Ministry of Words
I've been a writer and editor for over twenty-five years, authoring and producing all sorts of texts from huge technical documents to small websites, large websites, procedures manuals, bids, instructional media, business articles, blogs, help files, intranets, press releases, corporate reports, training courses, white papers, storyboards, scripts. That's the work stuff, and much of it is about clarity - leaving behind the clear impression, picture or message that you intended to create.
Creative writing is another order of language, where one spirit speaks to another. In a curious way, it's equally about clarity, but right-brain clarity rather than left. The power of words to express and unlock imagination is scary. And the power of imagination is limitless, greater than any knowledge or technique: capturing and expressing essences in ways that speak to the human spirit is an incredible privilege and a deepening pleasure. Finding the right image, metaphor or phrase to unlock someone's belief structure and move them gently onto greener pastures is something akin to a healing art.
I hope you find some healing, life and change here. We all have a story - it's what brought us here - and we can all change our story and re-write our future. We can choose finer thoughts, better outcomes, more beautiful, inspirational words to speak to our inner man and woman. We can all become more. We can all become everything we were intended to be.
That's one of the reasons why I'm training to be an interfaith minister and spiritual counsellor. The thoughts and beliefs through which we filter and experience life in all its outrageous, extravagant variety are intimately connected with the words we have grown up with, heard, used, suffered and been inspired by. This, for me, is the truest meaning of the idea that words have power to bless and curse. We can use words in all kinds of ways: to sell, inform, educate, persuade, confront, expound, lead, suggest, encourage, heal, support and bless. Find your words, your voice, your song, the one that fills your sails, then let the stiffening breeze do its sacred work.
With every blessing
Peter Neary-Chaplin
Writer, editor, poet