Writing as confession and witness

What follows are notes for a talk I gave on April 10 at Life Enrichment at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan.

Where do we hear these terms: confession and witness? One place is in police dramas, where the cops or detectives interview suspects and try to get them to confess to a crime, or they talk to witnesses to find out what happened.

Another place we hear these terms is in church, right? Catholics, at least, go to confession, but even Protestants sometimes offer prayers of confession. And Christians are often exhorted to bear witness to their faith.

I want to place these terms in another sphere—writing—which is something I’ve been doing for more than 30 years as a journalist, a reviewer and a sometimes fiction writer.

Let me give you a quick bio: I graduated from Wichita State University in 1976 and moved to Newton to be part of an intentional Christian community (more on that later). In 1978, I began working as editorial assistant for The Mennonite, at that time the magazine of the General Conference Mennonite Church. I worked downtown in Newton at what was then the headquarters of that denomination. Mostly I did copy editing but increasingly did some reporting. In 1984, I became assistant editor and did more writing as well as editing. In 1992, I became editor. Then in 1998, the magazine merged with the magazine of the Mennonite Church to become a new magazine, also called The Mennonite. I became associate editor, as I still am today.

So as a journalist I’ve worked hard at the “witness” part. I’ve gone to meetings and observed what was said, what a group of church leaders decided about something. I’ve tried to be a good observer and witness. I still do this occasionally; in fact, I was just in Kansas City last week to cover meetings of our church’s Executive Board. The goal of a good journalist is to be as objective as possible, to be a good witness.

But the “confession” part comes in because we recognize that none of us is completely objective. We must be attentive to our prejudices, our slant on things and acknowledge these. Confession requires looking inward, observing ourselves, then expressing what we find.

Such confession comes more into play when writing fiction or memoir. In 2011, I published a book called Present Tense: A Mennonite Spirituality, in which I try to address what Mennonite spirituality is. I report on (or witness to) what I’ve observed over the years as a Mennonite and as a Mennonite journalist. I draw on many books I’ve read on spirituality and theology and Scripture. But I also write much about my own experience (confession), so it’s partly a memoir.

[Here I summarized the book.]

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve also been a book reviewer for the Wichita Eagle for more than 20 years. Here, too, my writing has combined witness and confession. Reviewing involves reporting what I’ve observed in reading a book—what it’s about, what it’s trying to achieve and how well the author succeeds. Since most of what I review for the Eagle is fiction, I judge its success on how well it tells its story, how well it connects with human experience, how beautiful its prose is. But when reviewing, as in any writing, I reveal some of my own experience and perspective. This is often subtle and understated—readers want to know about the book, not you, yet every reader brings his or her point of view to a book, and it’s only honest to reveal that to some degree. This also lends some credibility to your review.

Recently, for example, I reviewed a book that I really liked that I say may become a spiritual classic—My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman [see my earlier post]. My review shows, I think, that I am, like Wiman, a Christian, yet also that the book has something to say to those who struggle with faith. It also will speak to those who love poetry, though, while Wiman is a poet, I am not.

Confession and witness share a goal of seeking the truth, which is also a goal, I believe, of good writing and good art.

Writing should bear witness to reality, whether that reality is ugly or beautiful or—as is most often the case—some mixture of the two. That witness should be clear, concise, concrete and beautiful.

Writing should also reveal the view, the struggle, of the author. It should pursue a truth that is clear-eyed and honest, one that shows I am one of you. I, too, struggle with carving some kind of meaning out of the suffering—or the joy—that I experience.

Writing goes deeper than merely finding the killer and getting him to confess. It delves into that killer’s soul and finds the humanity he shares with you and me.