but the swaddling cortex traps growth.
feelings, when allowed to mature,
start flowing
(maybe growing, maybe slowing)
but keeping them locked in the brain
doesn’t minimize the pain.
most truths are counter
intuitive.
feelings need to flow freely
simply acknowledge them
feel the feeling
and
let it go
and by letting it flow
freely
the feeling matures
completes its journey—
sometimes dying neatly,
sometimes persevering sweetly
I love the notion of writing as discovery. For me, such discoveries in academic writing have been as serendipitously complex as uncovering a new pattern in my dissertation results that led to new questions and testable theories. But oh, the possibilities in the realm of journaling! Writing about a problem you face may get icky emotions from inside of you to outside on the page, allowing you to see the situation more clearly (credit to a friend for helping me articulate this idea). Let me be clear: I am not saying that we should wallow in our problems, or that all emotions are icky. But I do believe that when we ruminate about situations in our heads, it is all too easy to continue on that hamster wheel of worry. Putting it on paper can reveal the underlying issue. And adding structure to this kind of writing can be most helpful: setting a 5-minute timer to get started, focusing on answering specific questions, etc. When I journaled recently about an experience, I recognized my anger stemmed from a deeper issue. I get angry when I perceive others not doing what I struggle to do: love. To love in the sense of believing the best about that person (I Corinthians 13:7, AMPC). For me, the fruit of anger has a deeper root, discovered in the discipline of writing.
but whether the feeling dies or grows
check the root
for there lies the source of the fruit
We resume our Writing As a Spiritual Discipline series with a post by Anna Gissing, editor at InterVarsity Press and previous editor of The Well. Browse Anna’s other work for ESN here, including one of our most read posts, Grading As a Spiritual Practice. To explore other pieces in the Writing As a Spiritual Discipline series, click here.
I’m not one of those writers who has always known I wanted to write. I don’t have childhood journals, and I didn’t write my first novel as a teen. (In fact, I still haven’t written one).
Nor am I one of those people for whom writing bubbles up inside of me and I have to write to find release.
Yet, I do write.
I believe that we are all part of a huge story that God is writing—that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. I believe that oft-cited quote by Kuyper: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’â€
But I sometimes forget what I believe. It’s easy for those ideas to stay tucked away in my head somewhere, like sweaters packed in mothballs, waiting for the right time to be brought out.
Writing helps me remember. For me, writing helps me to connect what I’m reading or experiencing with this epic story of God. When I write, I make time to reflect on the ways God is at work in my individual circumstances, in my community, and in the world.
I write to figure out how to practice what I believe—to learn how to live a holistic life where the spiritual part isn’t shoved into one box away from the files for parenting, work, and advocacy. I write to discern how to respond to life amidst the cacophony of voices around me.
If I don’t force myself to write, I can bypass some of this reflective work. I find myself thinking about but not practicing my faith. And I believe that faith takes practice.
Writing is a discipline. This work of integrating my faith into all of life takes intentionality. And my reflective writing can get shoved down to the bottom of the list if I’m not careful. When kids are hungry and the house is a mess, who has time to write?
Writing feels risky—what if it’s not good? What if it’s inelegant, superficial, or— heaven forbid—grammatically incorrect? It’s tempting to just go read another book.
Because I battle perfectionism, deadlines are my friends. If I didn’t have external accountability to write, I’m not sure I’d ever do it. It’s always easier to critique than to construct, and I’d pick holes in someone else’s writing all day if I didn’t have to write myself.
Those who have asked me to write and have given me deadlines have been gifts of God to me. They have pushed me to practice this spiritual discipline of connecting my head to my heart, my books to my life, my story to God’s story. They have helped me to remember what I believe.
“Respect, I think, always implies imagination—the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls.†(Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace)
In South Africa where I lived for many years, the basic “hello†greeting, sawubona, translates literally, “I see you.†In this mundane greeting, people declare to each other a tiny reminder that “I see you as a human, and I respect you.â€
Writing offers an opportunity to say the same: “I see you; I respect you.†In writing, we slow down long enough to see other people’s lives and care about other people’s matters.
In my work as an anthropologist, I write most often about people. To prepare for writing, I listen, I watch, I visit, and I live among people. The warm mug of tea prepared by a woman I interview, the smell of chicken manure in the factory where I spend a day, or the energy of a hip hop artist as he closes his eyes to improvise, all remind me of the shared humanity involved in writing. As anthropologist Irma McClaurin writes:
“We have taken upon our shoulders an enormous responsibility that is beyond any allegiance we might owe to the academy or any desire for tenure. We hold in our words, real people’s lives.†(Anthropology Off the Shelf)
At its best, writing is more than a chance to exercise our brains, build our CVs, or inform an audience. It offers a gift to those heard and seen in the process. As I write, I remember people like Mtoko, a young South African man with tattooed arms and a debilitating drug addiction, who shouted jubilantly after me on the first day I visited his home, “She’s gonna tell my story in America!†I think of Thembi, a mother of ten adopted children, who thanked me for writing about her life saying, “You heard even more than I spoke.â€
If you write from data more distanced from human experience, still your words hold human lives. Writing from government records, rain water samples, historical fiction, or economic models, you describe and affect human lives.
Often in Christian organizations I find the words “voiceless†and “invisible†used to describe people. Living in Nicaragua, China, South Africa, and among refugees in the United States, I have yet to meet anyone invisible or without a voice. I have, however, met others who do not care to hear or see. I know many busy people—myself included some days—who spend life too blind and deaf to respect other humans.
Writing gives the space to see people as they deserve to be seen. Madeleine L’Engle writes,
“The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama†(Walking on Water).
At our best as writers, we slow down, we see, and we respect people.
Image courtesy of Pexels at Pixabay.com.
Today in our new series on Writing As a Spiritual Discipline, InterVarsity staff member Angelo Blancaflor shares his thoughts. See Angelo’s other work for the ESN blog here. Previous posts in the Writing as a Spiritual Discipline series include Limits and Creation and The Spiritual Act of Naming: Truth Telling in Writing.Â
Since finishing undergrad, I’ve moved back across the country—from school in Illinois to home in Orange County, CA. Writing has been a big part of the past 8 months as I’ve been re-adjusting to the area, away from the majority of my social circles. I’ve been able to capture moments and share them with God and my distant friends.