When I first started to be published, I loved it when some reviewer said “Stork writes with authority” even though I was never totally sure what that meant. The phrase first began to intrigue me when I read in the New Testament that the people who listened to Jesus preach felt he “spoke with authority.” When I was a lawyer practicing in private practice, I sought to act with authority. It was a pretending of sorts, putting on a “game face” every morning which was like donning a mask of confidence and bravado – a mask that perfectly hid weakness and doubt. Writing with authority can be such an act of pretending as well. Or it can be a connection with an inner truth out of which our writing flows. This connection with a greater truth is, I believe, the source of the authority that people perceived in Jesus and in many, many men and women who have influenced the path of our world. For a writer, writing with authority comes from a connection with an intuitive apprehension of a personal truth. A truth that we have made our own and which has given our lives a direction, a path to follow that is greater than the satisfaction of our needs and wants. When you write with authority, you are in some ways creating and in other ways simply getting out of the way so that the truth of creation can shine.
December 28, 2025
August 20, 2025
Warrior
Beneath the fear and doubt
Remember you are a warrior
Strong but kind and gentle
No one can harm you
For who can reach the true you?
You follow your own light always
That’s what it means to be fierce
You are steadfast to your truth
A warrior saves the hidden brightness
From any force that seeks to dim it
The warrior’s task is to find the inward fire
Then spend whatever time is left safeguarding it
Living and dying in its radiance
October 22, 2015
Writing that Opens Windows
To open up windows is the function of religion, says Rumi, the wonderful Persian poet. And I would add of writing as well. But how? What kind of writing opens up windows? So much of what we write simply repeats what is in the windowless rooms of our reader’s mind. So much of what we write does not open up a window to something new or something valuable that has been forgotten. Writing that opens up windows gives a new perspective to a reality that in many ways has been shaped by others in predictable ways. A reality that has been shaped since childhood by ancient prejudices and fears, by commercial expectations of success, by the media. So when you write, ask yourself if you are opening windows or whether you are simply reinforcing in the reader what is already there. Writing that opens windows is more than a metaphor – it is a practice, a technique, a decision that is made before you start to write and constantly as you progress in your work. There are innumerable places when your story can go in one direction or another, when your character can be this way or that, when you can choose to say or not say something. Writing that opens windows then becomes an ever-present, bold search for the unpredictable, a struggle to shift the reader’s perception toward some new way of seeing and feeling and understanding. Writing that opens windows arises ultimately from the writer’s recognition that art is capable of feeding the hunger for meaning that exists in the reader’s soul, or at the very least, awaken it. Art helps us live. It gives meaning and solace and hope to our lives. Writing that opens windows allows the reader to look out and be a part of a larger world. It lets the reader know that she is not alone with her yearning for truth and beauty. But writing that opens windows also lets light in. When writing opens a window it becomes a vehicle for grace. It allows grace to enter a person’s heart. Grace can have a divine origin if you are religious, like Rumi, or it can simply be the gratitude for living that life bestows to anyone open to it. Finally, writing that opens windows can only happen if the writer opens windows in his or her heart. That’s the ethic, the responsibility, the integrity of this type of writing. Your writing will open windows in the reader’s life to the extent that you open windows in yours.
