Writing is foreign and yet familiar. It is consciousness articulated, or expressed...so why does a previously unread text present itself as something new and unfamiliar? Text maintains and carries within it the structure of our interior consciousness, and it seems new because our implicit consciousness is not self-expressing. Spiritual leaders speak of prayer as a silent discovery. Writing is a sort of reminder. A nudge. Don't forget this, it says. but the help held behind and within this text originates from within the mind - both the reader's and the writer's. It pulls us into something we have forgotten. It reminds us not always of a fact or truth, but rather the space that we must navigate in order to find this truth. There is no replacement for contemplation, and without it any two people could extract seemingly contradictory notions or ideas. The text re-presents the tasks of meaning-making. The text outlines the truth that needs to be discovered. The conscientious writer is motivated not by a truth he must spread, nor a message to be told. The writer's work is to show us to think of things we may otherwise forget to consider. No text holds an absolute truth, and neither does any mind. When the writer discovers something of significance amidst his own thoughts, he calls upon the reader to discover it for herself. The conscientious writer is humbled not merely by the impossibility of containing or sharing a truth. The writer's burden is that his words are significant only insofar as they can push the reader into the same or similar space within the world of meaning. No text is self-sufficient to replace meaning, just as the writer's mind is not sufficient for all or any of mankind. Both are but a mirror-glance reminding us to look back into that silence and see for ourselves.