I recently finished reading Michael O’Brien’s Strangers and Sojourners, which has been one of my favourite reads in recent memory. O’Brien is a master storyteller and his real life mirrors his art. Here is his advice for fellow Christian artists and writers (you can read the complete letter in the link below):

On a practical level, I can offer you no more advice than this: For more than 30 years as a Christian artist, I have lived in relative poverty, trying to raise our six children on nearly nothing. There were many dark years of testing, yet in hindsight I see how much God accomplished in my weakness. In any labors of the Lord we need to abandon ourselves into his hands, work hard, pray continuously. Anyone can do this. What is needed is not cleverness and worldly connections, but the willingness to give everything, even to the point of complete failure.

“Where everything is given, nothing is lacking,” wrote St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

During the most difficult periods of my life God taught me to trust that he was and is doing something through and in me—even when it seemed hopeless and radically insecure (which was most of the time). In fact those are the times when he can bring about the best growth in us, if we continually renew our willingness to undergo this discipleship of trust. So in all of this, my advice for your work, and your soul, is that you ask for the grace to be perfectly docile to the Holy Spirit, and ask continually for everything you need, both spiritually and materially. Then the doors will open. Not by our will, but by His.

Inkwell Griffin Gooch Josh Nadeau

Creation of the Birds by Michael O’Brien, 2002