“Listening to my life for whatever of meaning, of holiness, of God there may be in it to hear.” ~ Frederick Buechner

On the heels of yesterday’s post, comfort met me through the thoughtful ponderings of my friend, Ann. At Holy Experience of Listening, you can sense the rhythm of this writer’s heart:

“Indifferent to the lateness of the hour or the weariness of the body, I need to come and sit here, press these keys and watch letters shuffle into words on the screen. It is my streak across space, falling into words and landing softly.

I tell no one of these rendezvous with 26 letters. Like the Perseids, this act of dancing with curves and lines occurs in the out-of-the way hours, unbeknownst to they who call me daughter, friend. Day dawns, the bell tolls, and I slip away home.

Every apprentice knows, painfully so, of the chasm to be crossed in the journey towards skill. Loose and awkward, my knitting of words is not something to be paraded. And who would understand?

“You are the mother of six—you don’t think your life full enough? And writing? Maybe gardening, baking, quilting…but writing? What kind of a product is that?”

But as Ann says, writing is not about product, but process. Listen further as she shares a timely insight from Henri Nouwen:

“Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals what is alive. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write…To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.”

Why do we keep returning to the midnight oil? Does anyone understand those of us who, day after day, are drawn to probe and ponder?

Probably not, but according to Ann, that’s okay.

Thank you, Ann. Keep writing. Someone does understand!