Why I Write

Sometimes people who know about my past writing will ask, “Are you working on something now?” People might run into me at Indah or Drip--local coffee hangouts--my laptop open, and wonder.

There’s never a day when I don’t write something: ideas for a class I’m teaching, sermon notes, an email needing sensitive wording. I might be at the desk in my office, a dim-blue screen glowing in front me. Or in spring, I might set up on the porch. At night I might sit in our family room with rough-hewn ceiling beams overhead and crowded bookcases encircling me.

But I think people ask about my writing to get at something else—usually they mean writing that gets published: an article, a book, a blog. And they are mostly curious about more than if I’m writing, but what: “So what are you writing about?”

Sometimes that’s easy to answer. I write for music publications: CD reviews or interview articles. When writing about spiritual matters, my first love, I tend to focus on topics there as well. I like making complicated content just a bit more understandable-- what I’ve learned about how to pray when I’m distracted and fidgety, for instance, or thinking about the presence and mystery surrounding angels, say. Or what the closest—and most broken—relationships tell us about relating to God. I like making something that’s otherwise daunting seem more within grasp of my readers or hearers.

But lately I’ve gotten clearer that I write for another reason: I want to get a hold on some things that bother or confuse me. I want to plumb some truths that seem just beyond my current comprehension. I want to interact with mystery.

I like how author Dani Shapiro answers when her readers and friends ask what’s she’s working on: The best reply, she concluded, is “I’m writing an Inquiry.”

I think she means that she writes to discover what she doesn’t yet know, “to peel back the layers,” as she explains, “and see what has previously been hidden from view.” Inquiry is rooted in curiosity and lifelong learning, Shapiro says.

I’m envisioning this blog as space for me to inquire and explore. I want to make the pieces that I am working on become paths to go down, steps whose destinations I don’t fully see yet. I expect I will ask questions more than I do when standing in a pulpit. I may get grittier than I’m accustomed to, for I write in a world that warrants both elation and sorrowed heaviness. I deal with my own alternating trust and fretfulness, bursts of faith followed by sometimes elusive belief.

I will cover some lofty topics, I hope, but I want to do so in a hands-on way. I’ll walk around some mysteries that lie at the heart of a normal life and give a good look. I’ll explore how I find glimpses of a divine Someone amid a busy day. I’ll ask, How do I grow closer to God during times when God seems to turn a deaf ear toward my prayer? Do glimpses of God revealed to us as a Trinity matter in the grubby particulars of how I live and pray?

From here, at the outset of blogging, I look forward to poking around and writing my way into what I’m about to learn.