And So I Write...

“Writing can be a true spiritual discipline.

Writing can help us to concentrate,

to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts,

to clarify our minds,

to process confusing emotions,

to reflect on our experiences,

to give artistic expression to what we are living,

and to store significant events in our memories.

Writing can also be good for others

who might read what we write.

Quite often a difficult,

painful,

or frustrating day

can be redeemed by writing about it.

By writing we can claim what we have lived

and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys.

Then writing can become lifesaving for us

and sometimes for others too.”

I love writing for the reasons mentioned so eloquently by Nouwen above.

"Writing is not just jotting down ideas.

Often we say: "I don't know what to write.

I have no thoughts worth writing down."

But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself.

As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper

and start to express in words what is on our minds

or in our hearts,

new ideas emerge,

ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing

is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures

that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.”

Some time ago, Sarah dropped by and left me a treasure of a gift in the comment box. It was a quote of something I had written in response to a post of hers back in 2008. The beauty of the gift was that as I read the words, they spoke to me. I had penned them, but they were offered back to me and not recognizing them as my own, they moved me deeply. This is one of the things that I most love about writing, that as I sit and sort through my thoughts and seek to connect things and express them, something beautiful emerges that is not so much the production of a girl with a knack for words as it is the product of a work being written in my life by the Master Scribe. It never ceases to stir me. And so I write, and am continually enriched in the process.