A recent issue of America magazine had an article by an author who writes articles primarily for religious magazines. She has built up a career as a “spiritual writer” but has come to question if that is really her vocation. I found the article captivating, as it was both painfully raw, yet showed a tremendous depth of faith. She got me thinking about my own writing career.
Part of the problem is that “spiritual writing” is an almost impossible task. You are trying to write about something that is beyond your comprehension. We don’t have the concepts or the words to speak of God and really know what we are talking about. There is a bit of hypocrisy in trying to be an authority on the divine and the “spiritual writer” knows this.
At best, our words are broken symbols that point to the ultimate. The only thing we can speak of meaningfully is our experience and share with one another our glimpses of the divine. We don’t capture the divine in our words. We share are our experiences put into inadequate words. The experiences are important to us because we have gained hope and insight from them. We hope that those experiences might provide a bit of insight for our fellow pilgrims as well.
She looked up to many of the spiritual writers who have been widely read. These spiritual writers and thinkers that inspired her in the past were mostly middle-age white men who spoke from their experience and place of privilege in society and the church. She tries to listen to other voices now. What insight can be gained from the experiences of people who don’t get listened to very often? What about women spiritual writers? What about finding inspiration in the spirituality of other cultures. What does the Hispanic, Black, Native American and Island cultures have to teach us? What can she say that has any meaning or value to others? Why listen to any voices or presume to be a font of inspiration to anyone else? What good are words?
I don’t consider myself to be a writer, let alone a “spiritual writer”, but over the years much of my work has involved writing. Much of that writing has been technical; mostly reports, studies, evaluations, canon law opinions and decisions. Yet, writing has also served me as an important spiritual discipline. I meditate as I write and find spiritual insight in the thoughts that flow up within me.
Over the years writing has been one of my primary means of contemplation. I kept a journal for most of my 20’s and 30’s, most of which was devoted to my exploration of spiritual questions and how God was at work in my life. During my mid-thirties I began the reflections that have become Along the Way. These reflections are my attempt to wrestle with the same spiritual questions and continue to explore how God is at work in my life, with the understanding that I am sharing these reflections with others.
While words are helpful to me in making sense of Scripture and the Catholic tradition, when I stand before God and try to communicate, they fail me. Words stay at the level of concept and narrative, which are important and useful at times. Yet, they don’t give voice to my soul. St. Paul was familiar with this frustrating condition and speaks of praying in groans, as words are not up to the task. This may be the pain that the author of the American article is trying to express in her words.
When people ask for words of wisdom in many spiritual and religious traditions, they don’t get theological arguments. Rather, they are told stories. The stories speak to their hearts and allow the listener to enter into the experience of the story. Perhaps in the world of the story the listener can catch a glimpse of the divine. This is the approach to divine wisdom that Jesus provided for his disciples. Only rarely did he provide an explanation of his teachings. Most of the time a question would result in a parable. What is more powerful: a philosophical essay on being a good neighbor or the story of the Good Samaritan? While words can be useful in sharing our experience of that which is beyond us, they are still broken and inadequate to the task.
The saints call us to silence. There is no magic in silence. Rather, silence gives us a space where we are able to listen to something aside from our own yammering. I’ve told this story many times over the years but back in the late 70’s I was praying in San Jose Church. This was long before the church was air conditioned. The doors and windows were open to let in the bit of breeze that was blowing through the village. As I sat alone in the church, I stopped forming words and simply listened in silence as intensely as I was able. I heard the voices of children playing and dogs barking. I heard the sound of the wind gently rustling the leaves of the trees near the church. No words came to me but there was a sense of God’s presence in the village and especially in the sounds that were now so obvious and so comforting. I basked in that rich wordless silence for quite a while before leaving that church.
There is a time when words are more of an obstacle than a help. Perhaps this is a time for silence, in which we listen to what God is saying to us.