In his book, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, writer and theologian Frederick Buechner has some interesting things to say about writing about faith. His comments also hold true, I think, when speaking about religious faith as well.
The first is to "listen to your life. All moments are key moments." I'm not sure what he means by key moments. Every moment leads to another... Are they all key? But personal stories have power nothing else can match. I used to tell my children bedtime stories about my childhood and my life, and even now sometimes they want to hear them. Nobody can dispute - or replicate - our experience. Someone once said - and I don't remember who - that the most valuable thing we have to share is our life story.
Buechner's second point concerns the words we use: "Words - especially religious words, words that have to do with the depth of things - get tired and stale the way people do. Find new words or put old words together in combinations that make them heard as new..."
And finally, "if you have to choose between words that mean more than what you experienced and words that mean less, choose the ones that mean less because that way you leave room for your hearers to move around in and for yourself to move around in too." Again I'm not sure what he means by "moving around in" the story. Perhaps creating a dialogue, perhaps leaving room for questions...
Being a writer, his main concern is words... I don't disagree that words are important. As humans, they are our main vehicle of communication. But, as I have written before, my experience teaching English to multicultural students has also taught me that words only take you so far.
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