How the separate practices of writing and faith can converge
Forty or so years ago, in the early eighties — when telephones still “rang” and were wired to walls, and we still relied on typewriters — I did two seemingly unrelated MA degrees back-to-back. One in creative writing and one in religion. Needless to say, neither program led clearly or quickly to a job. So I had a lot of time to write and read, and not surprisingly, found myself drawn to writers whose spirituality somehow converged with their writing practice. People like James Baldwin, Kathleen Norris, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, and Marilynne Robinson.
As I read and reread these authors, and gained more confidence as a writer and teacher, I slowly learned some things that have helped anchor me in my profession. For one, I came to see the art of writing as an act of faith in creation, and to view the writing process as a way of teaching myself how to pay attention to the world. And while that has gotten more difficult to practice in our high-tech TikTok culture of perpetual distraction, it still feels like the central task or challenge.
Another thing I learned during those years is that writing is a balancing act. You have to look out with your eyes while looking in at the I — to attempt to balance self and world through language. And for me, when writing is going well, that balancing, that conversation between self and world, can sometimes be a spiritual process, a journey into mystery. This all aligns with the origin of the word “essay” (essai, a verb) — my favorite nonfiction genre — which means to attempt, as in a test or trial run. An essay is more about the journey than the destination, more an invitation to readers, than a prescription.
All of these ideas came flooding back to me last month when I visited the American Writers Museum in Chicago. Their current exhibit — “American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture” — featured all of the writers mentioned above, and many other giants, such as Zora Neale Hurston, W.S. Merwin, Chaim Potok, and Flannery O’Conner. The exhibit invites visitors to consider how storytelling has served as a powerful lens for examining our belief systems, personal identities and the relationship between religion and American culture.
The first thing that hits you in the exhibit is the diversity of the cultural perspectives represented: Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Humanism, Indigenous spiritualities, Islam, Judaism and Taoism, as well as Agnosticism and Atheism. Devout Christian writers such as Flannery O’Conner and Marilynne Robinson are contrasted with devout Buddhists such as W.S. Merwin and Gary Snyder. But most of the writers featured are hybrids, whose beliefs have kept evolving. Some of the writers are focused more on the seeking, such as Jack Kerouac in On the Road, and others on the seeing, such as Wordsworth in The Prelude. Given this diversity, I found the most useful term to capture the wide range of perspectives to be “spirituality” — a word even more blurry and vast than “religion,” which is likely why it was not included in the exhibition’s title.
“Great writing is always spiritual, but rarely religious,” a colleague commented recently at a writing conference. I kind of knew what he meant, but not for sure. So I looked up the origins of both words. The root of “spirit” (espiritu) means “wind” or “breath.” It is not human-made but a natural force. A religion, however, is human-made, and often tied to a human-made structure — a church or synagogue or mosque. And a religion usually includes prescribed rituals and behaviors, beliefs, doctrines, a sacred text, a moral code, etc. The root of religion (re-ligare) means “to tie or bind together again.” But that binding can mean to gather together a compassionate inclusive community, or to enslave and bind followers to rigid beliefs and doctrines. The point is that there is a continuum of openness/freedom and restriction/rigidity within most religions and spiritual traditions.
“The American Prophets” exhibition embraces this broad range of religion/spirituality in its displays and features. One of the most interesting parts is the writers’ own personal accounts of their spiritual journeys. Ann Lamott writes she came to her faith “not through a leap but a series of staggers,” alluding to her history of addiction. James Baldwin was raised in a strict religious household and became a preacher at age 14, yet later felt repressed and rejected by the church as a gay Black man.
The writer that I most aligned with in the exhibit was Henry David Thoreau. “God culminates in the present,” he wrote in Walden, “and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us.” My translation: pay compassionate attention to your everyday life and you will find the spiritual insight you seek. I like this idea because it affirms that the art/practice of writing and the art/practice of a faith can meaningfully converge in one life.
Tom Montgomery Fate is a retired English professor and the author of six books of creative nonfiction. He will be speaking at the American Writers Festival at The Harold Washington Library on Sunday, June 7.