What Are Writers Good For? (Eugene Peterson)

Just got back from the Westport's Broadway Cafe, where I drank a mocha and a dark coffee and jotted thoughts down in my palm-size notebook (the kind with a binding and lines on the pages). Immediately upon getting home, my existential concerns (why does the average writer make about $3 a month?) were exacerbated by a question posed by Eugene Peterson:

What Are Writers Good For?

Man oh man.

Actually, Peterson's thoughts are a shot in the literary arm:

And that is what writers are good for, to use metaphor and story and poem to bring our friends and neighbors into participation in the Great Conversation where creation and revelation and salvation take place. Apart from writers, most language between Sundays is used for information, for publicity, for motivation, for entertainment, and diversion, preparing for and passing exams, for selling cars and buying lingerie. These are all useful and legitimate uses of language for getting on with one another and in the world. But there is nothing creative or saving in such language.

I guess I won't trash this writing thing just yet.

Read more:

• Writing
• Coffee
• Questions