Writing to Stay Awake
Writing to Stay Awake
Ryan Snider
On the Pastoral Art of Attention
My favorite part of Monday is putting him to sleep. My son reclines on me, facing outward, nestled in like I’m a La-Z-Boy. The soft morning light shines through the crack between the broken, crooked curtain and window casing. He grabs my finger like it is a life preserver before he sinks down into the waves of sleep. His shirt rides up, and his rolls hang over the elastic waistband. I’d laugh if it wouldn’t wake him. Most mornings, he hits himself in the face to stay awake, or he flicks his bottom lip up and down, but today, his eyes roll around, flip upward, and eventually close. He snores like an old man.
Daytime consists of the simplest forms of entertainment: standing and falling. He pinballs from the coffee table to the couch to the side table. He falls over. Most of the time, he’s looking to swallow some object that will end his short life. I’ve already pried the remote control from his hands twice as he tries to pry out the silver batteries. I chase him when he crawls down the hallway. He stops, turns his head, and giggles. Then, he crawls away.
But I follow him, engrossed in every one of his small actions.
*
At the risk of becoming a daddy blogger, I took writing seriously when my kids were born because I had been warned too often that they would grow up quickly and eventually would want nothing to do with me. They said it’s best to savor every sound, touch, sight, and, occasionally, smell. I tried to remember this when I was in my sixth hour of bouncing my colicky firstborn on a yoga ball. The sound has been preserved without a journal full of adverbs.
Still, these two strangers, made of my own flesh and blood, became my best motivation to capture every mundane moment, however chaotic, frustrating, or dull, and etch it into my memory. Every piece I wrote was a kind of vain attempt to immortalize withering grass and fading flowers. The beautiful, boring, and beastly; the way his eyes expand into saucers when his song is played, the unfurling lip just as she is about to cry, the electrical cord that is munched like a cow chewing cud.
Children bestow a particular kind of attentiveness, an easy entrance to empathy and love. You learn that there is a difference between seeing people and paying attention to them. You learn to see a human being in the same way that God sees you.
Mommy (and daddy) bloggers will always feel to themselves like they are embarking on uncharted shores. And they’re right—millions of diapers have been changed, but this particular soiled diaper belongs to my son. Objectivity doesn’t stand a chance. Nothing’s extraordinary, but everything is extraordinary. Nothing’s unique, but everything is unique. Every moment feels like a breaking story. We’ll never stop writing about babies because each one is a miracle, worthy of a compilation of blogs, a book, an anthology (this remains true even when they excrete gobs of black tar that sticks to everything).
As a young parent, I learned to define attention like this: nothing is too insignificant to become the vessel of God. There is a theological foundation here: omnipresence. God is everywhere. God is in every towering mountain, and the live oak trees that are draped in Spanish moss. God is also in apparent nothingness, like the geographic area between Savannah and Atlanta, or what we call the armpit of South Georgia.
There’s no secret combination that has to be unlocked; no permission must be granted from an old white guy wearing a robe or a particular building that must be accessed. God is already present, and no incantation will make it more true. This is what Matthew Fox calls a form of spiritual democracy; we all have equal access to God. Others might describe it as God’s prevenient grace or God’s presence pervading every atom of the world, drawing us deeper into God’s own being.
Our job as children of God is to pay attention. And writing is the best hack for not falling asleep.
*
My kids gave me the courage and confidence to call myself a writer when few are bold enough to claim the designation. More often, we pride ourselves as readers. Reading might be an easy way to first start paying attention. Good writers make you pause, reread sentences and words, letter strokes. You consider what the words mean and how they sound when they sit beside one another. String those characters in the right order, and you might immortalize them in your memory. The practice of reading well sharpens attention to see the world differently. Chesterton, for instance, wrote that fairy tales train our imagination to live in a world with just as much mystery and delight as evil and hardship. After spending some time with Tolkien, you might notice that the trees in your backyard are glimmering gold like the trees in Rivendell.
Yet, I also know that reading without a response is incomplete. Attentive reading is often a circular activity. Reading without writing, in particular, can become a form of hoarding. Beauty ought to beget beauty. That’s to say that when you move slowly enough to notice beauty in the world, you can’t help but birth more beauty yourself through song, art, or speech. A good book is like kindling, and your own writing can be the spark that lights up the neighborhood. Your attentiveness will become the catalyst for another’s attention; suddenly, the world is slightly brighter.
*
I’ve often wondered if I can pay attention without writing. Few of us really know what we’ve seen or heard without later exploring the experience through keystrokes on the screen or scribbles on lined paper. I rarely know what I think about something unless I’ve put it to paper. It’s the best way I know to take someone else’s observations about the world and integrate them into my life.
This must be why professors assign discussion posts for every virtual class. Writing forces slow and critical thought, challenging our consumption of words and ideas. These three-hundred-word reflections are painful and tedious for students and teachers, but they do make you pay attention. You must cut through the excess, chew on hard sentences, and savor the beautiful phrases. The piece is swallowed and digested when you write the next sentence by picking up where the piece left off—connecting it with your story. Attentive writing will close the circle that reading initiated.
I know I’d read my Bible more closely if I ended each reading with a discussion post. Writing is a way to practice spiritual contemplation. The Christian practice of contemplation is being present in heart, mind, body, and soul to the God who pervades every grain of life. In contemplation, the Christian sees not just with the eyes but with the heart. The question for those who practice contemplation is not whether God is present. Rather, the question is whether we are open to God’s presence in our lives in every present moment.
If you keep a journal in your pocket or the notes app unlocked, and you might become an investigative journalist on the watch for God’s latest production.
*
I sometimes wonder if we should consider calling ourselves “writers” when we start calling ourselves “Christian.” To be clear, I am biased. My job has required me to write thousands of words a week about God and humanity. I’m paid to pay attention.
I had a former professor tell me that I signed up to be a writer when I signed up to be a pastor. He’s not wrong. Pastoring is about learning to see and discern the divine, becoming a congregation’s chief optometrist, and helping others find the right prescription to see the world more clearly. Oftentimes, the prescription must be written down. I have been tasked with newsletters, e-mails, social media posts, and even text messages. More crucially, a sermon always loomed on the horizon. Stanley Hauerwas said that you had a successful day in ministry when you wrote a couple of really good sentences in the Sunday sermon. To most of the world, this sounds like a waste of time. But a good sentence has the capacity to change someone’s life, and that’s worth eight hours of work.
The best preachers I know are great writers. And the best writers are the most attentive. And it’s no surprise that the most attentive writers can be deeply Christian. The Christian life is not possible without attention. Writing might be one of the best instruments to develop most of the Christian virtues. Writing takes time, and time is the friend of attention. In the habit of writing, we love God with our minds as we begin to reflect and write our experiences of the world. Think of the gratitude lists, patience in editing, and the faithful and diligent appointments we keep with our pens and word processors. The fruits of the Spirit overflow. Some of us practice the virtue of hope that what we produce will be legible or even beautiful. It might get published. Often, the piece won’t be clicked, understood, or appreciated. But bad writing can be important, too—it’s the writing that goes unread that might save you. It’s an act of resistance to the commoditization of our lives. That’s called the virtue of rest. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
There is an audacity in writing because you’ll quickly come to the limits of your knowledge. Kurt Vonnegut said, "When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." Our attempts to speak faithfully of anything, and especially God, will always fall short. There is a deep otherness to our God and experiences that elude our words. We’re all children scribbling with crayons when we try to write about the divine. And so, we pay even closer attention to reconsider, revise, reword, and redraft.
The process of writing puts us back in our skin, making us humble. Saint Basil says it is not superfluous to scrutinize every word, syllable, and element of speech. Each stroke of the pen has the capacity to capture something of the divine for a fleeting moment. Those who want to love God will continue to feed and be fed through our words because the one who created with words, became the Word, and hides in words will continue to re-create the world with our words.
*
Jenny Odell wonders whether attention is really just a series of successive efforts to bring our attention back to the one thing that truly matters. Like an exercise in meditation, we let the distracting thoughts sail away through peaceful waters so that we can return to the lighthouse of our attention: the incarnate Christ, who sheds light on the rest of the world. Then, we do it again.
Paying attention, then, is not a means to an end. Nor is it an academic pursuit or about getting the right definition of God. Rather, it’s about noticing the arms of God that wait outstretched. Dwelling on what’s beautiful. We write down words because they deliver us to the feet of the eternal Word and then unite us with God. I often notice something new and beautiful, and there is absolutely no opportunity to put it to use. That's okay. I write it down and worship God.
Ryan Snider
Writer & Pastor
Ryan Snider is a pastor, writer, and teacher. He also takes pictures and drinks a lot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee. His first book, Ancient Extravagance: Christian Ways of Becoming More Human, will be released in October of 2024. You can find his work at www.ryancsnider.com.
Photography by Sir Simo
