Saying the Unsayable

As Christians, we are often writing about things that defy trite, easy answers. The mysteries of God are manifold and our earthly languages are not really built for expressing them. So how DO we talk about spiritual matters? In prayer, the Holy Spirit may intercede for us in groans and new tongues, but that’s not going to translate well into a Microsoft Word document.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of trying to over-intellectualise things, and we end up writing theology that is perhaps a little too clever, a little too dualistic or exact. We all have that instinct that wants to tidy God up into boxes and make Him/Her/They (even our pronouns are inadequate) neatly comprehensible.

Most of my own attempts at theology are rewritten time and time again after new research appears, or new insights are revealed to me in prayer. My writing about God in this direct way is the most prone to constant edits as God leads me to be ever more inclusive and gentle, and as my own small understandings grow. Whatever we say and however we say it, we will always be just scratching the surface.

At the other end of the mystical scale we have poetry, which is perhaps the language best able to catch a glimpse of God as he passes by the cleft in the rock where we are hidden. But poetry is extremely difficult to write well, and although some poetry about faith, like that of George Herbert  or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, might inspire us to love God better, there is also rather a lot of poetry that is twee or falls flat on its literary face, as social media and my own journals bear daily witness. It’s a bit like trying to paint the Milky Way (yes that is my attempt above).

In my own work, one of the most powerful and vulnerable ways of writing about God is poetic prose about his creation. Another is story-telling. I am ever mindful that Jesus constantly chose telling stories (for which humans are hard-wired) above homiletics (which sends most of us to sleep).  Myth and allegory have always been successful ways of talking about the intangible. And the good news is that they can be incorporated into pretty much any type of written word.

Perhaps the best way to write about unwritable things is to ask the Holy Spirit’s intervention and go with the flow. We all have different abilities, different histories, different giftings, and a unique way of expressing our own ideas and experiences of God and our spiritual lives. Some of us will write about God in memoir, as testimony, whereas others may find their deepest authenticity as a spiritual writer comes out in screenplays. 

I believe the most important thing is integrity. Go with the genre/s that best suit what you genuinely have to say and how you instinctively feel you want to say it. An openness to how God wants to speak through you, and discernment about how your voice is most genuine, are probably good guiding lights for those who are not afraid to be vulnerable and speak about the ungraspable loving mercy of the great I AM.  

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a disabled writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her full-length publications include Garden of God’s Heart and Whale Song: Choosing Life with Jonah. She lives in South East England and is mainly housebound by her illness.