WRITING AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Jan 2018
©Lynda Berry 2018
(writing) can evoke connections in our lives, transform us, and engender an authentic humility… since we grasp only the “somewhat” of an incomprehensible Whole …. Knowing the Mystery of the Life Within: Selected Writings of Isaac Penington - R. Melvin Keise
It is hard to describe, or perhaps it is easy to describe, what brings me to writing. Plenty of people enjoy writing as a pastime. Something that happens in the evenings, in a safe compartmentalised space. I feel drawn to writing perhaps somewhat more than most. Whilst sitting in Quaker meeting I can feel pulled into writing my thoughts down, opening what is for me an important source of support and relaxation. Someone once said to me that my writing in meeting made them feel better because they couldn’t master the discipline of concentration without it. But I would resist placing the minority of people who happen to write in meeting as someone spiritually less evolved, and somehow more self-involved than those that are around them. My writing is a part of my mental processing, not an escape from the meeting around me.
I have been challenged in meeting for my writing. It was either a curiosity or a strangity. What am I writing about I would feel the pangs of embarrassment or perhaps my privacy mildly violated, or the guilt of perhaps not being so open to the community, somehow introverted, not joining in the collective worship. Sometimes my writing in worship was not mentioned, but just accepted, especially if I managed to stay ‘quiet’, and not disturb the collective silence, and rest of other people.
Writing can be a de-stressor. To offload sticky thoughts, externalise them, and place them somewhere, can be a great act of catharsis, but is it praying? I often find myself telling the blank page all that which I either can not admit to anyone or can hardly admit to myself, perhaps this is another way of communicating with the divine? Another way of communicating with the spirit, to offer up your secret self, desire and suffering for transformation It wasn’t until I encountered the journal writing session during the Young Quaker Leadership Course, that I had the revelation that writing itself was a means to speak to that which is beyond ourselves. To have my writing recognised in this way brought a lot of joy to my heart. I felt encouraged, rather than discouraged. My writing had a purpose, even if it what I communicated was known only to myself.
I don’t write every meeting. Some meetings pass without the turning of a page. I can’t explain why some meetings have to involve a pen and paper, and some do not. Though there are times I know I can’t concentrate without first writing out the thoughts of my mind, this is not always the case in meeting, and not always the reason for my writing within it. It is a mystery, an individual need, another form of prayer.
The creative process itself is a kind of prayer. I feel a deep parallel between the experience of writing this article right now and meeting for worship. It takes time to centre down, where day to day distractions will affect my mind, but after some time, eventually, I will focus and the article will start to take shape. I will start to feel flow and connection, and this is what writing in meeting can begin to reveal to me. There are times the flow and connection happens differently in meeting, without writing being the focus. It is hard to describe how or why writing either does or does not happen in meeting, it is a mystery, like the mystery that lies at the heart of meeting for worship itself. I know I have experienced personal transformation from the written prayers I have offered up either online, in meeting, or alone. I know my mind has made connections to neglected parts of itself, has prayed in poetry for healing, and I know I have moved forwards. Writing as a spiritual practice happened naturally to me, and I can accept that writing does not hold the same central position in the spiritual practices of others. Being that we are all individuals, it stands to reason, that we all have a different way to rest and pray.