Remember who’s the author!

by Heather Libbe

Every single experience we have, be it academic or otherwise, provides opportunities to learn more about the allness of God and our oneness with Mind. Remembering who is the author is the best writing “advice” I can give!

During spring quarter of my junior year at Principia College, I learned a very valuable lesson that has stuck with me ever since. I found myself very overwhelmed by a personal situation with a friend off-campus, and this caused me to quickly fall very behind in my work. I felt like I was just digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole looking at all my assignments piling up. One afternoon I couldn’t even get myself out of bed. As I was sobbing to myself and hit a point where all I could think was “I can’t do this,” I heard an angel message that I will never forget: “You know, Heather, you’re right—you can’t do this.”

I’ve found that idea to go really well with this Bible passage: “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30). At the time, I was trying to do it all on my own, which, of course, seemed overwhelming. So I was very grateful to be woken up to the fact that I was not doing the doing. God was!

Needless to say, I was humbled.

Four years later, I was in a similar situation with a graduate school paper that needed to be written. I just couldn’t seem to make any progress with it. I had read the entire book that I needed to in order to complete the assignment but felt as though I didn’t even know where to begin. I was overwhelmed by the topic, length, deadline, and so on.

I explained all this to a friend who asked how things were going as we randomly ran into each other in a Boston crosswalk that afternoon. He shared an idea from Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy that I’ve held to ever since: “Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create. The creations of mortal mind are material. Immortal spiritual man alone represents the truth of creation” (262). Those four statements really woke me up to rediscover that divine Mind was completing the assignment and I was just there to reflect. As I prayed with that idea and sought to be Mind’s scribe as opposed to thinking of myself as a creator, the heaviness of the assignment just lifted and I completed it with joy. I think I even got a high mark on it, too.

Now, whenever I need to write something, be it in correspondence, an article for the Christian Science periodicals, or a piece for an organization, I continuously remind myself—before, during and after—who is really the Author. As the image and likeness of Mind, I am at one with the source of all creativity and intelligence.

Moreover, how wonderful it is to know that

• Perfect grammar reflects Principle
• Creative new ideas reflect Mind
• A well-thought-out format reflects Soul
• Different punctuation marks reflect Spirit
• Diversity of word choice reflects Life
• Proper citing reflects Truth
• Editing an assignment before handing it in reflects Love

Starting and ending with prayer, with some prayer in between, has helped me over the past few years complete assignments with ease. Writing has also become even more enjoyable because it is exciting to see how the final product reflects all those beautiful spiritual qualities such as order, intelligence, logic, right reasoning, knowledge, and flow.

Happy reflecting, everyone!

This guest post is from Heather K. Libbe, CS, who was a writing tutor before graduating from Principia College in 2011. She is a Christian Science practitioner who is currently in Australia.