I have mentioned before that I receive a daily e-mail devotional from Back to the Bible based on the writings of Elisabeth Elliot. The one this morning was taken from the book All That Was Ever Ours, which is one of just a few of her books I have never read. I think it must be out of print: I don’t usually see it in listings of her books. Since I have been receiving these for some time now, I’ve been through them all and have started seeing entries that I remember reading before, but which I still enjoy. This one caught my eye the first time because of the following passage about writing (the question, “What could I possibly say that hasn’t been said before?” is one I had asked myself many times, and this answer wonderfully blessed me) but also this time because of the comments on solitude and stillness in light of the recent Carnival of Beauty post on “The Beauty of Solitude.”

The first several paragraphs of this entry detail a boat trip to see whales in the ocean, then she writes:

Not long after we had made this trip I received another of those letters from an aspiring writer. A young woman wrote, “I often yearn to be a writer but after reading books like yours, I feel that all the important things have already been said!”

They have indeed been said, and long before I said them. If a thing is true it is not new, but the truth needs to be said again and again, freshly for each generation. I have often been introduced to some seventeenth-or eighteenth-century writer by a nineteenth-century writer. If I quote what I learn from the ancients, a twentieth-century reader is sometimes helped when he would not by himself have found Crashaw’s poem or St. Francis’ prayer or St. Paul’s Love chapter.

What of the twenty-first century? Which of the young people I know are now laying the groundwork for being the writers or artists or, as I like to think of any who show truth in any form, the prophets for my grandchildren’s grandchildren?

I wrote to the young woman:

Don’t give up that yearning. During these busy years while you take care of small children and give yourself to being a godly wife and mother, lay the firm footing on which good writing must be built. Read great books if you have time to read anything at all. Get rid of the junk that comes in the mail, eschew all magazines and newspapers if your reading time is limited, and by “hearing” the really great authors, learn the sound and cadence of good English.

There are two other things required of “prophets.” Observation (“What do you see?” Ezekiel and John were asked) and silence. (“The word of the Lord came to me.”) Obviously we (I, at least, and most others, I suppose) are not anything like the biblical prophets. Ours is a different assignment. But we are charged with the responsibility of telling the truth, and I don’t see how this can possibly be done without opening our eyes to see and our ears to hear. There must, there simply must, be time and space allowed for silence and for solitude if what we see and hear is to be “processed.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of Wind, Sand, and Stars, said in a conversation with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “The great of the earth are those who leave silence and solitude around themselves, their work and their life, and let it ripen of its own accord.”

If any of the crowd we saw fishing from a breakwater as our boat entered Gloucester harbor again are among the “great of the earth,” it will be against terrible odds. They, like the lady on board, were also listening to a shrieking radio.

ln the cry of gulls, in the blow of a whale, in the very stillness of an early morning, it seems to me, we are more likely to hear the Lord’s quiet word.

Speak, Lord, in the stillness,
While I wait on Thee.
Hushed my heart to listen
In expectancy.

Copyright© 1988, by Elisabeth Elliot
all rights reserved.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily throw out all magazines and newspapers — there are forms of writing there, good and bad, and I’d definitely stick with the good and profitable. And there has been some discussion here and there in blogville about whether blogging is truly “writing.” I think it is. Writing at its base is a form of communication, and we all hope we are doing that or we wouldn’t be taking the time to write anything. So I hope these thoughts encourage you as they did me.