We all know what it means to write for ourselves, but what does it mean to write for God?
Thomas Merton on Writing for Yourself
Thomas Merton (link) writes the following from his book New Seeds of Contemplation:
If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy.
If you write for men–you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while.
If you write only for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.
Writing for Love
The artist must evoke within himself the state of mercy and to dedicate himself to it, to contemplate God’s perfection with the heart and to abide in it until the heart and the will (the action of the conscience) are filled with it; to find within oneself the power of love and to turn it (even for the moment) toward God, to mankind, and all that is alive
Foundations, 16
Father Lev Gilet and the book In Thy Presence that to create for God is to understand first, before you even begin working, that you are deeply loved.
My Love for men is a movement of My Self toward them, not simply to be known by them or to be, to a certain extent, imitated by them, but to unite Myself to them, to give Myself to them.
To write for God is to know His love for you; to know that your deepest failures can be the means of your salvation–not for what can be jotted onto a page, but what can be done, made, created with and in and through your very life!
Writing Might Mean Not Writing At all
Writer, iconographer, Michael O’Brien (link) …
Allow Him to expand your heart. Allow Him to create with the material of your life. Allow Him to make you more than you think you are. This long process will contain some sufferings and numerous unexpected joys.
And again …
In any labours of the Lord we need to abandon ourselves into His hands, work hard, pray continuously. Anyone can do this. What is needed is not cleverness and worldly connections, but the willingness to give everything, even to the point of complete failure.
Such an orientation to creative work requires continuous prayer and repentance–in fact, prayer and growing in repentance is the work itself, and thus the work of the artist, the writer, the craftsman, is the work of salvation itself. Like the monk from the book Everyday Saints (link) who died and saw Saint Mary and they were surrounded by all his wood working over many years. Then Saint Mary spoke …
You’re a monk … And all we wanted from you was just one thing, the main thing: repentance and prayer. Instead of that, you gave us wood work.
The vision disappeared. The monk opened his eyes and was once again back to life in the monastery …
After that event, Father Melchizedek was a completely changed man. The main focus of his life became exactly what the Holy Mother of God had mentioned to him–repentance and prayer.
What It Means To Write For God
In such a way of being, ‘your’ life is no longer ‘yours’; your past, your history, is no longer yours. Like Henri Nouwen you can use the brokenness of your life, of your past, as a strength for others. Nouwen calls this movement from regret to gratitude.
When I think about what it means to live and act in the name of Jesus, I realize that what I have to offer to others is not my own intelligence, skill, power, influence or connections but my own human brokenness, through which the love of God can manifest itself.
Spiritual Formation, 63-64
This is something we can all do–all of us writers and artists: we can offer Christ our brokenness, which is really all we have, and all we’re expected to have.
Writing for God means dying to ourselves.
This post is based on the book Creativity and Becoming: On Art, Writing, and Orthodox Spiritual Life (link). Check it out!
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