We'll begin with something a bit fantastic, that being a visit from the apostle James: He stood at my school desk the other day -- I'd gone for some water -- and he opened one of my books. It lay flat on my desk next to a description of an exercise we do in class. Conveniently, the book he opened contained his own letter to some of the first people to proclaim Jesus as the Christ, and he flipped right to it. He didn't say anything, but pointed out to me a few passages. Then he directed my eyes to some parallels in what we do in my Creative Writing classes.
It's in light of this that I offer this meditation on Faith and writing.
I'm in my 9th year of creative writing instruction. Spread into two classes, almost evenly, I have 22 students this year -- which is more than usual. The mix of students who want to write with those who need an easy class to blow off is about the same; the mix of their anxieties, if we only consider anxieties that are class-related, is also normal.
"I don't know what to write." (Read: fear)
"I don't have time to write." (Read: fear)
The parenthetic labels above will remain as typed; though they look the same, I'll leave it to you to dissect the types of fear each student may be dealing with.
To work through various fears or anxieties -- really sort them out on the page and aloud among others -- is the undercover business of these classes. I want them to learn to write, to build their vocabularies, to create stories, yes, but working through fear is also important.
One main way of doing this is to assign short exercises that we read aloud, all within the same class period. This way I can show them they actually can produce sentences other people want to hear. We laugh, ask questions, encourage. Some students respond well, some don't. Nonetheless, we practice, and it's in this practice that life pokes through.
Exercise #25 is called Show vs. Tell. It's not a novel idea that a writer needs to know the difference between the two -- nor is it a novel idea that writers improve through small exercises. We work on showing because it is fundamental to powerful writing. Here is one example I use in class:
Chris loves cheese.
Simple enough. This is a sentence that tells me a detail about Chris; the exercise is to turn that telling sentence into a showing sentence. I say, "Don't just tell me -- show me!" The idea is to tap into the reader's will: Let the reader decide, through Chris's actions, that, wow, he must love cheese!
Yes, simple enough -- but not so simple to weave into everyday writing without practice. Our first instinct is to tell, tell, tell.
And this is where the apostle James gets my attention once more. He's found a seat now, and he's smiling at me like he knows exactly what I'm talking about.
"Don't just tell me -- show me!" I've repeated myself, yet it seems I had to, for his eyes set my throat on fire, and unless I let them out, those words would have burned me up.
And these words he wrote so long ago to some of the first Christians begin to glow within me as he watches my every move:
"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."
I am convinced that writing is dead, or never comes alive, if there is nothing shown; characters, like people, may even say quite a lot -- we do love dialogue -- but we learn more, so much more, by observing a person's actions.
James knows this, and he's nodding at me. Jesus knew it, too. He spent years with his disciples and they watched his every move. What will Jesus do when...? How will he respond when they say...?
In this age of the WWJD accessory, I wonder how much we know about what Jesus did. We'd like to know what he'd do in our situation, but it would help to know first what he's already done.
And James? What did he do? Well, as a kind of clue, I give you more of what he wrote:
"But someone will say, 'You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do."
The natural question that follows: How? (Or that's the question that always arises in my mind anyway.) Because we've tried, haven't we? And we fear failure, not to mention we know its sting.
"I don't know what to write."
"I don't have time to write."
Remember these?
My claim above was these excuses reveal fear -- and of course there are many others. It seems to me the same fears that keep me from writing also keep me from showing my faith.
"I don't know what to do."
"I don't have time for [fill in the blank]."
Now James is on his feet. Arms crossed. And of course he's right: I have been told what to do, and any time I've been given is to be directed toward obeying.
When I hold fear up to the light to see what it is -- what it really is -- I see this: A small loving kindness rejected, unuseable; a tiny prayer spoken in worship, unheard; my energy given to love others or love God used up, unaccepted. How will I know I've done well?
"How long does this have to be?"
That's a student question I adore. But isn't it my own? My students want to know just how much they need to do so they can stop, or so they know what they're working toward. Sometimes I answer.
Sometimes I don't.
What I want for my budding writers is for them to love the writing so much that it doesn't matter how long it ends up being. I want them to know the joy of their words on paper. I want them to forget, even for 20 minutes at the start of the class period, all the fears that will freeze them -- that have frozen them.
I'm writing of freedom now. Maybe that's not surprising, given the fact that it's the polar opposite of fear.
Small, specific exercises to practice showing -- but for character development or faith building?
Above I wrote that real life pokes through when my students practice. It's more precise to say that the fears they carry with them are stripped away -- even if it's slight or momentary. Creative writing helps me realize it's through small, specific acts of faith (read: love) that eternal life pokes through and fear recedes.
So I'm learning with my students -- how to practice writing, yes, but more important is the parallel between showing action on paper and showing faith through love at every opportunity. That nagging student question about the length of their work won't go away, and I seek God's answer for myself often, too: How long do I have to show love? How many times do I have to forgive? (How many times will I have to be forgiven!?)
Jesus answered the question about forgiveness when Peter asked it; he said, "7x70," which is to say every time. And then Jesus did something -- he showed the way of love.
Yes, his words are recorded in the gospels, but without the showing parts, the telling would fall miserably short. The last of John 13.1 reads, "Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love." Then the One through whom and for whom all things were created washed his students' feet. (He included Judas in this, the one he knew would betray him. That always silences me when I think about loving difficult people. And when I think I'm unlovable.)
And what does he tell them about it? "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you."
He did many other things, the greatest being his willing death at the hands of his enemies, and what I see through the gospels is his perfect balance of telling and showing. In fact, in the person of Jesus we have God putting his love on display -- in creative writing terms, we have in him a character's set of actions that reveal his innermost motivation: The love of our Creator God, who will not hesitate to save us -- who has not hesitated to save us.
And now, as our brother James has pointed out, it is time for those of us who follow Christ to walk in faith and show God's love to his broken world. Let us learn to show bit by bit, maybe with some sort of daily exercise, and let us rest in the fact that it is not we who are writing this story, this drama of humanity. No, but let us trust the Author of our faith, for we are his workmanship.
