Confessions of an Unqualified Writer

It's time to come clean...

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” — Eden Phillpots

My work is beyond me.

The novels. The essays. The poems. The thoughtful cultivation of a social media “presence.” Everything I am trying to create — it’s beyond my skill. After years of striving to hustle my way to that elusive chalice the world calls success, I have at last been humbled often and thoroughly enough to see this truth: I am simply not sufficient to the task. It’s not just that I need more training or a bigger team or fresh branding or a lucky break. The chasm is simply too wide to jump. Maybe another can. I realize now, finally, I cannot. 

No. What I need is a wholesale surrender. I need to wave the white flag at the universe, to hand the whole thing over, to let someone else take charge.

I feel such relief finally admitting this truth. I have felt stuck for so long between what I’m meant to do and my inability to do it. But meaningful action isn’t really possible until you fully accept reality for what it is. And my reality is that I’m simply not talented enough for what I’m trying to do. I’m not skilled enough. Not gifted enough. Not clever enough; or rather, not clever enough in the right ways. My mind bends toward the mystical and transcendent. I’m too esoteric for this hyper-capitalist age, despite its rampant addiction to escapism. I can’t grasp the calculus of selling someone spiritual maturity by appealing to their ego, though this is apparently the way things are done. I can’t tolerate the use of pretentious sales tactics and manipulative stage craft to beguile people to say yes to a “greater good.” If the goodness you’re bringing is so great, why all the gimmicks and flashy displays?

But of course that’s what we’ve trained everyone to want. Snake oil salesmen have become the new gods of our age. We happily worship at the feet of those who tell the most fantastic tales. And it really doesn’t matter if their stories are true. We’ll believe every word they say regardless.

But I digress. These mad distractions that have us by the throat, they are all too powerful for me. Too seductive and convincing. I cannot compete, and I refuse to do so in any case. The words I carry, that burn in me, are beyond my skill to write in the way they want to be written so as to be heard above the madness. 

Yet — and let me be very clear on this point — none of this disqualifies me, or gives me the right to set my pen down.

We like to believe that the greatest works of our lives will be born out of our strengths — those special gifts and talents unique to us, that rare diamond quality that sets us above the crowd in some particular way. But if sixty years of life here have convinced me of anything it is that the truly great works any of us accomplish are always born out of our weaknesses, and never out of our strengths. 

Everything we create from our strengths is in one way or another tied to our ego, and ego is a cold and brittle thing, a fragile scaffolding of ice that sparkles in the sun for one brilliant moment but quickly splinters into nothing under the bright scrutiny of the full heat of day. But every good thing we create from our weakness is born out of our truest soul, and that soul is glorious and free and beautiful and true and everything it leaves behind lasts forever.

The great American poet and philosopher Wendell Berry affirmed this very principle when he wrote, so beautifully:

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Likewise, the Apostle Paul recognized this truth as foundational to the way the Divine Spirit works in human lives:

“God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

I am not equal to the work to which I am called. But I take that as a very good thing. Because if a man does not reach beyond his grasp, then what is his reaching for? And if he only reaches for what he can obtain in his own strength, what need does he have for intimacy with the Divine? 

All that is required of me is to take whatever gifts I have been given, however meager, and invest in them as faithfully as I can, to become as masterful as my capacities allow, and to surrender ownership of all of that into God’s hand, like a little brush or chisel or pen abandoned in God’s palm, and let the Spirit make of me whatever art She will. For even the simplest of instruments can craft wonders in the hands of a True Master.

“When I am weak,” writes St. Paul, “then I am strong.”

Yes, brother. So say we all.