Why Write?
Valentin de Boulogne, Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, 1619
Sharon and I have been gone for a couple of weeks, sailing with delight around the magnificent British Isles, witnessing up close some of the deep, enduring roots of our civilization, roots I have studied earnestly over time. I confess, though, I found no time to write while traveling. I’ve missed my connection with you all. I’m eager now to begin again.
During this time of travel, I did do some thinking. I found myself going back and forth on the big question we all ask, a biblical question, a classical question: Who am I? At this stage in my life, the question has now become: What is my calling now? What is God asking me to do with the small gifts he has given me for whatever time I have left?
As I continue to mull that question, I keep turning to a simple answer: “Well, for one thing, I am a writer.” This claim may sound pretentious to some. It did for me in an earlier time. But as time moves on, I’ve begun to shed this fear of pretention. I feel I have less need to prove anything. I’m a bit driven by this writing thing. I catch myself saying “no, I can’t be there for that meeting in the morning because that’s my time to write.” I can read it in their faces: “What do you mean you need to write? What do you write? Do you make any money doing that? Is your writing really worthwhile to others?”
In 1934 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a stunning series of letters, Letters To A Young Poet, to a young writer who asked him whether he had what it takes to become a writer. Was he any good at it? How does one go about becoming a writer? Rilke took this request seriously, to the surprise of his inquisitor. He began quite simply: “Go into yourself,”
search for the reason that bids you write, find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?
Whoa, this is getting pretty serious. The need I feel to write, each day, may not be a trivial matter, the occasional jotting down of things, the note written to a friend in need, all good things, but not the deepest reason I spend those hours at my desk writing.
I’ve been forced to ask Rilke’s question: “Must I write?”
Without getting too grandiose, I feel the answer is emphatically yes. But why? Well, I know in this age of confusion and uncertainty, I am trying to sort things out, at least for me, maybe for a few others. But then I know I am always trying to dive deeper into things than the usual answers we get from a culture that lives mostly on the surface.
I had a late-in-life conversion, one night on an airplane, when Jesus admonished me to “put out into the deep waters.” Stop fishing in the shallows, he said to me that night. Deeper, that’s where the real fish are waiting, swimming in astonishing abundance. In the deep is where you will find my kingdom.
That’s when I began to write in earnest.
Waiting, as Rilke says, “with deep humility and patience [for] the birth-hour of a new clarity,” well, that’s one way to explain why I write. But from there writing has become for me almost like prayer or praise. Sometimes when I find those right words, and that right rhythm, down deeper than my ordinary preoccupations, I feel a calm settle down over me. I feel the surprise of joy. For the moment, God seems to be saying be still and listen.
I hope something like this is true for you. At whatever stage of life, I hope you have found that deeper purpose. It’s worth searching for, I’ve concluded. If we are responding to God’s call on our lives, maybe then we will make our small contribution to the kingdom of our Lord.