I miss writing sometimes. Oh, I’ve given up the academic writing of my previous life, and I am certainly finding the attendant lack of stress and pressure to produce to be life-giving. But I do sometimes miss writing–not the deadlines, or the constant worry about whether I’m good enough, smart enough, connected enough, etc.–but the creative and spiritual outlet of producing something from nothing that can hopefully be of benefit to someone somewhere… that I miss.

And so we have this blog. (I know my mom reads it, so I guess it is worth something!) I created this blog as a companion piece to my new vocational adventure as Associate Dean for Spiritual Formation at YDS. But today I’m thinking “meta” about how writing itself is a formational exercise, or should be, especially in theological education.

After all, in the beginning was the Word, right? And we worship the Word incarnate in Christ and revealed by the sacred words of scripture and testified to in the words of preaching. I may not fully qualify as a post-liberal theologian of the “Yale School”, but there is something to be said about those theologies that really get at the “linguistic” and “narrative” characteristic of the Christian faith. And if language, text, and speech are one key set of loci for spiritual enlightenment, then writing must be some form of spiritual co-creation in collaboration with the divine… or at least it is at its best.

So I’ve spent the last few days digging into a text, not scripture but, instead, Ray Waddle’s excellent “This Grand Errand”: A Bicentennial History of Yale Divinity School. And I am struck by the sheer enormity of the theological and spiritual writing that has gone on at this place since before it was even a divinity school, from the most esteemed faculty to the least famous almnus/a, all in efforts to probe the mysteries of God’s nature and work that we, mere mortals, might collaborate with Her in that work and more fully image that nature in our individual and communal lives.

Just one example: Henri Nouwen joined the faculty of YDS in 1971 and wrote 12 books in the short 10 years he was here! I mention Nouwen in particular, even though I could have picked any number of prolific YDS scholars, precisely because his books were not the normal fare of theological academia. They were spiritual manifestos and theological reflections more than scholarly tomes. And they represent the best of theological education, I think. This is not to malign the more rigorous academic volumes as necessarily less spiritually formative. I myself have two such volumes with OUP that I hope are worthwhile. Rather, I believe that Nouwen captures something that all good theological writing–be it scholarly, pastoral, reflective, or any combination of the above–should strive for: to be crafted with an eye to cultivating love of God and love of neighbor.

From the perspective of an Associate Dean for Spiritual Formation, I hope this is what all YDS students glean from what can certainly be the onerous writing demands of the MDiv, MAR, and STM curriculums. While certainly not all YDS students are interested in things spiritual or formational, I do hope that all can find some sort of meaning in their writing beyond merely meeting requirements and obtaining grades. I hope they find, if not the love of God and neighbor that grounds my faith, then something similarly formative toward their own holistic wellbeing and that of the world around them.

It sounds a bit lofty, I know, to compare a silly blog to the writings of Henri Nouwen. But I do so only aspirationally, not thinking that I might reach his depths of insight, but that I might be inspired to pursue the same aims that he did in my own little corner of literary co-creation.