Write

    "Write as though you were dying" was one of the more memorable phrases in the book The Writing Life, a book that I highly recommend when you have time to read it three or four times through, it takes that long to understand. In some ways it reminds me of Ecclesiastes, where you are hard pressed to find the connections between the author's thoughts, but once you do you're astounded. The author goes on to tell writers to write as though their audience was dying--what could you write that wasn't so trivial it would enrage a dying person?
    I wish I could write like that; I wish I could write for others. But again and again I come back to the point where writing is mine, for me, to say what I can't say otherwise and to see what i don't see until I put it in print. It's reflection and introspection and communication and craft (though the last is lacking) all in one; it's something I love and something I can't live without, though I may write in my head, on a computer, or on paper; it happens all the time. But one thing I have realized.
   Writing is like living. It is when you are dying that you live with all your might; it is when you are incapable of writing that you begin to see it's possibilities. But you can put words on paper and not write; you can go through the actions of life and not live. When you write you put yourself on paper--your thoughts, your personality, your knowledge, and your desire to communicate with others. The things that define how you live, define how you write. You, your relationships, experiences, and character limit and expand what you do, what you think, and how you interact with the world. Writing takes you, your interactions, your life, and causes you to put in ink the way you see things and the way those interactions have helped to shape you.
     So if you were called to write for a dying person, what could you say? What could you offer universally to a dying person from your life, something that is strong enough it could help your whole dying audience, not just one or two?
    Because I think that's what I want, I want a life (and the ability to write combined with such a life) that  offers much to all, that is lived to the extent that it is will be listened to, that is changed enough it can communicate itself and what God is doing in it--that can write and be read.
    I wonder what God does with wishes like that?