Writers Share Their Lives

Judith Hougen, one of my favorite authors, teaches "Christianity and Writing" at the college level. She's very good at putting together writing and transformation. She is inspiring me to write for others, as well as for my own transformation.

This is what she says about sharing our lives through writing:

I think, as writers, our stories, our life, are all we really have to offer. When our stories are a service to others, we offer them as “a genuine participation,” as an honest, loving involvement with the other and not merely to seek applause or sympathy. If we have responsibly worked through our experiences with our communities, our stories can become, as Henri Nouwen says, a way to “give gratuitous love.” When we love gratuitously, we love without needing or expecting any particular response. We offer our stories in freedom—free because we don’t need anything from those who receive them.

There's a rightness to this way of living and writing--serving with that which is most core to us--our lives, our stories. As my student is discovering, learning to offer our stories in freedom through words can be costly, but in the end, maybe that's where we find the syntax of transformation. Maybe that's the writer's way to make room for the glory.

More HERE.