I Write Because. . .

I write to keep my balance, to preserve my sanity (whatever remains). I write to explain myself to myself, to give my life some meaning in the face of contrasting views of misery, promise and glory.

I write because I love and feel and need to love mightily. I write because I see. I write to understand this world and to probe my relationships. I write much that I never share.

Probably the first reason I write, starting some fifty years ago, is to guide this heart of mine through some chaos, through truth and fiction and the great summons to love. I know I am a "walking contradiction," a mixed bag.

I write because I am climbing a mountain and want to share the views along the way. I write because I am now standing on a mountain top and the landscape is both awesome and scarey. I write because now the mountain moves and has become a volcano ready to explode with fire, fury and lava, and some steam must escape.

I write to calm my soul so that when I read what I have written, I can say, "Ah! There! That’s not so bad. That’s more clear. Now I can see more clearly what before was troubling or crazy, boiling or just stewing."

I have journaled for many years and have thick notebooks. I have employed the habit of writing to keep my sanity (whatever is left) while I survived or tried to survive listening to people’s problems 30 hours per week for forty years. I added up this career time once to be about 45,000 hours of attending to all their Ifs, ANDs and BUTs and often tortured explanations.

The last ten years of that, honestly, I felt trapped. I had family, wife, house, chores, demands, and a lifestyle to maintain via spending 30 hours per week as a Professional Listener and Problem Solver–Zorba’s "Full Catastrophe!"--while pretending sanity. Hah! I was probably "burned out" ten years before I happened happily to transition fully to organizational consulting in 1997.

Writing has probably saved my soul. I write to discover meaning and beauty and grace. More than before, I discover beauty and grace everywhere even in the face of evil, denial and blindness. I write to explore my heart and to discover my core values.

What we see is our own reality. What we focus on becomes our world. "Appreciative Inquiry" (The Thin Book of), makes the point that we have two ways to view challenge. We can see ourselves, our company, our marriage, or faith as a problem to be solved. Then we focus on what needs fixing.

Or instead we can see ourselves, our company, our marriage, or faith as a mystery to be embraced. This second view has very different outcomes. We focus on what works, and how to make it work better. Two entirely different approaches.

I usually approach the end of the year and the beginning of a new year with some inventory. What the year was like, where my energies went. Some self-exam has always been part of that.
But often--not very happily. "Gads, I am still doing THAT. . . After all these years. I can’t believe I have made so little progress in . . .whatever."

This year, different. What is it that I am good at, where do my strengths lie, where is "my bliss?" Ah! That is what I will do. Now I will do it in spades. Yes!

Part of my bliss is in the process of writing. I write because I love life. Life itself is such a precious gift. This one life given me cannot be appreciated enough. Writing claims it, as my own. I cease being a passenger, an observer, a voyeur, a lurker, and become an actor discovering a role, a place, a function, even "God willing and the crick don’t rise," a plank over the crick, a footpath among the rocks, a bridge, a lever.

I become, by writing, more of a straw, a vessel, a glass, a cup. For me, it is an exercise in "Servant Leadership," also a favorite book by Robert Greenleaf (Paulist Press, 1977).
By risking to make myself vulnerable, perhaps others can risk and make themselves vulnerable.

"Oh, if my enemy would write a book!" said Job somewhere. My wise and distinguished Moral Theology Professor (on loan to us from St. Meinrad's Abbey) loved that quote. "Don’t put it in writing," was his dire warning in major seminary to all of us young aspiring candidates for priesthood.

In the first days of this new year, I have started seven blogs on topics that intrigue and fascinate me. I offer writing on these topics to others. My webmaster, Alan Dix is preparing a new page to introduce those blogs and a way to coordinate them for the reader.

"Bless me, Reverend Father, for I have sinned. . . ."

Namaste.
Paschal
January 10, 2005.