Writing for Contemplation
There may be people for whom writing is a constant pleasure, but for me it is both a burden and a compulsion. As long as I can remember, I have longed to write, and felt the need to put down my thoughts in writing. Writing is thinking; I cannot work out an idea in my head, but must commit it to the page, working it out in the physical interaction with pen or keyboard (and thereby, oftentimes, purging myself of those ideas that fester in my mind, undeveloped because un-developed). In this, we can see the structure of the human person: the spiritual made manifest in the material, the material the very mode of the spiritual's presence to itself. Now, as an academic, I must write, in order to retain my job. But writing is so difficult; one longs to find The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together But this is difficult...