Write, Pray, Live

"Well, is writing more like prayer, or more like life itself, or a little like both? I am not sure. They all seem remarkably akin to me. They all exact something from us, but it is hard--maybe impossible--to know in advance what that something is."

--Harvey Cox, from the Introduction to The Best American

Spiritual Writing 2007, edited by Phillip Zaleski

This quote from the well-known Harvard Divinity School professor and theologian seemed an apt epigraph to get me started on this little essay, given that I want to have that unknown something exacted from me. So, writing, prayer (Cox uses the term in a broad sense), and life, these three. Has Cox spent too much time contemplating the Trinity, or is he onto something?

Writing, whatever else it is, is a kind of thinking, an approach to learning. It draws things forth from the writer, helps him understand them better. It can be an approach to making sense of one's life, putting one's experience in some kind of order. It's a special form of attention, as is prayer in the way I would conceive it. The link to life from writing and prayer is in the ongoing human process of constructing the self by attending to one's experience, examining it, and integrating it.

The ongoing assembly of who we are comes from our assessment of what we already are, in creative tension with who we might wish to become. Most of us who hold this tension are somewhat restless spirits. We may even be very accepting of who we are, but there is still something else we want to incorporate into ourselves--mastery of a skill, the satisfaction of a curiosity, or some psychological or spiritual movement.

Writing an essay is also an exercise that allows work toward mastery, first and foremost through more clarity of expression, which follows from more clarity of thought. If the writer confronts himself in his writing (which is often as difficult to avoid as it is to do) there's an opportunity for clarity about his life.

I recently had an online discussion with a old friend, one from the town of my high school days in the mid-sixties. We found each other, as people often do these days, on Facebook. A message from him recalled concerns across the decades about people in our families, people among our friends, people entwined in our lives who'd had particularly troubling times. Both of us could recall times of regret for failures of simple kindness.

I like to think of myself as a kind person, but I can think back on times I just wanted to do what I wanted to do, and withdrew or withheld my time and attention from someone who may have needed it. At other times, I just didn't notice the often modest needs of people around me. I don't believe I'm particularly unusual where such lapses are concerned, and I don't judge myself too harshly. But I do want to be more conscious of my actions, so I have to pay attention, both to myself and to others.

The act of paying attention to people around you is, I think, the beginning of kindness. We start towards kindness by a kind of openness in which we notice, then allow ourselves to be moved by the needs of others. This openness is also a quality of attention, the kind that may come out in writing, prayer, and life. It's helpful to practice it in everyday things.

I had a co-worker a few years ago who had migraines and suffered them stoically. One day I asked him if he had one, pointing out that the smile he wore was just on his mouth and not in his eyes. He said, "Oh, you notice that!" And it was clear he was just glad someone did notice.

But that's one of the times I did it right. I don't know about all the times I did it wrong, because I wasn't paying attention, and so I didn't form memories of them.

The Jewish scholar and social activist Abraham Joshua Heschel said: “When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” I think often of that, how one's perspective on what's important changes, and what might point to such a direction of change. I suspect reflection on one's life, which could come through writing, and the kind of concentrated effort to touch something sacred that some call prayer, could move such a change of emphasis.

Heschel wrote scholarly works on the Hebrew Prophets, and saw them as insistent articulators of the need for justice in the world. Some of his academic colleagues thought his scholarship was enough, and wondered why he took the trouble to march with King at Selma. Later, he wrote, "when I marched at Selma, my feet were praying."