“Write Them Down”: Writing to Transform Life
Posted by Liz Busby on October 15th, 2007One of the funny things about being a writer is that you have to be somewhat narcissistic. You have to think your words are important enough to share. To quote Orson Scott Card:
Let’s face it. You don’t start writing fiction if you didn’t have a healthy dose of vanity and ambition. What could be more arrogant than to believe that stuff you make up out of your head will be so pleasurable to others that they ought to pay you to be able to read it?
Although the quote applies specifically to fiction, the point applies to writers of the personal essay, and even journal writing. If you’re not, say, Winston Churchill or Ghandi, why is your life important enough for me to spend any time on, not even taking money into consideration? I’ve talked to many people who’ve pushed off journal writing with just this attitude. I’ve even felt it myself–the guilt of writing something of no importance. It seems wasteful. As I’ve been working on personal essays for my honors thesis, I’ve rediscovered how plain my life is: no physical disabilities, no abusive family, no major obstacles, no major accomplishments, no strange events, no extraordinary revelations, no doubts. It’s just life, all PB&J sandwiches and afternoon TV programs, bland and continuous. Perhaps the only thing unusual about my life is how ordinary it is. I suffer, as I’m sure many do, from a form of angst envy, wishing that my life was just slightly more interesting. But not too interesting, of course–I’m not asking for major trials, just something worth talking about.
Strangely, being Mormon solves this problem: our religion is one with a strong belief in the importance of every individual. We’re one of the few branches of Christianity who believes God isn’t some omniscient blob, but a person with a body and a personality. We believe that simply by your membership and your humanity, you are qualified to instruct others in sacrament meetings and gospel doctrine classes. In our temples, we do work for individual people, one at a time, slowly slowly. The insane scope of our temple work project has only recently hit me: do we realize it will take more than a million years of cumulative two-hour endowment sessions to cover the earth’s current population, not to even begin to think about those who are dead?
Most importantly, we believe fervently that each individual has direct access and right to revelation from God. To us, or at least, to me, God is not only someone who enacts our salvation, but someone who cares about our mundane lives, who inserts the little “tender mercies.” That intense divine interest and compassion qualifies every life as important reading material. President Eyring’s talk in the Sunday morning conference session, “O Remember, Remember,” makes this same point:
I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.
He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.”
I went inside. I didn’t go to bed. Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write. And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind. I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. Grandpa didn’t have to do what he was doing for us. He could have had someone else do it or not have done it at all. But he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do. I knew that was true. And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it.
As President Erying says, “forgetting God has been such a persistent problem among His children since the world began.” Therefore one of the first commandments of God to his people has always been for them to keep a record of their interactions with him (Moses 6:5,46). These records not only record our lives, but transform them:
I wrote down a few lines every day for years. I never missed a day no matter how tired I was or how early I would have to start the next day. Before I would write, I would ponder this question: “Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?” As I kept at it, something began to happen. As I would cast my mind over the day, I would see evidence of what God had done for one of us that I had not recognized in the busy moments of the day. As that happened, and it happened often, I realized that trying to remember had allowed God to show me what He had done.
I used to be bothered by this idea that reflection inserts revelation into our past. It seemed like creating something out of nothing. It was a stretch, like wresting the scriptures, wasn’t it? But over the past year of developing my own writing I’ve seen ordinary parts of my own life–going to school, visiting a museum–transformed into some of my most meaningful memories because I wrote about them. This process of living and then realizing is simply part of being human. We don’t have the mental capacity to realize the implications of what’s happening at the moment we’re in it. I think there’s a reason that pondering is in the primary song along with searching the scriptures and praying. If we don’t think, we miss much of what the Lord has to say to us. We must study out our lives in our minds to find the things of eternity.
But finding these revelations in your life is not the last step. That whispering voice told President Erying, “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.” Where would the Church be if Nephi had ignored the command to make a second set of plates? As spirit children of God, our experiences count for something. Again, there’s a reason this Church has no paid ministry and I believe it is because we each have something to teach and something to learn. How you saw God’s hand in your life might help someone else, either by testifying of God’s love or by helping them to see things in their own lives. It doesn’t matter your background, your education, your doubts: write them down and share them as inspired by the Spirit.
Liz,
I enjoyed reading you thoughts.
Forgetting God is a reality that we all need to be reminded of. The Book of Mormon goes to great lengths to warn us to not go there. The word “remember” appears 136 times in the Book of Mormon. It is an interesting study to review these verses.
Prosperity can put us to sleep to the things of the spirit and awakens us to the things of the flesh. We need to be diligent to avoid this, and appropriately sharing our experiences with the things of the spirit in writing and by word must be pleasing to Heavenly Father.
Comment # 1 left by Jared on October 15th, 2007
Well done, Liz!
Welcome to BofJ.
Great post. You touch on so many things, I don’t know where to begin.
The worth of souls is great. Our experiences are a big part of why we are here. Is it time to make the endowment session more efficient? (Probably a future post for someone). There is a power in writing our experiences.
Thanks Liz.
Comment # 2 left by Eric Nielson on October 16th, 2007
I wrote a missionary for a full two years when I was a senior in high school and freshman in college. I didn’t marry the boy, but he was kind enough to give me back the letters. It is like a journal to me, and the process of writing those letters was very beneficial because I was deliberately looking for spiritual things to write down.
I really like this post, particularly that last paragraph. We each have tender mercies to record in our lives if we will look for them and take the time. Such a profound invitation!
Comment # 3 left by Michelle on October 16th, 2007
I love individual narratives! I also think that there is much to be learned from the normal aspects of love and much beauty in tradition. I like your thoughts on individuals being able to receive revelation and pondering. Also, I do think it is interesting how writing for some does help them to see the hand of God. I am not sure if I learn anything new when I write, but I enjoy the process and like to tie things together. I do a lot of thinking in general about a lot of subjects so my level of consciousness may already be there so that writing does not bring more to the table necessarily.
I do say that I think it is important for people to write about healthy family relationships. I think it is nice to hear about people without any major trials. I have gained a lot reading about people’s trials. Yet, it is so important to hear that there are good homes and happy families. I like to hear about husband being good to wives and wives being good to husbands. I also like to hear about maternal and paternal feelings. We can get a skewed sense of the world if we only report the abberations. Although I do not know the per cent of problem homes to those with happy homes, I want to write the stories of happy homes across the skies!!!!!!
Comment # 4 left by Barb on October 17th, 2007
Barb, you make an excellent point and one that I’ve thought a lot about since my life is mostly “normal family life.” I’ve come to think the world we live in suffers from Tolstoy Syndrome: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” We’ve come to believe that normal people aren’t worth knowing. I remember feeling frustrated in elementary school because every story we read was about a family where the parents were divorced, or the kid had disabilities, or was an underprivileged immigrant. I thought, “Where are the stories about me? Am I not worth telling about?” In the way I live my life and the way I write about it, I want to show that happy is not all the same, that happy is not boring but rich.
Comment # 5 left by Liz Busby on October 18th, 2007
Well put, Liz! And happy does come in so many ways. Even so, some of my favorite sentences in the Book of Mormon simply contain the words that there was peace or that people lived as one.
Comment # 6 left by Barb on October 18th, 2007
Liz, your most recent comments have been swimming around in my head today. And that is a happy thing! I was thinking about some of the shows that are based on wholesome families such as “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie.” Don’t quote me on this unless you research it to back it up, but I seem to recall that “The Waltons” was cancelled early on in the series like maybe the first few episodes but a write in campaign let the Network know that people wanted that type of show. And the characters and plots of the shows were different not just because of different eras but also because of the personalities of those in the stories. Plus, there are so many different experiences that one can have from a young girl believing she has struck it rich when it is just Fool’s Gold to a mother who knows some of the finer things of culture marrying a hard working man who is unsophisticated and yet so romantic the runs the mill. Okay, I have watched these shows in the last few years in reruns as they are so heartwarming. People like happy stories and need happy stories. Well, maybe not need in the sense of food, shelter and clothing. But they are a safe place. And I get upset when it seems like so many of the bestsellers have “secrets” that need to come out as the story develops. Yes, it is good that some things are more open than in the past. However, we can start thinking that there are so many sick people out there if that is all the diet we get. There are studies that show that people who watch too much violence on t.v. do think the world is a more dangerous place than it is. I may not have gotten that exactly right, but it is somewhere along those lines. Well, keep the happy stories coming…
Comment # 7 left by Barb on October 19th, 2007
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Comment # 8 left by Idetrorce on December 15th, 2007
This is a great blog. I agree that you do have to have a lot of confidence to put out anything. Some who I think has great confidence and a gift for storytelling is Chris Heimerdinger. That’s what I’m writing to you about today.
I’m writing to tell you about a little project I’m working on with Chris Heimerdinger. He’s the author of the “Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites” books. He also has a new movie out you may be interested in blogging about…
After a solid run throughout the state of Utah, Chris Heimerdinger’s first feature film, Passage to Zarahemla, opens outside of Utah starting this Friday. He will be coming to an area near you very soon.
Chris is available for interview and would love to discuss with you his incredible journey from best-selling novelist to award-winning filmmaker. Many people do not realize Chris was a filmmaker first and received the Sundance Film Institute’s Most Promising Filmmaker award, and others awards as well.
Feel free to contact me at tams8275@yahoo.com to set up an interview with Chris. You can also contact his PR manager Bettyanne Bruin at bruinpr@yahoo.com.
I appreciate your consideration of this e-mail and look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Tammy Price
Comment # 9 left by Tammy on January 18th, 2008