Composition Notebooks

 "Please take out your composition notebooks," I say almost robotically. It comes as automatically as hello and how are you because every day, at the beginning of every class, we journal. Students open up that black and white sort of splatter-paint surface and unleash the depths of their preadolescent imaginations. The inside, I must presume, is bursting with ideas and dreams, brainstormed lists, colored memories. Vocabulary words in every margin, I'm certain of it. And stories. Oh, the stories. The questions and revelations as they come of age in a world marked by a seemingly endless cycle of unprecedented news. "Dream, my little writers." Or, on days I'm feeling especially ambitious: "Write, my little dreamers."

So you can probably imagine my surprise when, with these awe-inspiring prompts and persuasions, I walk by a student and find them on the first page of the notebook. My initial reaction is always best-assuming: They must write from the back to the front. Perhaps they're a move-in. They probably already filled up a notebook and are onto the next. But the back page is empty. They've been here since day one. This is the first notebook; they've not yet begun. 

Conversation becomes difficult in this moment. The notebooks are ungraded, so I can't say they'll be penalized. I vowed not to read them, so I'm not really supposed to know. And the point I wrestle with the most, simply put: most days, I don't really feel like writing either. 

Getting words on a page can feel like vanity. A chasing after the wind. Paper, especially, has become so disposable to us. Gone are the days of stashing journals under mattresses and shoeboxes full of letters. We can take a picture of something and it becomes digitally permanent. Unable to rip, tear, be lost or accidentally swept up among grocery lists and bills. So why write? 

And then there's the pitifully short attention span of most in our society. Despite an education system that requires 7-10 page papers, the real world has one demand: tell me in ten seconds or I'm out. You used to be trendy on the 'gram if you wrote a lengthy and clever caption. Now, an emoji will suffice. Any story on Facebook longer than three stanzas is likely to be skipped. I won't even watch a show if it's longer than 40 minutes. If palm tree stickers and five-second reels can tell the story enough, why say more? It's the quintessential Kevin Malone question we chuckle at but secretly wonder to this day: why waste time say lot word when few word do trick!? In other words, why write?

As a teacher, I'm facing an uphill battle as I persuade students of the importance of writing in a world reluctant to read it. As a writer, I'm facing internal warfare as I persuade myself that this is good for me, good for my mind, good for the world, even though they'll never read it. As I find myself again choosing reels over writing, feeling every bit as enamored and enthralled, I keep coming back to the question why write? Why must this ancient art persist? If choppy videos entertain and deliver messages with brief flashes of font on a digital screen, how and why do I continue to robotically start my class with "please take out your journals?"

First, I fundamentally believe in the intellectual growth that happens when piecing words together. I desperately crave the memory preservation that comes with writing things down. I heartily insist that writing - whether prayers or fears or conflicts - is a processing tool that leads to healing. And I have personally experienced the necessity of using words to promote growth and change, awe and adoration, respite and relief. That's why we write.

I think of Lewis and Spurgeon, Paul and Peter, Wilkin and Wifler -- the theologians who have brilliantly and poignantly expounded on truths from a God whose Word will never perish, spoil, or fade; and in all of their writings, I am pointed back to that very God. He is the author of life. He is a perfect Creator, and because we are made in His image, we get to create as well. That's why we write.

I read Through the Gates of Splendor, baffled by the necessity of written word. Had Elisabeth Elliot not penned the letters of five missionaries -- one being her husband -- who embraced various unreached populations and eventually lost their lives, we would not have their stories of heroism, their fervor for evangelism, their winsome encouragement to 'live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.' None of it, without writing. That's why we write.

But writing is a discipline. In the same way I have to drag myself off the couch to exercise, I often drag myself to the computer to write. But it is a discipline that, much like forcing our eyes away from a screen and toward the sunrise, inspires awe. We must simply be disciplined enough to engage this art, to meditate on good writing, to overcome our socially constructed short attention spans, and to read like crazy and write for the long haul. 

Reading good writing (and attempting good writing) moves us from the ordinary to the transcendental, forces us to think immaterially, and ultimately can astound us with a freshly awakened sense of wonder. It would be difficult, I think, to listen to the written lyrics of Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton and not be filled with awe. And awe, considering the fact that every good thing is from God, ought to bring us back to worship of our Creator. If we are creative, if funny, if thoughtful or wise, it is only because His sovereign hand made us to be. This literary partaking can be an act of worship as we recognize that nothing we have is from us, but from the God who penned eternity and Scripture and every human heart, who loved us enough to give us language. Every thought, every stroke of the pen is allowed by God, and even the meager exposition of a holiday at sea can remind us of the Imago Dei we get to be.

That is why we write.