Why Memoir Writing Is My Spiritual Practice: A Reflection
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler
“Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write. Spiritual Writer Henri Nouwen~
Photo Credit: Pixabay Free Image
Why Memoir Writing Is My Spiritual Practice
As a practicing Roman Catholic, I find a great deal of comfort and meaning in following the precepts and rituals of my faith. For me, religion and spirituality are intertwined. But spirituality reaches beyond the bounds of a religious practice.
Spirituality is a universal human experience, a basic need, that includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves and involves a search for meaning in life.
We are all spiritual beings in need of a purpose, often found by getting in touch with our own creativity.
According to author Anne LaMott, “creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.”
How do we meet our spiritual needs and what is a spiritual practice?
By definition (Wikipedia), “a spiritual practice is the regular or full-time performance of actions and activities undertaken for the purpose of cultivating spiritual development.”
Memoir writing has become a spiritual practice for me over the past nine years.
*It forces me to step back from the busy-ness of life and explore my thoughts and feelings.
*It connects me to other people and ideas and helps me clarify where I’ve been, who I’ve become and where I want to go.
*It brings me closer to my Higher Power whom I call God and guides me in my day-to-day life.
*It gives me the strength and insight to keep digging to the core to find the buried treasures of my life, increasing my self-awareness.
*It helps me balance what’s going on in my head with how I am experiencing my life in the present. Getting my thoughts down on paper/computer clears the path.
*It gives me a sense of fulfillment and purpose.
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As I finish up this current round of edits for my work-in-progress memoir, Daring to Hope: A Mother’s Story About Healing From Cancer and Her Son’s Alcohol Addiction, the words of Pat Schneider, author of Writing as a Spiritual Practice: How the Light Gets In resonate:
“Writing can be a spiritual practice. To write about what is painful is to begin the work of healing. To write the red of a tomato before it is mixed into beans for chili is a form of praise. To write an image of a child caught in war is confession or petition or requiem. To write grief onto a page of lined paper until tears blur the ink is often the surest access to giving or receiving forgiveness. To write a comic scene is grace and beatitude. To write irony is to seek justice. To write admission of failure is humility. To be in an attitude of praise or thanksgiving, to rage against God, or to open one’s inner self and listen, is prayer. To write tragedy and allow comedy to arise between the lines is miracle and revelation.”
Book Synopsis:
“When I begin to write, I open myself and wait. And when I turn toward an inner spiritual awareness, I open myself and wait.” With that insight, Pat Schneider invites readers to contemplate their lives and deepest questions through writing. In seventeen concise thematic chapters that include meditations on topics such as fear, freedom, tradition in writing and in religions, forgiveness, joy, social justice, and death, How the Light Gets In gracefully guides readers through the artistic and spiritual questions that life offers to everyone.
As Schneider writes, “All of us live in relation to mystery, and becoming conscious of that relationship can be a beginning point for a spiritual practice–whether we experience mystery in nature, in ecstatic love, in the eyes of our children, our friends, the animals we love, or in more strange experiences of intuition, synchronicity, or prescience.”
My Review:
Schneider dives deeply into her own painful memories of being abandoned by her mother and sent to an orphanage at the age of eleven, using W.H. Auden’s quote “ Follow poet, follow, right to the bottom of the night.” For each memory that arises, she asks, “what’s underneath it?” In showing us her pathway to transformation, she provides us with a valuable guide in exploring our own life issues.
It’s a deeply engaging and relevant read and I highly recommend it for anyone who wishes to explore their life and write about it.
Here are a few select resources for exploring writing as a spiritual practice:
“Writing as a Spiritual Practice” by Pat Schneider at Huff Post blog
“Writing as Spiritual Practice: How Transformative Writing Can Help Us Heal Our Wounds” by Mark Matousek on Garrison Institute blog
“Writing as a Spiritual Practice” by Ryan J. Pelton on The Writing Cooperative blog
Photo Credit: Pixabay Free Image
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How about you? Does writing help you nurture your spirituality and creativity? Do you feel writing is a spiritual practice? If so, how so?
I’d love to hear from you. Please join in the conversation below~
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This Week:
March 2018 Newsletter: Updates, Memoir Musings, Max Moments:
” Finding Hope ”
Next Week:
Monday, 4/2/18:
“Ashes in the Ocean WOW Book Tour with Sebastian Slovin”
Sebastian is the author of a Ashes in the Ocean, a memoir about surviving and learning from the suicide of his father.
