California Whispering "You are a Writer"

A California Vacation Whispering

“You are a Writer”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I began writing this as my vacation in California was coming to an end.  I shared it with the evening hotel personnel as well as another story.  For this reason I am writing the first of what will likely be several blogs that will be connected to my vacation in California.  For that reason I am dedicating this blog to the personnel at the Doubletree Hilton hotel in Brisbane, California.  I am the kind of person who becomes easily discouraged in new settings.  The staff was always helpful when I had questions.  Sure they get paid to be helpful, but still I want to honor them because always they were helpful.

            I am also writing this blog for other writers I know online.  Some of you are writers that I am learning from when it comes to writing.  Others of you whom I know, you seem to struggle against something that holds you back, when I feel as though you may have more to offer our world than I do.  For me a vacation in California seemed to whisper to me and give to me this moment of confidence that I am a writer.  I am a writer even if only a few ever read what I have to say.  My days of vacation in California seemed to convey to me a sense of my being a writer.  I told my friends on Facebook:

       “My California vacation is in its last hours.  I will be flying back Sunday afternoon.  I felt this week like I belonged here.  Not to live, no feeling that I am meant to move here; but a sense that for these past few days, at this time in my life I absolutely belonged here.”

       I don’t expect to feel that way often, because we are of those people who are looking for a city not of this earth; for we are aliens and strangers, citizens of a city above.  But every once in a while during our journeys and sojourns on this earth we truly call home, we sense that we are in the place where we are meant to be at this precise moment in space and time.  That was a prevailing feeling while I spent a precious few days in California.

California

 

 

            I have always liked to write since sometime in junior high school.  When other kids complained about writing essays, I found the liberation of my soul as I took up ink pen and paper and began putting together words, thoughts, phrases and saying something I had thought over and struggled to make it sound beautiful.  I like writing but I am not sure if I am a good writer or simply one who loves to do something even if he never does it well.  But here in California I felt my desire to write being confirmed.

            I was moved by the things I saw, smelled, tasted, heard, experienced and thought about.  California with its mountains, coasts, hills rising out of the waters; with its Redwoods, Giant Sequoias, its city by the bay, and the fertile Central Valley; seals and gulls to deer and squirrels, it was all here.  With each sight, sound, smell and taste I thought of what I would want to write about all this.  That is how California whispered to me "You are a writer."  It whispered to me with each time I saw something and thought instantly that I could write about that.  That is what makes a writer a writer.  He or she experiences something and instantly begins to consider how they would write about it.  At that moment life is whispering to you, "you are a writer."  It does not guarantee you will be a good writer but it lets you know that you have heard the call to write and that it resides in your soul, your heart, your mind and strange as it may seem you feel the call to write.

            But that is only the opening scene of the initial story of the making of a writer.  Then one having seen a sight, thought out an idea, smelled a smell, or imagined a wholly composed story to create; following this initial venture into writing one has to begin imagining his or her audience listening like ancients around a bonfire for the story you are about to tell them.


           For me, a few weeks ago a new thought came into my imagination because of Ascension Day.  Jesus is about to ascend into the heavens.  He will be leaving his disciples upon this earth.  But he promises them that he will make them witnesses so that they would witness to him.  Did you catch that?  Jesus told them they were going to testify to him.  But how do we speak to God, to Christ when he is unseen?  Do we not speak to the unseen God by speaking to the man, the woman and the little child we can see.  For if we must speak to God who is unseen we can do so only by speaking to those made in his image that we do see.  If we are speaking to fallible human beings that we see sometimes through impatience even detesting what we see; do we not become more compassionate when we realize that that these we see are also those the unseen sees and loves with an endless love?  So if we speak to him who is unseen while speaking to those who we see, we must see them in the love we have for him.  In this way the blasts of human arrogance we too easily express while claiming truth being on our side, falls to the dirt when we speak to those we see as we testify to him who is unseen.

        I hope these thoughts are helpful for some of you who struggle with your desire to write.  Some of you speak of spiritual matters while you struggle with doubts.  You want to speak of your doubts but a part of you doesn't want to speak against the God you want to believe exists.  I would encourage you to speak of your doubts as if you are speaking of them through yourself to the very God whom you cannot see.  Speak openly of your doubts but speak of them with the ear of God included, and thus you will be writing words matching the madness and method of the Psalmist.  You will be speaking of your doubts but you will be speaking to the very God whom you doubt.


        Another may write while in the heights, singing praises that tempt someone in their cynical hours to imagine you to be expressing some form of insane escapism.  But perhaps you ought instead seek to sing your praise to the unseen God through the weak brother crying out in lamentations.  As you praise the unseen God through the seen man in pain your praises will inhabit a new dimension in which you seek to lift up your wounded brother or sister so that they are lifted up in your praises rather than feeling as if your praise was never meant for one as discouraged as he or she is.

            I am saying that we write in a way to speak both to our fellow human beings we see and the God who remains unseen but loves those whom we see.  We believe we are God’s hands and feet in Christ; thus are we continually connected to him in heaven and also we are connected to those he loved even to death here on this lowly visible world.  The mystery of the incarnation tells us that we cannot speak to him who is the unseen without our speaking to him and her who are seen.  But also we write to those we see by giving testimony to him who we do not see.  We make our words to be bridges from our souls that will embrace, encourage; and sometimes warn and question those who are seen as the same words are heard by Him who is unseen.

          The task of the writer is to use his words to build a bridge expressing thought, feeling, emotion, and truth so that it simultaneously moves from a place within our souls to a place within another's heart, to the joy of the one who created and loves both of us.  The writer creates a bridge to a seen and unseen audience.

A writer seeks to build a bridge to the soul of the seen and unseen audience

 

            Once we know to whom we write we begin to become ready to figure out how we shall write.  If we speak to a seen audience in order to testify to the One who is unseen, then we aim to speak in the language of beauty and kindness as well as goodness and truth.  We may not be poets but we wish for words to convey the beauty and reality of the mystery that we experience of the unseen in the seen.  No words suffice, but we seek to imagine a way to help another sense that the words are lofty because the sentiment of knowing the unseen through the seen is beyond the measure of our pitiful words.

Thank you California, hotel employees, taxi drivers, and people whose paths crossed mine somewhere in the days of this vacation.  Thank you California: your mountains, trees, hills, valley, deer, squirrels, seals and gulls I met while in your boundaries.  You have joined together to bless me beyond all I could have imagined; and I know that I owe the unseen for the mystery of blessing me through the kindnesses of you whom I could see.