This week in The New Yorker they have published a big excerpt of the writer Flannery O'Connor's prayer journal, from the time she was in the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Here's a taste:
Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. . . .
I always find it fascinating to read about writers who are simultaneously struggling with their art and their faith, and reading Flannery O'Connor's essays about how she viewed herself as a "Catholic writer" in Mystery and Manners was hugely influential in my own writing life as I was studying for my MFA. O'Connor makes the argument that Christian writers will write darker fiction than non-religious writers, because they see a world in danger, but that the best fiction does not attempt to use belief as a hammer to bash over the head of the readers, but as a mirror to hold up for them. Hence O'Connor's gothic tales that show us Bible salesmen who steal wooden legs and philosophical escaped murderers who execute old ladies. . .
For those of you with a subscription to The New Yorker (which is not a bad idea if you want to understand publishing literary short stories), the link to more of her prayer journal is here.
And here is an article on the subject for those of you without a subscription.
What do you think? How do faith and writing come together for you?
