#BTColumn – Cherish the gift of writing

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Adrian Sobers

“Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” – John 8:6

Writing is a spiritual discipline. And what holds for all other spiritual disciplines, especially applies to writing (even for the staunchest materialist): the more down-to-earth you are
(or become), the better you will be at it. This “down-to-earthiness” is embedded in the Latin root of “humility”.

Humilitas begins with humus, the Latin word for “earth”. Humility not only grounds us metaphorically, it (re)connects us with our source and our literal and ultimate destination (Genesis 3:19).

While style/grammar guides have their place, books about the writing process deserve (more of) our attention. In one such book, Richard Gibson and James Beitler (Charitable Writing), dispel one of the common myths about said process, namely, that writing transcribes thought.

“Writing is thinking: our ideas change and develop as we go. Put another way, writing a first draft always involves setting out into the unknown.”

There is nothing magical about the process as described in Luke 1:1-4.

“After investigating everything carefully from the very first, [we set out] to write an orderly account for you”, the reader. “Others have undertaken this project,” says Alison Gibson, Director of the Writing Center at Wheaton College, “but Luke seems committed to a more expansive and thorough research process than has preceded him.”

“His purpose”, she concludes, “in this accumulation of evidence is not to hoard his knowledge but to share it.” That perfectly sums up what writing is: a gift.

Not in the sense that writers are gifted (although some are), but in the sense that the writing process is best approached as offering a gift.

The Gospels are the greatest gift we have, but so is: the essay, the letter, (not the memo), the speech, or the eulogy.

We who write should be the biggest subset of we who walk.  Nassim Nicholas Taleb touches on walking throughout Incerto.

For those who are able, walking (not the ghastly “power walk” variety), is a must for we who write.

“Most people, alas, walk too fast,” he says, “mistaking walking for exercise, not understanding that walking is to be done slowly, at such a pace that one forgets one is walking.”

I can confirm that walking has tangible benefits for the process of writing. There is something about the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other that aids the writing process.

Louise DeSalvo (The Art of Slow Writing), opens the chapter Walking and Inspiration thus, “Many writers I’ve met, or whose lives I’ve studied, remark on how they take long walks each day, and that these walks are an integral part of their creative process.”

As Divine Irony would have it, the greatest lesson on the writing process comes from Jesus. He never wrote a book and his words come via his followers. But, as is typical of the One who chooses and uses “what is low and despised in the world” (1 Corinthians 1:28), we find the best model for writers in Him who never wrote. Well, except for the one time he twice stooped to write in the dust to which all writers will return. (That
“down-to-earthiness” again.)

Jesus’s model for writing in John 8:6,8 is simple: stoop to write. The authors of Charitable Writing cite composition expert Thomas Deans, “Jesus’s act of stooping to write functions first to introduce a pause, a quiet but disquieting interruption of expected rebuttals and rejoinders.

It disrupts the adversarial back-and-forth, the escalation that typically follows on a direct oral challenge.”

Jesus refuses to engage in the typical metaphor of “argument-as-war”. Another perspective comes from Rowan Williams (Writing in the Dust: After September 11): “He does not draw a line, fix an interpretation, tell the woman who she is and what her fate should be.

He allows a moment, a longish moment, in which people are given time to see themselves differently precisely because he refuses to make the sense they want. When he lifts his head, there is both judgement and release.”

To take Jesus’s stance is to stoop, to aim at humility. This, to be clear, does not mean condoning any and everything (and certainly not acquiescing to nonsensical narratives). (Go and sin no more.)

Love does not mean sweeping difficult truths, topics or terms under the rug. Even clearer still, maintaining Jesus’s posture is easier said than done.

Richard Gibson and James Beitler admit: “We are treated as enemies, and we respond in kind. Our words become weapons despite our intentions to speak truth with grace.”

They cite Stephanie Paulsell often (and with good reason). Paulsell’s reflections on writing as a spiritual discipline are both helpful and humbling: “The very best writing emerges from generosity, the desire to meet and nourish another.

No matter how inadequate our words may seem to us, in our struggle to find the right ones, we make room for others to find words of their own.”  Sound advice for we who write.

Adrian Sobers is a social commentator and prolific letter writer. This column was offered as a letter to the editor.