Faith & New Beginnings

A photo of the last time I took a walk in Toronto. The Lord has a way of sending me signs of His love…I didn’t even see how the sun’s light streamed into the photo until I got home. Sometimes He sends me birdsongs or rainbows.

These past couple of days as I arrived in Boston, Jesus has sent me His love through the welcome and care of the sisters in my new community. Transitions are not easy for anyone…they require detachment from what we are used to and the faith to reach forward to respond to the Master’s invitations. This past Sunday’s readings challenged me to truly live the virtue of faith in the midst of change, trusting that the Lord will use the “stripping away” of transition to help me to grow, and to bless others through me.

New beginnings can be a rich resource for a writer. The emptying out of the familiar leaves space for me to notice details of my surroundings and nuances in the behavior of the people I meet. The lack of familiarity means that I am much more observant as I navigate my way through the day. This heightened awareness will, I hope, lead to more grounded and sensory observations in my writing in the coming weeks, as well as the creativity that comes when I am inundated with new ideas and experiences.

For me, this transition is also going to be a big shift from writing feature scripts and books into writing for other forms of media. Although I am familiar with writing for the small screen, I haven’t done it in a long time. And I’ve done very little writing for websites and apps, apart from here on my blog.

The inadequacy that I feel as I look to new ways of writing is eased when I pray with the theme of faith running through the Scripture readings of yesterday. Faith is not just about intellectually knowing the Lord; above all, faith is about our relationship with God. The reading that struck me most was 2 Timothy 1, where St. Paul urges us to “fan into flame” the Spirit’s gift to us. So I started praying and reflecting, what is the specific gift I have received that makes my writing unique? What are my gifts as a writer that the Master is encouraging me to use–perhaps in a new way?

This question is not just a good one for me today; it’s a question I want to return to in the future. Just as the Lord wants us to grow in the spiritual life, I believe He also invites us to grow as communicators. If I become more open to His presence in my life, I can then also allow Him to work more freely in me when I write.