I watched an interesting movie the other day: Let Them All Talk with Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen. The main character, Alice, is a writer, and one of her friends is convinced that the book that made Alice famous and for which she won an important award, was actually the story of that friend's own trauma, a trauma she'd shared in confidence to Alice. The friend can't forgive Alice for this. The movie got me to thinking some about writing on the whole, and my own writing in particular.
As writers, we write from our own experience. We do. Whether it is obvious or not, we can't write from anything other than our own experience. We write for many reasons, but I believe the top two reasons are to share the things that we think others will value and to process our lives. In a sense, writing is therapy. This is true even if what we are writing is fiction, and even if the connections to our own lives are not obvious. We bring ourselves to our writing and that means it comes from our experiences. This is perhaps especially true for pastors. We write what we hope will be meaningful to others. We cannot do that apart from our own experiences because our faith is informed by our experiences: by our relationships to God and to people, and even to all of creation. But this means two things for my own writing:
First, people often assume that the points I am making are somehow "aimed" at them. I've written about this before, in part because it happens so very often. Does the behavior of other people around me influence or affect my writing? My preaching? Of course. Again, I cannot write apart from my own experience because it has determined who I am, what I think, what I mean, what I do. I cannot separate my own experiences from my writing, nor would I want to. My experiences have given me what little wisdom I have: they have informed my beliefs and have challenged me to grow through and with them. Since I believe faith is ultimately about a relationship with God and God's people, it is a living growing thing as all relationships are. And that means that my writing and preaching also grow and change based on the life lessons that I face in each day.
But as I've said before, I think it is very dangerous to preach "at" people. So I work very hard to preach sermons "at" myself, or the things that I know I need to hear: to say the things that I know I need to remember to grow. As Alice said in the movie I just watched, "Ultimately a writer is writing about herself." Yes, even when it sounds like I am "preaching" at someone, usually that person is me. It is very rare that I have an image of someone else in mind when I am writing or preaching. And when I do have an image of someone else in mind, I have learned to take that as a cautionary note and try hard to work around it. I will give a very specific example:
There came a Sunday when the lectionary passage was Mathew 18:15-22. It comes around once every three years and we are called to preach on it each and every time it does. It is a passage that says that when someone has wronged us, we are to talk to them directly, not about them, not gossiping, not stirring up anger. We are to go to them directly. If that doesn't work, we are to take a couple "witnesses" with us and again, go to them directly. If it still doesn't work, you expand the circle farther by bringing more "witnesses" to sit in on the conversation, but still you are called to talk to the person directly. There's a key word here that I keep using: directly. There is no room in this for gossip or triangulation.
Well, at the time that the passage came up for it's tri-annual sermon, the congregation I was serving was struggling with some serious gossip problems. I didn't know what to do. I felt that it had come at a crucial time in the life of the congregation. But I was also very aware that this was one of those occasions when it would be hard for me to resist using the pulpit to preach "at" people who were doing damage in the church. My solution? I pulled out a sermon I had written 6 years earlier, for a previous congregation, and I edited it only slightly so that it was not obviously from six years before. I did not want to fall into the trap of preaching "at" or "to" anyone, so I made sure that I wasn't. Still, people in the congregation believed I was preaching "at" specific people. Ironically, at least two people believed I was preaching at someone who was never in my mind as someone who needed to especially hear the sermon. And since they never actually asked me if that was the case, (I again heard about it through more gossip, sigh) there was no space for me to explain my process or my thoughts.
Unfortunately, this has not been a one time event. This is one of the curses of writing, of speaking in public ways and in public places. There is always the chance that, no matter how hard I try not to hurt or upset anyone that someone will put their own interpretations on what I said and either become angry or hurt. Once that happens it is very difficult to repair the damage.
Is it possible that sometimes I am, without intention, still tapping into some of my own feelings and therefore lashing out? It's possible. I try to be self reflective, honest with myself, and kind to the people in my area of influence. But I'm also human. I try to own my own mistakes. But we also all have blind spots and I am no exception to that.
The second point I want to make is that I do use stories to say what I want to say. I use stories to illustrate my points, such as the story I just told about my gossip sermon. Many times these stories come from books or movies. But the stories that are most impactful, that make the most difference to those who hear them, and that ring the truest, are the stories that are true, and that I'm in the unique position to share because they come from my own life. These stories are real. But that necessarily means that other people are in those stories: other people who are also real and have been a part of my life. So how do I avoid hurting people? If the story involves someone easily identifiable, I often ask them if it's okay if I use it. For example, if I tell a story involving my kids, I ask them if it's okay before telling it. Sometimes, for whatever reason, I have a story and I am unable to ask those involved for permission. In those cases, I will often change key elements of the story to "hide" their identity. Sometimes I have not gone far enough in these efforts when I've believed the story would be heard as an apology or a clarification of something that has happened. And so, occasionally, sometimes my stories have hurt others. I've told a story that I thought would not be offensive or hurtful and the person who saw themselves in the story was hurt or offended. Or I've told a story that I thought would in no way be connected with a specific person because they were distant, not in my sphere, or not connected to people who would read what I write, and was surprised to find that was not the case.
I remember when this has happened and I use those instances as warnings and reminders to myself to be careful. But I am human and I do make mistakes. It is for this reason that as I have sat with my book about what my family experienced in Ohio, I've had a hard time pushing it into a realm of publication. I worry about the people who might be hurt. I worry that no matter how hard I've worked to hide identities or change names that people will see themselves and will interpret what I've said negatively rather than complimentarily. I think this is one of the biggest challenges of writing. How do we speak truth without injuring others? This remains a growing edge for me. It might always be so. All I can say is I'm working on it. And that I hope that those who feel hurt by the things I have written or said would have the courage to talk to me about it. I want to grow. And I want the opportunities to make things right.
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