5 
The Writer Attends to the Word
Let my cry come near before thee, O LORD: give me understanding according to thy word. Let my supplication come before thee: deliver me according to thy word. My lips shall utter praise, when thou hast taught me thy statutes. My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness.
PSALM 119.169-172
Bernard Malamud once explained the process of the craft of writing: “You write by sitting down and writing.” The writer Jane Yolen is more earthy. She has often said that the writer’s most important rule is BOC — Butt on Chair. She may be right. Writing is a gift; writing is a skill; writing is a joy; writing is a sorrow. And writing is a discipline. It may be that there are some writers who are able to write in a white heat and produce reams with little effort, but one should not judge the profession through the aberrant. For most all of us, writing is a discipline that takes care and attention, with regular — we hope — sessions and regular — we hope — goals and regular — we hope — successes. For the writer, the pleasure of the rising pile of pages is the reward of discipline. (One more reason, as if we needed another, to abandon the electric chill of the word processor during composition.)
Of course, there are not always successes, and sometimes, often usually, the pile has to be pruned. BOC does not always mean finished pages at the end of the day. It may mean more cutting, more starting over.
But that, too, is attending to the word.
Occasionally it is a healthy thing for writers to look at the manuscripts of other writers; it is a practice that gives us hope. That repeated line at the end of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” — that line that seems so inevitable now? That line wasn’t repeated at first. It stood by itself, a little lonely and with a lot less punch. And Marley at the beginning of A Christmas Carol? He was almost “Old Marley,” conjuring up images of a jovial, fun-loving, beloved bachelor rather than the chain-encrusted dead sinner.
We attend to the word.
We have held in our hands the light fascicles of Emily Dickinson’s poems, the manuscript of Little Women, the revised journal pages Emerson used for his lectures, the autographs of John Greenleaf Whittier scissored from letters for a souvenir, Thoreau’s handwritten poem, for sale in an upscale Boston bookstore, ready to go to the highest bidder — which probably will not be a library. All of these show the awful fragility of the writer’s drafts. So much could so easily be lost. But for all writers, that page we work on, that page from a cheap tablet, from that black and white notebook, from that leather-bound journal — that page seems so incalculably valuable, and we cherish it and place it on our desk carefully because it contains the form and matter of our message to the world — even if it is a world that has never written back to us.
The writer attends to the word, and in so doing, brings out of the mess of ideas and the chaos of language and the upset of form, clarity and order and point. We write, to attend to the word. We attend to the word, to write.
For attending to the word means attending to the incarnation of the idea, the embodiment of the sentiment, the manifestation of the concept, the enfleshing of the meaning. It is to literally make physical the abstract. It is to bring into the world what was not in this form brought into the world before.
For the writer of faith, there is something awfully familiar about all of this — and mysterious, a mystery that Margaret Gibson expresses in “Poetry is the Spirit of the Dead, Watching.”
What is prayer
if not a marriage
of passion and the opposing need
for quiet loneliness? What is
a poem, if not the death-cry
of each moment’s hard-won
and abandoned self?
Creator and Redeemer God, your Word shows us that once those known as the disciples were prone to stammer and say all the wrong things. They asked your Son all the wrong questions. They rebuked those who brought children near. They scolded those who did great works in Jesus’ name in case those wonder-workers were not part of the disciples’ private club. But then your Spirit came in a Pentecostal outpouring that somehow led to an eloquence, a boldness, an accuracy of expression the disciples could not have seen coming. Give me that Spirit, Lord my God! Untie my tongue, loosen my pen, set free my hands on the keyboard. Where before I have been foggy, let your Spirit’s warm breath blow away the vapors and give me clarity. Where before I asked the wrong questions, give me the Spirit’s epiphany to penetrate to right queries. Let the Pentecostal flame burn within my heart and mind so that I, too, may witness to you in eloquence, boldness, and accuracy.
Scott Hoezee
Lord, shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?
Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers
For life, for dignity, grace and order,
And intellectual pleasures of the senses?
The Lord who created must wish us to create
And employ our creation again in His service
Which is already His service in creating.
T. S. Eliot
To Music bent is my retired mind.
And fain would I some song of pleasure sing,
But in vain joys no comfort now I find;
From heavenly thoughts all true delight doth spring.
Thy power, O God, thy mercies, to record,
Will sweeten every note and every word.
All earthly pomp or beauty to express
Is but to carve in snow, on waves to write.
Celestial things, though men conceive them less,
Yet fullest are they in themselves of light;
Such beams they yield as know no means to die,
Such heat they cast as lifts the Spirit high.
Thomas Campion
From “Poem in the Rain and the Sun”
Sweet Christ, discover diamonds
And sapphires in my verse
While I burn the sap of my pine house
For the praise of the ocean sun!
I have walked upon the surf
Rinsing the bays with Thy hymns.
My prayers have swept the horizons clean
Of ships and rain.
All the waters are slick as lacquer.
Upon these polished swells my feet no longer run:
Sliding all over the waves I come
To the hope of a slippery harbor.
The dogs have gone back to their ghosts
And the many lions, home.
But words fling wide the windows of their glassy houses.
Then Adam and Eve come out and walk along the coast
Praising the tears of the sun
While I am decorating with Thy rubies the bones of the autumn trees,
The bones of the homecoming world.
Thomas Merton
Thou takest the pen — and the lines dance. Thou takest the flute — and the notes shimmer. Thou takest the brush and the colours sing. So all things have meaning and beauty in that space beyond time where Thou art. How, then, can I hold back anything from Thee?
Dag Hammarskjöld
Footnote to All Prayers
He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou, in magnetic mercy to thyself divert
Our arrows aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.
C. S. Lewis
My God, my God, Thou art a direct God. May I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all that thou sayest?
But thou art also (Lord I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy diminution), Thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God, too.
A God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all profane authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps, Thou art the Dove that flies.
O, what words but thine can express the inexpressible texture and composition of thy word, in which to one man that argument that binds his faith to believe that to be the word of God is the reverent simplicity of the word and to another the majesty of the word.
And in which two men equally pious may meet and one wonder that all should not understand it, and the other as much that any man should. . . .
Neither art thou thus a figurative, a metaphorical God in thy word only, but in thy works too. . . .
How often, how much more often, doth thy Son call himself a way, and a light, and a gate, and a vine, and bread than the Son of God or of man? How much oftener doth he exhibit a metaphorical Christ than a real, a literal?
This hath occasioned thine ancient servants . . . to proceed the same way in their expositions of the Scriptures and in their composing both of public liturgies and of private prayers to thee, to make their accesses to thee in such a kind of language as thou wast pleased to speak to them in a figurative, in a metaphorical language. . . .
As therefore the morning dew is a pawn [promise] of the evening fatness, so, O Lord, let this day’s comfort be the earnest of tomorrow’s, so far as may conform me entirely to thee to what end and by what way soever Thy mercy have appointed me.
John Donne
Eternal God,
whom our words may cradle but never contain,
we thank you for all the sound and silence
and color and symbol
which through the centuries have helped
the worship of your church
to be relevant and real.
A Wee Worship Book
All, absolutely all,
by your grace
speaks to me of you.
When I write
I ask
in your hands to be
the blank sheet of paper
where you can write what you please.
When I skim through a book
I feel acutely anxious
that such a lot of words should not go fruitless
without some happy message for the world.
Every step I take
reminds me that,
wherever I am going,
I am always on the march to eternity.
The din of human life,
the dry leaves eddying on the ground,
the passing cars,
shop-windows full of goods,
the policeman on point-duty,
the milk-float,
the poor man begging,
the staircase and the lift,
the railway lines, the furrows of the sea,
the pedigree dog and the ownerless dog,
the pregnant woman,
the paper-boy,
the man who sweeps the streets,
the church, the school,
the office and the factory,
streets being widened,
hills being laid low,
the outward and the homeward road,
the key I use to open my front door;
whether sleeping or waking —
all, all, all
makes me think of you.
What can I give to the Lord
for all he has given to me?
Dom Helder Camara
You had no words at the Baptism, Mute Spirit:
Your assignments were
to swoop and to settle —
a fluttering image of
pleasure and grace.
You had no speaking part in the garden,
nor at cruel Golgotha.
Three days later when the tomb burst open
you remained silent.
Even in the Upper Room
when you poured out a rampage of wind and fire:
Even on that day when you powered tongues —
cloven tongues of flame, other spoken tongues —
you yourself, dear Spirit, acted without a script.
So I am not asking for words from you here.
To hunt for them is my office and my obligation.
One thing alone I seek from you —
your brooding presence.
Elizabeth Stickney
. . . Person or, A Hymn on and to the Holy Ghost
How should I find speech
to you, the self-effacing
alone by the only one,
to you whose self-knowing
is perfect known to him,
seeing him only, loving
with him, yourself unseen?
Let the one you show me
ask you, for me,
you, all but lost in
the one in three,
to lead my self, effaced
in the known Light,
to be in him released
from facelessness,
so that where you
(unseen, unguessed, liable
to grievous hurt) would go
I may show him visible.
Margaret Avison
You asked for my hands,
that you might use them for your purpose.
I gave them for a moment, then withdrew them,
for the work was hard.
You asked for my mouth
to speak out against injustice.
I gave you a whisper that I might not be accused.
You asked for my eyes
to see the pain of poverty.
I closed them, for I did not want to see.
You asked for my life,
that you might work through me.
I gave a small part, that I might not get too involved.
Lord, forgive my calculated efforts to serve you —
only when it is convenient for me to do so,
only in those places where it is safe to do so,
and only with those who make it easy to do so.
Father, forgive me,
renew me, send me out
as a usable instrument,
that I might take seriously
the meaning of your cross. Amen.
Joe Seremane
Love Made Visible
An artist would sculpt or paint you
and make of you an image
worthy of a gaze
intent enough
to behold all of your
wonder in just one glance.
A poet would fashion you into
a sonnet or a cinquain,
an ode or a sestina,
with just enough words
to utter you in,
to proclaim you forth,
sweetly.
But I have only this work
here, day after day,
to attend
and out of this daily
drudgery must lift
tired hands
and pull you
out of sheer possibility,
a task so difficult that
some days
my open heart
gapes
and nothing but the swish of
the Spirit’s breath moving through
me could ever energize this effort
enough to call it a masterpiece.
Beth Fritsch
The Ebb and Flow
When first thou on me Lord wrought’st Thy sweet print,
My heart was made Thy tinder-box.
My ’ffections were Thy tinder in’t,
Where fell Thy sparks by drops.
Those holy sparks of heavenly fire that came
Did ever catch and often out would flame.
But now my heart is made Thy censer trim,
Full of Thy golden altar’s fire,
To offer up sweet incense in
Unto Thyself entire:
I find my tinder scarce Thy sparks can feel
That drop out from Thy holy flint and steel.
Hence doubts out bud for fear Thy fire in me
’S a mocking ignis fatuus
Or lest Thine altar’s fire out be,
It’s hid in ashes thus.
Yet when the bellows of Thy spirit blow
Away mine ashes, then Thy fire doth glow.
Edward Taylor
A Lament
O Lord, I don’t know what comes next. Am I past my prime? Am I a sack of trinkets, emptied out? A once-shimmering pool, evaporated? A spinner spun down, tipped sidelong, stilled? Is this a drooping, dry, dissipating drift toward some awful blank forever?
On some days, my work seemed a sweet sachet, crafted in satin, scented with pungent words: “purpose,” “calling.” Or a journey toward visioned destinations, worth all the ache and sweat.
But if this is only a rest, then why do I feel so restless and dull?
So much depends on the metaphor we choose for this — wouldn’t you agree, my God? You are Lord of the freeze and the thaw, fullness and emptiness, purpose and wandering. Let’s call me a tree, and this a winter — I’m all for cliché in a crisis. Let’s say that shivery, barren days hunker us down to the deep. Tell me, God, to hold fast to the banks of the river. Tell me I will bear fruit in season. Show me the pale green at the root, the lively bulbs beneath the crusted loam, the small creatures curled in furry warmth. Tune me to the hushed inhale of promise, the stillness before chattering birds.
O Lord, do not forget. Let the seasons turn. Quicken me.
Debra Rienstra
My Lord, I have nothing to do in this World, but to seek and serve thee;
I have nothing to do with a Heart and its Affections but to breathe after thee.
I have nothing to do with my Tongue and Pen, but to speak to thee and for thee
and to publish thy Glory and thy Will. . . . What have I to do with my remaining Time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy Grace, and thy Salvation?
Richard Baxter
Prayer for Utterance
Unless you build the house of this poem,
I who build it build it in vain. Unless
the words you give to me take part
in the word that is your Word,
I stray from my eternal home.
Unless your Spirit hover
on the face of my waters, they return
formless and void. What in me is dark
illumine. Not my will, but thine, O Lord,
as I face the cross of this day’s page.
Before a word is on my tongue,
you know it, Lord, altogether.
You know each raftered part of me,
fitted together in the womb.
You know which way the ink will flow,
each start of hope, each rub of loss,
when all that I can do is groan.
Praise be to you, Author and Finisher.
Praise of morning be to you.
Paul Willis
