Resilience

I'm currently freelancing for a living. My freelancing income is coming from both writing and editing (for magazines, curriculum, corporate media), so I’ve been thinking a lot about both.

For instance, in April I’m going to a books festival replete with big name authors and intimate classrooms, but I realize any author interviews I can score—even with Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon—will not garner near the acclaim or attention or money as an interview with the director of some lame movie thriller. This matters because it’s how I make my living. Yet it’s also my primary calling from Christ.

At the recent Pentecostal Writer’s Institute (March 12-14, 2008), I was able to interact with many writers with the same calling, but what is said and how we act diverge. In seems there’s a distinct lack of faith in the importance of this calling to write and edit.

Society, Pentecost, Us
While our overall society relies (almost exclusively) on visual cues, our Apostolic culture still relies (almost completely) on oral cues, so that those of us called to write squirm in an ill-defined no man's land between them both. As I told my PWI classes, what’s the response going to be if you tell your pastor, “I can’t make choir (or prayer meeting or a SFC fundraiser) anymore—I’m going to write.”? Even with encouragement, the rewards appear limited. It’s easier to participate in other, more prominent (oral) callings, even if it’s not your primary calling. I saw it in the wake of PWI—a conference of writers, who seemed to believe this was more hobby than holy mission.

Because writing is hard, time-consuming work, because books have lost their central space in society, because of the instant satisfaction of a quality oral presentation, because there are so few writing examples within our ranks, it’s easy to doubt the importance of this calling. We can’t allow ourselves to do that. We didn't choose to do this. God did.

Faith in History
We must trust the written word. It has lasted. It will last. Just because it’s lost its central space in society doesn’t mean it’s lost its historical importance. We forget how transient most other callings are, yet the best writing remains in a way music, speaking styles, acting, films, and painting rarely do.

Writing is the triumph of the inner life, which the visual ignores and for which the oral offers prescriptions instead of illuminations. It is writing that offers the one quality everyone in modern society and too many Apostolic services seem so terrified of—silence. Yet, an infinite God offers an infinity of experiences and has even (ahem) mentioned ministering in such a still, small manner.

Keep writing. Make the sacrifices. Accept the strange looks and even ridicule. Enjoy the joyful loneliness. It matters. And if God gave you the calling, then it will be worth pursuing whether or not you ever get rich and famous, because that’s not why a calling is given.

Just don’t believe that other callings are superior just because they are more prominent. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” is what we’re told, yet someone had to write it before they could quote it.