Posted by giveawayboy on March 12, 2005 at 13:33:33:
In Reply to: Re: Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Day, Edith Stein and more.... posted by Dave on March 12, 2005 at 11:31:22:
: : : "About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do..."
: : (I only have time to comment on this right now)
: : This is a great insight. Going along with it, I have found (as have others I know) that sometimes the same is true for what we SAY. Sometimes I feel like I am completely unsure of what I really believe about some issue, and no amount of thinking will reveal it. Then someone asks me about it, and I listen to what flows naturally out of me in words. I am often surprised to realize that I really do belive what I just said, though I could not find that truth by thinking alone. I don't know if this is true for many, but I do know a few who have shared similar sentiments, like Terry. For me, I think God has made me in such a way that all truth requires some kind of expression to be realized and to be reaffirmed on an ongoing basis.
: Actually, that insight is at the heart of what we in the English dept call "writing center theory" (so called because we model our writing center's methodology on the insight itself). Writers oftentimes don't really know what they believe about a given issue until they write about it. It's as though the writing process itself (in your case the speaking process) forces us to organize all of the "loose" impressions we may harbor into coherent thought.
: Re: Flannery O'Connor, she is absolutely one of my faves. I have all of her stuff, as well as the Elie book. In fact, I recently parodied Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" as a short story, set in the rural South. Flannery was very much on my mind as I did so.
: Dave
Dave, Glad to hear about your story writing excursion. Glad to see you period. Thanks for posting.
Yours, Bill