Wednesday 17 April 2013

Pride

A few days ago my mum asked me if I prayed before I wrote.

Ah, here she goes trying to find some standard I haven't lived up to, some arbitrary rule that I haven't obeyed, my defensive subconscious grumbled.

I launched into an answer justification defence. "I don't need to pray specifically before I write. I pray in the morning, and then everything I do is influenced by that. I don't pray before every action I do, I just do them. That doesn't mean I'm not allowing the Holy Spirit to inspire me."

I'm sure other awesome bloggers don't pray before they write. They just wait around for an awesome idea to strike... and then they type away. Or they wait until a deadline is on them. And they write. Right?

Yesterday I was listening to an old EWTN Life on the Rock podcast with Jennifer Fulwiler. Right at the beginning, she is asked,

"Do you pray before you write?"

"I do, I try to. (....) I really try to, because if it's coming from me and not the Holy Spirit, then you know, that's not what I'm trying to do here."

You know?

Of course, when I think about the wide scope of blogs, the many (countless as the sand on the sea shore*) thoughts in my mind, my inability to focus, and the tendency of every human (especially human bloggers and human FB status-writers) to think our every random observation ("I've noticed that my left toenails grow fractionally slower than my right ones**") is in some way phenomenally important to the human race, then it seems pretty obvious that I need a little guidance about what aspects of my 'reality' I write about. A brief "Come, Holy Spirit" doesn't cost me much. Except my pride.

Sue eats humble pie.

* I love misquoting bible verses.
** That's not really true, fascinating and phenomenally important as such an observation  might be.

2 comments:

  1. It depends on what I'm writing. If I was writing something totally serious, I would be praying beforehand. For memes like "Five Favorites", "The Simple Woman's Daybook", and "7 Quick Takes", I generally don't unless some part of them is serious.

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  2. Yeah, I'm thinking more of when I am a blank slate, and am trying to come up with SOMETHING.

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