We walked lazily over wet cobblestone this morning, he and I and our slobbery, magic girl. The hundred-year-old bakery near our house is in a Church of Christ from the 20s. Today, rain had a kaleidoscope effect on the pillars of stained glass and I wondered, is it okay to take The Eucharist on a Wednesday and if so, is it okay if it’s a donut? 

Haggard bodies keep slumping into solid oak pews in this place, praying over buttery breads and hand-cut cookies. Maybe they’re physically unmoored from the flood of big church but they still want the peace of an honest chapel. Maybe they’re not ready for hot breath at their necks telling them to rejoice but they want to give quiet thanks and still have quiet hope. I don’t know. I’m not saying it’s an equal or proper substitution, but also who am I to say that their cold chocolate milk, their fresh apple turnover, is not the body and is not the blood?

For just a flash, I was grateful for jelly-filleds and secret places to eat them. Not in the same obvious way that I’m grateful for my husband who cares for me endlessly or a sturdy roof over our heads or meals. But in the same way I’m grateful that Justin Vernon is alive when I’m alive, and Phoebe, and Sufjan. It’s hard to think of me dying before them ever being born. What if they never sat down at the keys? And what if I never got to hear the bridge and have chills? 

What if Patti Smith would have only rocked and never written? What if Nora Ephron was born into a family of accountants and didn’t believe in humor or love? Of course, then Harry wouldn’t have met Sally and my life would be worse. Don’t you see? 

If all these things weren’t perfectly true, what would I even do on a September afternoon?

There are certain pieces of writing that I return to often. Their specific selection of words at some perfect point in my life happened to land in just the right way for them to serve as a lasting ministry to me. 

An online article explaining our cyclical nature as physical creatures who respond in evolutionary ways to the changing of the seasons — a reminder that I have a real body to care for in real time. A blogpost cautioning young voices to harness their tongues, to sit on their fiery opinions, and to cultivate a deep wisdom that endures beyond a shallow age of trend and breadth — a reminder that my mind is a muscle that needs to be worked as well as disciplined. A poem describing a dream in which an old man’s wife has died and he remembers her in the candy aisle of a supermarket — a reminder that I have a beating, sometimes bleeding, heart worth listening to. A paperback earmarked on page eighty-one suggesting that we stop using interesting words to pray because communion has nothing to do with our fancy verbal ability — a reminder that I have a soul and a simple Spirit companioning it.

I still have such trouble telling people that I’m a writer. “What kinds of things?” they ask, “Like a book?” My impulse is to downplay in one ear and convince in the other, hoping by some sleight of hand to salvage their perception of what I am and what I bring, which is not everything, but it’s also not nothing. I suppose we all share this same tendency.

Am I poser or a prophet? A useless sinner or a beloved saint? Are we the dust of the earth or are we the glory of God? Which is it?

When I boil it all the way down, my writing life seems like a selfish endeavor. I am not blatantly helpful, changing the world or even putting food on the table for my family. Sometimes I curse God for letting me down with a purposeless gift. But then yesterday, I read this passage by Rhina Espaillat and cried into a box of takeout, so encouraged by the fruit of a small thing: 

“No poem or prose, however good, is going to bring about a change in human nature that will do away with injustice, cruelty, or cynicism, whatever its source. But excellent writing can sharpen the senses, challenge the intellect, kindle the imagination, and encourage the reader to generous thought. And great writing – like that of Anthony Hecht, which so qualifies on all counts, aesthetic, moral, and intellectual – can do more. It can teach us to confess doubt, to acknowledge the moral ambiguities inherent in every human impulse, and to guard against self-satisfied overconfidence in ourselves and in those institutions we have created in our image.”

None of our creative work is heroic in its own right. Only when we find the courage to exalt our best, when we can practice humility in putting our best down, when we employ faithfulness in coming back — only then will the ground be ripe for roots. And at that first sight of bursting green — that aha!, that conviction, that quick vision of beauty — it’s not everything, but gosh, it’s not nothing to the reader who’s ready to receive it. 

The tension we feel (as writers and otherwise) to worship these ordinary passing things is what Espaillat calls “the mixed bag of creation,” and it’s what lets us know we are “mortal beings still capable of enjoying the details of the world for what they are, and Himself for what He is.” 

Who you are and what you bring matters, no downplaying or convincing or sleight of hand needed. I hope you can feel the blessing of that.