Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Why Write?

I've been real quiet on my posting of late. My friend Joel stated on his blog that he ran into this problem at one point of his writing and I think I'm somewhat at the same spot. In a sense, I'm still finding my voice. I have enjoyed, however, visiting others' blogs and checking in there and I continue to do so.

One of my fears is writing irrelevant nonsense just to hear myself talk. My joy is to express the Orthodox Faith through the prism of my own unique person in an authentic manner and not just be a parrot, speaking but not experiencing the truth I'm writing. If the Orthodox Faith is the True Faith, it must be able to communicate Itself via anything and everything as all things that are true anywhere at anytime find their fulfillment in Christ, their ultimate meaning and their "is-ness", what they are in their essence, revealed in Him who is the Creator of essence itself as the Apostle tells us in Colossians 1:15-20.

And so The Faith enters "the laboratory" to be worked out in my person and if I'm fortunate to be given words to ably describe the experiments failed and successful, fine. If not, fine.

But also I must heed the Master's words that every idle word will be be given account for. This places a heavier challenge on me because I know myself; I can be and am very glib with spewing words and information out to the four winds. Adding to the challenge is knowing of the Saints who would withdraw into seclusion to practice ascetic discipline and return after much struggle to speak with us and not before, measuring each word to convey their experience and not their theories.

Me? It's difficult to keep my mouth shut for very long and to silence my thoughts is virtually impossible. And still I give advice. Just ask me.

However, in regards to writing, there is much in me that I pray I may be able to bring out and I think the only way to do it will be to keep writing; hitting and missing. I find joy in finding words to express concepts to make sense of things that were merely inklings buried in the innermost me but come to think of it, these inklings cannot be truly "mere" because of the depth of the human person created in the image of God. They are "mere" to me because of my inability to give them life through laziness on my part in regards to prayer and fasting and the other disciplines to crystallize the thoughts to be put in a form to be expressed cogently and purposely.


Well, perhaps this writing is a step in the right direction.