Confessions Writing Project #1

I'm going to attempt to summarize and highlight my experience of reading through Augustine's Confessions as writing project to build my writing skills and develop my reading and retention skills...and of course to talk about Augustine's Confessions. It goes without saying that I won't be saying much compared to everyone else who's responded to Augustine over the past 1600 years, but, no matter, I have other aims for now.

I'll start with the introduction to the Oxford University translation by Henry Chadwick. In discussing the aims and situation of Augustine's writing of the Confessions, Chadwick mentions that at the end of his life, Augustine wrote a review and reappraisal of his work entitled Retractationes (which, Chadwick says, cannot be translated 'Retractions', because Augustine affirms nearly all of what he wrote). Chadwick says this about Augustine's perspective on the Confessions,
"When he came to the Confessions he observes that they serve to excite the human mind and affection towards God; the act of writing the book had done that for himself at the time, and 'that is the effect when it is read now'."
When I first started reading the Confessions, I made a note next to this saying, "this is when it is good to write." That was back in 2003 (it took me a while to come back around to the book to finish it apparently). I still feel the same way. Of course, in the discipline of writing as in any discipline there are times of awkward and painful growth, many times the soil gives way to beautiful fruit, ten, twenty, and one hundred-fold. "Inspiration or feeling is borne of regular daily work," said Camille Pissaro, the 19th century French Impressionist painter who has been called the "Father of Impressionism" . (I saw this quote while at an art gallery in Florence last spring break. Sometimes you just get lucky and see the right things...)
Chadwick goes on to explain that Augustine wrote his Confessions over the course of three years at the end of the fourth century as a "man in his mid-forties, recently made a bishop, needing to come to terms with a past in which numerous enemies and critics showed an unhealthy interest." As with many other aspects of Augustine's life, there is striking familiarity with contemporary figures and situations. Chuck Colson and his book Born Again come to mind first.
But I'm digressing. I mentioned this first to recognize that it took three years for Augustine to write his Confessions. On the one hand, that's a heck of a long time to write a book, let alone one's own story, but on the other hand (maybe a tired one at that after all that writing), he wrote it all by hand. No typewriters, no computers, no editors. Pretty impressive. So, even if it takes a while and is not easy going, writing is good and well worth it, especially when it serves to "excite the human mind and affection towards God", both for the writer and the reader.
Lord, may that be true of all that I ever write, whether for myself alone or for others with me.