Writing With Responsibility

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

The alphabet.  A finite number of letters bringing infinite possibilities. A reader reminded me recently that everything that has been written in the English language has been composed of only twenty-six letters.  Amazing.

On New Year’s Day I visited Headwaters, a sculpture by Larry Kirkland on the Texas Tech campus.  I’ve reflected on this photograph over the past week – hands resting on books, holding the alphabet. It speaks to me of possibility, the endless choices we have in the combination of the letters. It reminds me that with every possibility comes responsibility.

These twenty-six letters have been placed into our hands and as writers and we are responsible to use them wisely.

Will I choose to build up or to tear down? Will I choose to bring hope or despair? Life or death?

In warmer seasons water flows from the letters of the sculpture out into the fountain.  Thoughts, ideas, and stories flow from our hands. What will we choose to create?  The possibilities are infinite. The choice is ours.  The responsibility is ours too.

May I choose well this year.

Betsy Duffey,  WritingSisters

. . . from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

Luke 12:48