The Anne Morrow Lindbergh quote above (“I began these pages for myself…”) are especially pertinent to these sermon entries, which are starting to feel very self-indulgent. (I know, I know... "starting to"?) Just know that I recognize it too, and will be as overjoyed as anyone when Sunday rolls around.

Around the middle of the week, usually, the sermon tells me whether it wants to be written as a manuscript, or in note form. For me, manuscript sermons are complex, polished, wordsmithy things. If it’s important for things to be said in exactly a certain way, then manuscript is the way I go. Other sermons are more linear, driven by simple ideas and stories. Then it’s notes.

This particular one wants to be written out. Which I prefer. I’m a former theater person, so I like having a “script” (although I don’t follow it to the letter). Also, and I’m sorry to admit this, you can go on autopilot with manuscript sermons, which makes them less tiring to preach. (What?!? You mean you aren't 100% utterly present in the pulpit? Indeed I am not.) Preaching from notes is OK with me, but it requires an intense level of concentration throughout. I have a friend who prepares long and hard, and then preaches with not a stitch of paper in front of him. One time he totally lost his train of thought up there, and because he’s marvelously down-to-earth, he just up and said to his congregation, “I’m sorry, I just totally blanked. Where was I?” and they helped him out. (I suppose if he’d asked that question, and nobody could tell him where he was, that would be a bad sign indeed.)

I read somewhere that the beginning of a piece is not necessarily where one begins to write. That is, especially if you’re feeling stuck, you simply start somewhere, anywhere, and what comes out may actually be the middle, and that’s OK. I wish that were true of me, but I have to start at the beginning of the sermon. And I have to really like that beginning (I can’t start with some generic placeholding intro.) So I spend a lot of time up-front, staring into space. It bugs me that I work like this—I wonder if it’s some neurotic perfectionist tendency—but there it is.

After I have a beginning, the writing gets more and more skeletal; I’m basically getting the major points down. This helps me know that the thing is going to cohere, but it’s also good insurance—if the house burned down or somebody died, I would have something to preach.

At some point—OK, at numerous points—I get stuck. Usually it takes me a few bumbling moments of typing and deleting to realize it, and that’s when I get up and go do something else. I almost always get unstuck that way. In fact there are times when I’m hardly three steps away from the computer when—CLICK!—the answer presents itself. That is very cool.

It’s 11:20 p.m. Friday, and I have a completely fleshed-out beginning, a fairly complete middle, and a terse but good-enough ending. I preach tomorrow evening at 5:30, which means I have C’s naptime to do the rest. So I’m going to bed.