Is there such thing as a writerly vocation?

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

I’m only ever hanging out with God.

If I tell you I spend six hours at a blinking cursor, in a desk chair with no buttons, you may think I am A Writer. You will fancy me Disciplined and perhaps even Called.

If I am hungry enough, I will attend that masquerade. I can burp shiny bubbles about “showing up for the work.” I can produce word counts as though ecstasy had anything to do with arithmetic. I can point to documents ascending and descending the cloud like angels.

But I am not here to write. Writing is like the coffee that gets you across the table from a friend. You curl your fingers around the cup for the first five minutes. Three sips in, you begin gesturing wildly, which was the whole point.

I write because I am poor at prayer. I get up to dust the bric-a-brac before I get to “thy kingdom come.” But from the time I fit inside a teacup, I have found bread between paragraphs and parentheses. The moment I open the laptop and curl my knees beneath me in the buttonless chair, I am no longer the only one in the room.

God has not asked me to write a ten-volume Dogmatics or hymnody for the nuclear age. Others are better qualified. God has not exactly asked me to write anything. God has only made it clear that God will sit next to me at my desk, and that is how the chair lost all its buttons.

It does not appear God is fussy about genre. God does not get up for another cup when all my metaphors turn into salamanders, or the exclamation points invite too many friends. I have never seen God’s finger hover over the Backspace button. I have never seen God’s finger at all.

I can only tell you that I am in the Presence whether my alphabet is slaphappy or anguished, and especially when I can’t tell the difference.

I am hanging out with God when I write about my mother, because she is my working definition of grace. I am hanging out with God when I write about my dilapidated pancreas, because God is in the insulin and infusion sets. I am hanging out with God when I write about blueberries, because no one else could have come up with such a great idea.

I am aware I am insufferable. I am not concerned. God said something once about suffering small mammals. I assume God finds me hilarious. I write about my cats more than any mortal could stomach. I write about cola, pantyhose, and the actual Holy Ghost. I write about Hildegard of Bingen, pretzel nuggets, and the old man at work who signs sticky notes, “your forever friend, Joe.” I write about senators, Shaquille O’Neal, and walruses walrusing mightily upon the shore.

I write about the middle school dance from which I have not yet recovered. I write about how wars would cease if everyone listened to the Willie Nelson rendition of “The Rainbow Connection.” I ask God, “did you see that, too?”, and God did, which is pretty cool. I write about myself until I am almost sick of myself, although that has yet to happen.

I write things that should exasperate God, although that has yet to happen, too. I teethe on low hanging fruit full of heroes and villains who never change chairs. I am as earnest as an oatmeal cookie and as entitled as a pet. I decaffeinate paradox so I do not have to be afraid. I am still afraid, but I am not the only one in the room.

Sometimes, after six hours, I cram everything I have just written into “the cloud,” never to pull it down again. Sometimes I am okay with the yield. I press “save.” There may be one dewdrop for some parched tongue. It is probably not the thousand-word piece about my cats, but it may be. Who can say? God has not asked me to write, not exactly. I’m only ever hanging out with God, which is the whole point.