Songs about songwriting conjure mixed feelings for me. At their best, they can make one feel seen in the relatable struggle for artistic expression.

In my least gracious assessment, however, songs written exclusively about the writing of songs can feel like artistic cannibalism: creativity feeding on the very mechanism that should be giving life to creativity. Like defining a word by using that word itself, it’s hard to see how the listener can come away with what they came looking for.

In the above sentences, read an apology for what will follow: a blog post about writing another one of these blog posts. 

I hope you’ll indulge the ouroboric exercise; I find myself in need of taking a creative look in the mirror, and I don’t think I’ll know what I’m seeing if the light’s not on for you to see it too. 

Conversations Are the Thing

Verbal processors (as some of us consider ourselves) think we need to hear our own voices to know what we’re thinking. At least in the case of this verbal processor, it goes a step further than that. I need to imagine how you would think of what I’m saying to know what I think. If I don’t at least consider how my own propositions could be received by another mind, I don’t yet know if I know them well enough to call them my own thoughts or ideas.

I call myself a verbal processor because my worldview exists as a result of the conversations that have continually shaped me throughout my life. Talks in the car with Mom on the way to Sam’s Club, phone calls with brothers while walking the dog, slow Saturday mornings spent talking with my wife: these conversational “fixed points” form who I know myself to be—what I know myself to think.

It wouldn’t take too much to convince me that God put us here to have a few great conversations. Many a late night chat with friends have left me saying (or at least thinking), “This is what it’s all about.” A truly good conversation is utterly self-evident in its value. 

Did God put us here just to have a few great conversations?

It’s hard to say what the “thing” is which a such a talk accomplishes: it gives each conversation partner a further insight into the other, it deepens appreciation for some topic or concept, or it may even inspire personal change. But possibly one of the greatest insights conversations offer is to show us what we really think and, therefore, to give us a clearer picture of who we are.

Enter: Blog

“Not many of you should write books, my brothers, for we whose words are published will be regarded as having something to say worth believing, and those whose words others believe will be judged more strictly,” said St. James, never. But it’s not unlike the principle he did establish for the would-be teachers of the church communities he addressed in his epistle. 

I don’t publish words on my blog or share them through my podcast because you should believe me. I write words that, hopefully, I myself believe, and that, being shared, may point out for similarly-minded others where the beautiful views are along this path of thought. And a “path” it certainly is, because if I stop sharing—stop processing, stop conversing—I get lost. If I don’t hear myself think—and give someone else a chance to hear the conversation of those thoughts—I can lose track of where I am on the map. 

By simply being there for these words to come into contact with you, I can then see the compass and take another step. We may not even need to interact for you to be acting like such a guide for my thinking: like quantum waveform probabilities that collapse into definite particles at the possibility of outside observation, my thoughts coalesce into actual points of ideation at the possibility of your reading this. (That analogy was a lot—I’m glad you’re still here.)

Sight That is Light (and Vice Versa)

“Your eye is the lamp of your body,” said Jesus, really. It’s absolutely wild to consider that what we see is how we see, and how we see is what we see. Light is the thing we see when we are seeing anything. Light is also the way by which we see what is actually there. 

Jesus says that our eyes are our light. Our perception is the ray that goes out, illuminates what is there, and reflects back to me a reality to accept. So, which one causes the other? Is my sight simply showing me what is there, or does my perspective create what I’m seeing?

The paradoxical concept leads me to conclude that writing a blog post isn’t a one-way event. I’m not only sharing what I currently think, I may also be creating a way for myself to think. Putting words to thoughts doesn’t just embody them in another form, it is a way of making them more real to the thinker themselves. Saying what you think, in some way, shapes how you think. I might not know what I really think till I hear myself say it. 

Do we even know what we believe until we talk about it? If we haven’t exposed our ideas yet in some way—in a conversation, a song, a blog post—do we really know what they’re like? It may just be that, like a good conversation, a good thought finds its inherent value in being a thing that is shared. 

Like the song about songwriting, I have struggled to find the value offered by verbalizing such circular speculations as this. But a founding idea of Weaker Brother is that an honest expression of the process of personal faith through words has significance. If our beliefs are not only shared by communication but are also, in some sense, possibly even formed by it, then a conversation about communication becomes an important one to have. 

A map can’t show me the way to my destination if I can’t find where I am on it. Sharing my words helps me to check whether my surroundings look like what my internal map is showing me. Right now, I know that my faith is seeking understanding; if your map looks anything like mine, I bet we can show each other some incredible views along the way.