Writing: Where Do We Find Inspiration?

Where will the words come from today?  What will be my inspiration?  Inspire means to breathe.  The inspiration that I seek, like the air that I breathe, must come from a source outside myself.

Karla M. Kincannon in Creativity and Divine Surprise writes about what happens in our work when we encounter “the creative energy of God.” “The encounter takes the artist…where she or he cannot go independently.”

“When we cooperate with the God who encounters us on the pilgrim’s journey we become servants of the Divine, doing the work of Love even as we allow it to be done in us.  The end result always embodies greater significance than we could have accomplished on our own.”

Frederick Buechner writes about inspiration in The Eyes of the Heart:

“I don’t mean a truth that I thought up on my own and then put into her mouth, but a truth, instead, that came to me out of God only knows where, the way Godric came to me once, and Leo Bebb, the way all my life moments have occasionally come to me when I said more than I knew and I did better than I am.”

Inspiration from God comes when I open myself up to His creative energy and choose to  cooperate with His work in the world.

This is my prayer this morning, that with God’s inspiration I may say more than I know and do better than I am.

Happy Writing, Laurie and Betsy