Writing as an Act of Faith

We are a couple weeks into the new school year, and the little trickles of student writing have begun rolling in, those first sweet moments where I get to meet my students again–this time, though, I’m not learning their names and their interests but rather something that for most of them is far scarier to offer up: their writing voice. Writing for others, especially an older teacher-someone who will be handing out grades, is a pretty terrifying act. But the hope is that during their four years at our school, students begin to understand that the risk is worth it; writing can be a transformative act for both the writer and her audience.

I am reminded here of one my favorite books to teach: Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. In the final chapter of the novel, the protagonist Janie offers some of the best, most beautiful wisdom my sophomore English students will read all year: “Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh themselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves” (192).

Janie has just spent the last 200 pages sharing her life story with her best friend Pheoby, the two women sitting together on the porch, reminiscing in the twilight. Pheoby, for her part, is transformed by Janie’s tale: “Lawd! Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus’ listenin’ tuh you, Janie” (192).

There is much to love about this novel, but what I appreciate most—especially when reading this story with the young women in my classroom—is that it underscores the radical power of telling one’s story. Their Eyes traces Janie’s development from a self-effaced object to actualized woman, a woman so self-assured that our final image is of her metaphorically draping herself in her own horizon. She pulls this horizon around her shoulders, wrapping herself in the chaotic, the playful, the grief-stricken, the angry, the joyful, and the terrifying moments of her journey—“so much of life in [that horizon’s] meshes,” our narrator tells us. Janie has internalized a rich, sustainable idea of what happiness is, heading to her bedroom for what I can only imagine is one of the most restful sleeps she’s had in her four decades of living.

As a story about storytelling, Their Eyes Were Watching God is, simply put, a nice reminder that we need to tell our own stories in our own voices to other humans. Yes, it can be scary. But when we do, we not only better understand ourselves but also (potentially) inspire a community of others to do the same.

Pope Leo XIV said as much back in February in a closed-door session with clergy from the Diocese of Rome when he urged priests not to use artificial intelligence to write their homilies. In his entreaty, he offered a rationale that we also emphasize with our students: "Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity."

But more importantly, he added: "To give a true homily is to share faith," and artificial intelligence "will never be able to share faith."

"To give a true homily is to share faith," and artificial intelligence "will never be able to share faith."

What Janie shares with Pheoby is essentially her secular homily, a testament to a life well-lived and a self well-loved.  

Writing letters of recommendation–I’ve recently completed my batch for this year!–might be the closest I get these days to sharing anything remotely close to someone else’s story on the page. It is a chance to celebrate the growth and strengths of students, to bring to life the best version of who they are so that a committee of strangers can see them as I do, more than a list of numbers and resume items. My fellow rec writers know that each individual letter is a tall task and thus we treat each one with care, seeing this writing as an extension of the relationships we have built with our students over the past year or more. Writing these has also always helped me to see my students more clearly; the very act of the storytelling process clarifying truths about them that I don’t know I would see otherwise. 

To turn that process over to AI would be a breach of that trust, which is why I have encountered very few colleagues who do. If anything, some share that they might use AI in small ways: during the final clean-up stages or to assess their tone or potential gaps in their letters. We can all generally agree that AI should not be our voice when writing what is one of the more important letters of a young person’s life (let alone the ethical implications of submitting these children’s personal info to a large language model). Just as we can all generally agree that we wouldn’t want AI to write our memoir or our wedding vows or a graduation letter to a child or the eulogy for a parent’s funeral. These are big moments that matter and should be a place where our humanity is at the forefront. 

But life rarely happens in these big moments. Life happens in the everyday. The chitchat when you enter work, the quick hello in a hallway, the conversation at the copy machine. In terms of writing, these moments happen in the bajillion emails and Teams chats and texts and WhatsApp messages that we send all day, every day. In fact, for several years my juniors and I started the year by reading Anne Boyer’s “Not Writing” as a way to disrupt what they think writing is–because, I insist, writing is not and never has been solely a five-paragraph essay. We are all writing all the time.

All of this makes me wonder whether we really want to turn over even these tedious daily emails to our AI bots. (I’ll admit that doing so is increasingly more difficult as the Gemini in my Gmail repeatedly insists on offering to speak for me, much to my ever-increasing annoyance.) Sure, I imagine doing so is a timesaver, but at what cost? What do we lose when we turn over our voice in seemingly small ways–but then do it all day, every day? 

This realization struck me when, in the very process of drafting this post, a friend shared an email she had received from her boss celebrating the accomplishments of a colleague that was clearly crafted in no insignificant way by AI. The language felt awkward, vague, and reflected a number of the common telltale signs. She wondered, is it actually a true celebration of a colleague if the author–her boss–couldn’t take an extra 15 minutes of their day to write it? Of course not everyone is a confident writer and yes it is only an email, but it was to the entire company in order to honor a significant step in that person’s career. 

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Bret Stephens is much more direct than I am being here. “Never,” he stresses, “let A.I. do your writing for you.” 

Stephens offers a long list of where writing happens, in case we need a reminder: “Don’t use it for school papers, work briefs, letters to your in-laws, speeches at your company gathering or emails (however perfunctory) to your colleagues or friends. Don’t let it organize your notes. Don’t let it suggest an opening sentence, a segue or a closing paragraph. Don’t ask it to write a first draft and pretend that editing that draft somehow makes it your own. It doesn’t.” 

Stephens’s rationale isn’t because using AI is necessarily unethical (a quick AI acknowledgement-use solves that), nor is it because we can write better than AI (many of us cannot–or won’t be able to soon enough). Rather, he urges us to stop because “it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs.”  

Stephens adds that because “the intellectual muscle that’s exercised in everyday writing is the same one used for the writing that matters,” there is no difference in using AI to write your dad’s eulogy and using it to write the hundredth email of the day. 

Writing teachers know that writing is thinking. To write is to think. One of the clearest proofs of this is when, during a timed writing, a student’s restated thesis in their conclusion is far more nuanced and sophisticated than their opening one. Why? Well, they’ve had time to write through the evidence and have finally come to a more focused claim they can actually support.   

Writing teachers also know that we don’t one day suddenly become master writers. It is a lifelong practice, a skill we are constantly refining and polishing and strengthening and growing. Daily writing–the mundane and the not-so-mundane–is daily practice. To stop practicing? Yikes.

Megan journals with her students

Our students, I think, also know this–at least to varying degrees. They don’t become better dancers if they never practice. They don’t make varsity volleyball if they goof off during drills. Their performance in the school musical isn’t going to go so well if they spend rehearsals on their phones. And they aren’t going to become better writers if they don’t write–or if they let a machine do all that learning for them.  

One of my smart colleagues Caroline–who will, I hope, offer some of her wisdom here on Her Voice soon–mentioned a few months back that as we continue to refine our student AI policy at our school, we should also consider one for our faculty: when is it appropriate or not for us to use AI to write in the workplace? She noted that while using AI for internal communication might be ok, external communication should maybe be the red line. 

I appreciated this idea not because I want to think of more ways to police my beloved colleagues but rather because it would be one clear way to remind us that when we write to those outside our school, we are (inherently) telling a story of our school. And what might it say about any school meant to educate young people to share their voices with the world if said school cannot or will not or is too tired and overwhelmed to share theirs?

Of course, in my ideal world, we don’t use AI to write at all. Ever. For anything. Not even mind-numbing, super insular documents like our faculty procedures. To write even those is to think through what we value as a community and why.

But I know I don’t live in that world. People–even people I love–will probably use AI to write.

At the very least, though, I hope that we are more conscious of why we might make the choice to do so. Something more logically and spiritually sound than, “Well it is here so why shouldn’t we?” 

Because writing isn’t just thinking. It is–as both Pope Leo and Janie would say–an extension of ourselves, our faith made real.