Image credit: this is your brain on lithium
The work of writing can be for me, or very close to, the simple job of being: by creative reflection and awareness to help life itself live in me, to give its esse an existant, or to find place, rather, in esse by action, intelligence and love. For to write is love: it is to inquire and to praise, or to confess, or to appeal. This testimony of love remains necessary. Not to reassure myself that I am( “I write therefore I am”),but simply to pay my debt to life, to the world, to other men. To speak out with an open heart and say what seems to me to have meaning. The bad writing I have done has all been authoritarian, the declaration of musts, and the announcement of punishments. Bad because it implies a lack of love, good insofar as there may yet have been some love in it. The best stuff has been more straight confession and witness.
From The Journals of Thomas Merton Vol Six
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow – Miruh – I can completely relate to what this man has to say. When I write selfishly, or try to become an authority on whatever it is I am writing about, my writing reads poorly. When I let the words flow through me, in love, my writing is much much better.
Thank you. Nicole
Miruh, writing is like a wonderful, reassuring friend, or a conscience. Its like a perpetual Jiminey Cricket presence that echoes true feelings from soul. As a person shifts awareness, it becomes possible to stop judging the self, stop assuming any thought or feeling is good or bad. Everything becomes meaningful, helpful, life-transforming. Its all a kind of self-initiated healing process. Every human being is slowly awakening from a selective amnesia that blocks out the most extraordinary things. You slowly open the drapes to a whole world within worlds. The transparent bubbles before the soul are interconnected in ways each energy being is invited to rediscover.
Hi Miruh,
Writing is God guiding the ink through our being and splashing the pages with life – and there is so much life carved by words, expressions and love.
Hello Nicole,
Is it possible to write selfishly? We write because we have something to share with others and whether we judge it to be the absolute last word on the subject or not, we are wanting to share it.
I get what you are saying though, that when we write with an open heart, it flows beautifully.
Your writing always moves me on the heart level!
Hello Liara,
I agree, writing bypasses the head and speaks to us from the soul level. It is a truly healing art form.
Thanks for your wise healing words my friend!
Hello Alexys,
You said that so beautifully, “Writing is God guiding the ink through our being and splashing the pages with life…”
I know you have first hand experience of this; your words pulsate with life and vitalize the hearts and souls of your readers!
Thanks for all the love and life you share through your pen my friend!
Leave a Comment