Journaling As a Spiritual Practice: Encountering God Through Attentive Writing, by Helen Cepero, 2008
161 pages
This is a rich workbook, full of assignments and directions (although I do admit to just “reading” it, taking the time to do only two of the exercises). I plan (I know, that can turn to “try” as I watch my intentions fade away into the sunset of good intentions) … nevertheless, I PLAN to choose a journal and write through this book’s exercises over the next year.
For Helen Cepero, journaling has been a way to move inward and explore her memories, relationships and motivation psychologically and spiritually. This kind of work uncovered her desire to know God better, to be with Jesus. She invites us in to the same kind of intimacy, and suggests many journaling exercises to help pave the way.
She accompanies her writing assignments with good stories and insights into Christian life and maturity. Most of her writing assignments insist that I look at both the happy and sad, light and dark, visible and invisible in my life. She also insists that I rely on God to show me more. And more. And more.
Helen’s “Personal Compass” exercise in looking backward, forward, and settling into the moment offers me a structure for prayer and self-awareness that I can’t wait to use. What little I know about Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises came to mind several times, as she suggested various types of self-examination using the Bible, my imagination, and my journal.
One chapter (“Talking Back”) explores “dialogue journaling,” which consists of back-and-forth conversation between the writer and God. I call this “theophostic conversation.” When I take the time to do this I invariably have a clear, open, surprising time with God – with Jesus, the Holy Spirit, our Father. Helen wrote out these conversations for several years of Tuesday nights. Burned out in her ministry, her desire to be with God was re-awakened. She called this her Sabbath, her time of rest.
Writing is hard work. But usually when I do some of this hard work, I notice new parts of myself resting. I relax more deeply and trust God more deeply. I smile more easily, and then I want to write some more.
Outline of Journaling as a Spiritual Practice
- Introduction
- Starting Out: Discovering a Journaling Practice
- Beginning with God
- Finding a Time
- Finding a Place
- Choosing a Journal
- Writing in Your Journal
- Writing Your First Thoughts
- Beginning … Again: Staying in My True Calling
- Paraphrasing a Psalm
- Write a Letter to God
- Witnessing to the Truth
- Looking Intently: Paying Attention to My Life
- Naming What I See – Or Not
- Object Lesson
- A Relationship’s Story
- Looking Through a Doorway
- Silencing the Censor
- Silencing the Inner Critic
- Claiming Significance: Honoring My Own Story
- Reflections on Your Name
- Receiving Our Name from God
- Learning to Bless
- Naming the Landscape: Mining Below the Surface
- Journaling Focus
- Journaling Focus: Free Write
- Journaling Focus: Mapping
- Journaling Focus: Changes
- Journaling Focus: Invitations
- Listening Beyond Words: Blessing the Body
- Journaling after Physical Exercise
- Praying with Our Bodies
- Blessing Our Bodies
- Telling Your Body’s Story
- Looking Backward: Reflecting on the Past
- Praying for Light
- Looking Back with Thankfulness
- Praying into the Heart of Our Day
- Letting Go and Holding On
- Discerning God’s Voice
- The Prayer of Examen
- Looking Forward: Where Does This Lead?
- Make a List
- Reflect on the List
- Planting Seeds
- Waiting and Hoping
- Practicing the Discipline of Hope
- Reorienting in the Present: Where Am I Now?
- My Personal Compass
- Looking to the South
- Looking to the East
- Looking to the West
- Looking to the Center
- Talking Back: Dialogue Journaling
- Dialoguing with God
- Rechecking Your Personal Compass
- Dialoguing with a Gospel Story
- Gathering in the Exiled Self
- Embracing the Cross: Finding My Way Through Suffering
- Entering the Darkness
- Walking the Way of the Cross
- Recognizing the Risen Jesus Christ
- Naming My Community
- Discovering Life: Writing for Healing
- Heart Wounds and Scars
- Naming God
- Embodied Biblical Prayer
- Recheck Your Personal Compass
- Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary: Noticing God in the Everyday
- Taking a Second Look
- Taking a Contemplative Prayer Walk
- What I Found Inside
- Facing Resistance: Finding the Pathway Home
- Remembering Our Journey
- Remembering with God
- Bringing It Forward
- Sharing from Your Journal
- A Few Helpful Questions
- Is this a distraction, or is this the heart of the matter?
- Is this a critic, or is this a mentor?
- Is this being rooted, or is this being stuck?
- Is this foolish, or is this faith’s risk?
- Is this a block to my growth, or is this a challenge to grow further?
- Is this a detour, or is this a way home?
- Share what is appropriate for you.
- Share what seems to be the “heart of the matter” for you.
- Do not judge, criticize, or apologize for your writing or your writing experience.
- Respect the confidentiality of others.
- Let your response show that you are hearing what seems to be heart of what the other person is saying.
- Share a response that will deepen or enhance the reflection (as opposed to just indulging personal curiosity).
- Speak for yourself only, and share your own experiences without generalizations.
- Do not judge, criticize, or challenge what someone says.
- Do not give advice or try to “fix” someone’s problem or viewpoint.
- One final word – hold your desires and opinions – even your convictions – lightly.
- Appendix: Listening Guidelines for a Journaling Group
- Sharing from Your Journal or Your Writing Process
- Responding to Others in the Journaling Group
- Notes
Some quotes from Journaling As a Spiritual Practice:
Writing your first thoughts without any internal or external revisions, or just trying to write without stopping for ten to twenty minutes, will help to free up the flow between your head and your pen on the paper or your fingers on the keyboard … You can make lists or even complain about journaling, but you must keep writing for ten minutes without stopping, even if it means repeating the same word over and over. If you feel stuck, try writing with your non-dominant hand and see what happens. – p. 18-19
Begin with the words “I remember” and write for five minutes. Then turn to a new page and begin with the words “I don’t remember”; again write for five minutes. Here are the rules: keep your hand moving, and don’t cross out mistakes or worry about punctuation or grammar. Lose control and don’t think or be logical. If something comes out that seems scary or exposed, dive right in because it probably has a lot of energy. – p. 19
The primary wonder of our Christian faith is that God comes to the place where we are and says our name … Even after there is separation between God and Adam and Eve, God pursues them with the poignant question, “Where are you?” That question reverberates and echoes throughout the Old Testament and then reverberates again and again in the New Testament … (God wants us to be) aware and awake both to where we are and to God’s presence in the place where we are.” – p. 31-32
One of the best gifts of a journal is that it gives you a place to show up. As you write, you may discover where you actually are. – p. 32
Write for five minutes about what you see around you. Then turn the page and write for five minutes about what you do not see. Then re-read both entries and write a response to what you saw and what you did not see. – p. 33
Everything in our lives tends to be hectic, and what is subversive about a journaling practice is that it calls us to stop. – p. 33
It is not enough to say that your father makes you angry or your daughter drives you crazy – the journal asks for the details. – p. 35
In relationships, common mathematical principles falter. One plus one always equals three, and the third is the relationship itself. I do not experience just my story or the other person’s story, but our shared story. – p. 36
One enemy to your writing is the Censor, who insists that it is more important to be religiously or politically correct than to speak the truth. The Censor suggests that someone might read what you wrote … this voice is not your friend. – p. 38
There is nothing more deadly to spiritual practice or Christian worship than comparing yourself to others, as the Inner Critic urges you to do, or conforming to meet the demands of the Censor … We all need to know that we do not write or pray alone but in community with other fallible human beings. – p. 40
I am surprised and delighted by the definite shape of my story, the way that the most consequential events in my personal narrative were usually unintended but now seem to be so essential … when I do not claim the significance of my story … I show a flagrant disregard for the gift of existence that was (and is) given to all of us. – p. 43
A journal is a place to meet your particular life and befriend it. For most of us, such befriending is a way home that requires both faith and trust. – p. 45
Comparing my life to the lives of those around me puts me at the absolute center. It leaves very little room for God to speak into the life that he has placed in my care … When comparison with others seeps into our lives, God’s presence drains out. – p. 48
My mother kept diaries for years and years – diaries with four lines for each day and three years in one book. But she never wrote about her personal reactions or her feelings surrounding events and circumstances. We all tried to read through her diaries, but we soon lost interest. – p. 51
I believe it was fear that kept my mother always recording only the surface events, as it so often is for me as well. – p. 52
If you are hoping to use the journal as a spiritual practice to lead you into an authentic engagement with God, you (and I) need to choose to go deeper than a diary of events. This is not automatic for any of us – it is a choice which requires us to face the spectre of our own fears … the fear of failure or success, the fear of doubt or the fear of trusting the deeper truth in our lives. – p. 53
We write into our fear because fear is not the enemy of our writing. It is the friend of our writing, and it is often the place where God most wants to meet us. – p. 54
When we are able to enter into our real fears, we find ourselves on the edge of our true desires as well. Every one of us knows that when someone shares from that space, we are walking on holy ground with them … looking for “the angel waiting in the stone that Michelangelo began to carve.” – p. 54
The courage required to face our fears will not come to us because we are brave but because we know we are loved. – p. 54
God our beloved,
born of a woman’s body:
you came that we might look upon you,
and handle you with our own hands.
May we so cherish one another in our bodies
that we may also be touched by you;
through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, Amen.
— Janet Morley, All Desires Known
Do you get insights while you are swimming? (In the boredom/repetition of swimming laps at Crystal Lake Pool in Urbana, I had my first “theophostic” conversation. God has been building on that experience ever since.) – p. 61
Beginning my journaling with physical exercise seemed to relax the muscles in my shoulders and back, giving me more room to breathe. Usually filled with thoughts that seem trapped in my head, I was able from the beginning to let thoughts and feelings flow to my hand and onto the page. – p. 62
Though we may be able to manipulate the body’s truth with our minds, the body is always the truer witness. Less capable of rationalization, denial and excuse, wanting to offer its more authentic voice if we can only find a way to listen. – p. 63
Every spiritual practice, including journaling, begins with our embodied self. – p. 63
All the Gospels insist that the Christian faith finds its most exquisite expression in the resurrection of the body. – p. 64
We cannot be the body of Christ in any way that makes sense unless we live out that life in our bodies. The Spirit of Christ and our physical bodies are so intermingled that any attempt to separate the two ultimately debases one or the other. – p. 64
Christian prayer is always incarnated by bodily signs of love and concern; our prayer needs our flesh. Perhaps praying in my journal might also mean accompanying my niece to her chemotherapy appointment, holding my grieving friend’s hand or sending news about a job opening to my brother. – p. 65
Any practice that honors the body can also be used to demean it as well … When faced with this ambivalence, our first tendency as Christians is often to deny and repress all of these bodily conflicts. Unfortunately, denial simply heights conflicts that will not go away … and leads to addictions of all sorts. – p. 65-66
Addictions and healthy practices are rooted in what we take into our bodies or what we do not; in what we do with our bodies or fail to do with them … We don’t just have bodies, we are bodies. – p. 66
An example of extending compassion and bodily blessing begun in one generation and carried on into the next: a mother, when she was a teenager, was plagued by outbreaks of acne on her face. One day it seemed so bad to her that she was unable to leave the house for high school. Her father led her into the bathroom and asked if he could teach her another way to wash. “He learned over the sink and splashed water on her face, telling her, ‘On the first splash, say, “In the name of the Father,” on the second, “in the name of the Son,” and on the third, “in the name of the Holy Spirit.” Then look up into the mirror and remember that you are a child of God, full of grace and beauty.”
Remembering her father’s compassion, this same woman now a mother, teachers her daughters to sing blessings over their bodies.
Most of us have a part of our body we would rather hide than recognize … If you were to give this part of your body a voice and page in your journal, what might it say to you? – p. 67
Receiving my body as it is, has allowed me to recover in my own journal a story of grace that was born not in the body perfect but in the body maimed, defective and utterly glorious. – p. 68
It seems obvious to me now that the less-than-perfect bodies of my hospital companions were Christ’s body, broken for me and me for them. Only through this less-than-perfect body would the image of God be expressed in my life. – p. 69
In Romans 12 Paul tells us to find a way to offer God the imperfect bodies we are given, the bodies that we care for imperfectly – our human bodies. He seems to suggest it is only through that offering that we will discern the will of God. – p. 70
It is not enough to say that each of us has a story to tell; the deeper truth is that each of us is a story.” – p. 71
There are two great dangers in praying through our own memory. The first is that we might romanticize the past. The second is that we might demonize it … So begin by bringing into your journaling space a symbol of Christ’s light with you. – p. 74
The examen (part of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises) begins with a prayer for graced memory and understanding, then moves into a review of the past that is rooted in gratitude. Use the prayer of the body: “What did we taste and smell, touch, hear and see?” Be specific, not general.
“I think a lot of my life I live in ‘thanfulness’ – less than, more than, better, than, worse than, rather than in thankfulness.” … The examen is meant to lead us out of the scarcity of thanfulness and into the abundance of thankfulness. – p. 75
Is there one moment that stands out among all of the moments of the past day? … Take a moment to stay a bit longer with the strongest feeling from today. – p. 77
Finally, we end the examen by letting go of all the day’s hurts and failures and missed opportunities, dropping them into the bottomless well of God’s forgiveness. Then we hold on to the moments in which we caught the music of the Spirit and followed Christ’s leading into our lives. – p. 78
As God’s grace tunes our hearing, we begin to recognize patterns of speech that make us feel helpless or powerless, inner voices that make us act out of compulsion or an attempt to manipulate others … and those that make us more hopeful and free, the grace notes of a life lived in Christ. – p. 79
Over time, the practice of the examen brings our lives more in tune with God’s true intention for us. – p. 79
Living the examined life is not only about simply cataloguing experiences. Christian discernment is about sorting out the voice of God speaking into our lives from the cacophony of many voices that we hear, and then choosing to follow that voice. – p. 79
Metanoia, a true change of heart and direction, is described by Scott Cairns: “The heart’s metanoia, on the other hand, turns without regret, turns not so much away as toward, as if the slow pilgrim has been surprised to find that sin is not so bad as it is a waste of time.”
Misperception: God could not possibly desire for us what we desire for ourselves. But what if God is at least as loving as my own mother? – p. 83
Make a list of one hundred things you want to do or be before you die. Imagine. Repeat. Don’t be practical. – p. 83
Hope longs for good but is able to be flexible about how that good might appear. Expectation grasps at solutions and becomes easily attached to outcomes. – p. 87
In what area of your own life or the life of the world around you are you being called to the discipline of hope? List as honestly and completely as you are able the expectations that have been disappointed. (Think about Jesus’ conversation with the discouraged disciples traveling to Emmaus.) … We find our personal hope in Jesus’ story of redemption and salvation, we participate in that narrative. This is our calling until the day that Christ returns to make all things new. – p. 89-90
Writing in your journal as a spiritual practice is really about naming where you are in the present. It is in the present moment, in the now, that we are called to follow God. – p. 93
Summary of the personal compass exercise: draw a large circle on a piece of newsprint or in your journal. Divide it into four quadrants: south, north, east and west. In the center draw a smaller circle and leave this space open as your place to stand and look in each direction. Being still in this crossroad is not as easy as it might appear. To stand in the present moment means holding both past memories (good and bad) and future hopes (even our Godly ambitions), and then settling in to the moment.
Use whatever you want to fill the quadrants (color, drawings, words, pictures).
Look to the SOUTH. This is the direction of the sunny exposure – the direction of creativity, imagination, spontaneity and play. Where? What? How?
Look to the EAST. This is the direction of the dawn, the rising sun. What light is beginning to appear on my horizon? What needs change or transformation? Notice any attachment to a single way of being and look toward any larger reality God might be calling you to. Detach from false security, numbed awareness, self-praise or its opposite. Notice areas of perfectionism and where you need to control. Look to the east once more.
Look to the WEST. This is the direction of the setting sun. Where are there endings? Where do you need to let go? What maps no longer work for my life? What lies waiting in the east might require a letting-go in the west. Look at the “givens” in your life. When you see them as limitations, can you reframe them as gifts? Will I let these gifts move me toward God or away from God’s life in me and around me? The more uncompromising the circumstance (terminal cancer, life imprisonment), the more accepting the “gift” transforms your life.
Look to the NORTH. This is the key to any compass, the North Star, the guiding light. Who is it that deeply loves and guides me? What are the images and stories of God that nurture and sustain me? Who are my spiritual guides and deepest friends? Say a prayer of thankfulness.
Look at ALL FOUR QUADRANTS. God gave you this Particular Life. Can you allow God to love you just as you are right now? Pull out a lawn chair, sit down and rest in God’s presence at the crossroads of this present moment.
Look at the CENTER. Decide if you can put a “YES” at the center and commit all four directions of your life to God’s love. – p. 93-102
Making a conscious choice to live with Jesus rather than live for Jesus is another way of being available to God’s spirit in the present … following his lead rather than leading out … Pay attention to when being good/noble/self-sacrificing turns you to self-righteousness and then return to simply asking “What is Jesus doing in my world, the world around me?” Stay close to the Word, keep up the practice of prayer, and live in Christian community. – p. 99
Finding God in your life is about knowing that God has fallen in love with you. Following God in your life is about falling in love with God. – p. 101
Dialogue Journaling (what I’ve become accustomed to calling “theophostic conversations”):
I was exhausted and upset again. Then in a conversation that had every potential of turning into another argument, my husband unexpectedly said, “I think you need a Sabbath.” I became uncharacteristically quiet … my first Tuesday-night Sabbath began with swimming, eating dinner blessedly alone and bringing my neglected journal to one of Berkeley’s ubiquitous coffeehouses … it felt a little silly to put my name at the top of the page and write to God, ”Well, it has been a long time since I’ve talked to you – in fact, it has been years.”
Then I wrote on the next line, “God”, put down my pen, and waited for a response.
After some minutes of silence, I picked up the pen and wrote, “Helen, welcome back, I’ve missed you!” And I felt my eyes tear up in that coffeehouse because behind those simple words was a warmth and acceptance that I couldn’t have conjured up from my own spirit, even out of the most sincere effort.
Thus began a season of dialogue prayer with God that continued for several years. Once a week God and I met for conversation in my journal. I filled up one journal and another and another after that. The dialogue itself provided a way to God … and the joyful surprise that God also longed to be with me. – p. 103-105
Try it. Give God an unedited version of how it is with you right now. Then write “God” or “Jesus” or “Holy Spirit” followed by a colon. Set down your pen or rest your fingers on the keyboard and listen for a response. If you hear nothing, put your own name down again after the blank space and write, “This feels crazy” or “I don’t hear anything.” But don’t fill in the blank space next to God’s name until you feel led to do so … Set aside the Censor and Inner Critic who will try to convince you that this dialogue cannot happen or cannot be true. – p. 106
Ira Profgroff , perhaps the best-known teacher of the dialogue way of journaling practice, writes: “The dialogue relationship is a mutual meeting of persons … the I-Thou relationship.” – p. 106
The moment of risk comes when our pen is suspended above the paper, waiting for God’s response. We are living out our conviction that God, the Creator of all this and will be, wants to have a relationship with us. – p. 107
Look again at the northern quadrant of your personal compass. What spiritual friend do you think of? “I can just hear what she would say!” Begin a written dialogue, and listen for what she says to you now. Listen for a response that seems to carry the tone and speech pattern of this mentor. Be skeptical, but keep your pen ready. – p. 107-108
What if we brought storied imagination to our reading of Scripture, picturing biblical stories, having dialogue prayer with the characters in the story? Begin by praying that our imagination would help us in our desire to follow Jesus more closely, sense God’s presence more surely, rather than a hindrance or distraction. – p. 108-109
Try this with the healing story told in Luke 5:17-26. Read it several times. Notice time of day, weather, where people are sitting or standing, where Jesus is standing. Choose a character and begin a dialogue with him. Imagine, wonder, talk with Jesus about how he is with people and how people feel about him and themselves. After this, review what you wrote. What did you notice in yourself? Anything you want to say to Jesus or he wants to say to you? – p. 109-110
Reviewing your prayer is an important part of the dialogue technique, as it grounds you in the present and your own experience. – p. 110
Dialogue with God when you feel exiled by trouble or transition or loss. Also invite the parts of yourself that have been exiled, marginalized and lost to join the conversation … If God is so hospitable, even to those parts of us that we find least acceptable or have long neglected, who are we to keep them from speaking? In the end, who are we hiding from anyway? – p. 110-112
In Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink wrote: “Jesus at his crucifixion neither fights the darkness nor flees under cover it, but goes with it, goes into it. He enters the darkness, freely, voluntarily. The darkness is not dispelled or illuminated. It remains vast, untamed, void. But he somehow encompasses it. It becomes the darkness of God. It is now possible (for us) to enter the darkness and trust God to wrest from it meaning, coherence, resurrection.” – p. 115
The most hospitable and welcome place for (our) grief is at the cross of Jesus. – p. 117
From the earliest times Christians have traveled the Way of the Cross – a physical, prayerful or even virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem – to retrace the way of Jesus’ last hours. Over time there came to be fourteen Stations of the Cross in Catholic churches, some of them reflecting biblical scenes and others depicting a human understanding of Jesus’ suffering. – p. 117-118
The transformation that takes place after a time of suffering and death will not return the person to who they were before, but into someone who is transformed by the experience of suffering. – p. 121
List in your journal the people who will let you ask hard and deep questions, hold the light of hope when your own light is dimmed by suffering? If there is no one on your list, look around and see whom God might have placed in your life for this purpose. – p. 123
Knowing at the core of our being that God’s love for us is the single, constant reality of our life can sometimes seem difficult to comprehend. – p. 125
We all bear wounds … naming them can help us to heal hurts rather than hold on to them. Rather than overcoming or forgetting, we may find a way through them … Such self-transcendence is always a gift of God. – p. 125
Draw a large heart, and mark your wounds on it. Take your time. But if you begin to feel overwhelmed, stop writing and return to it another day. – p. 126
The way we name God tells a story … if we name Jesus as our shepherd, we wil see ourselves as sheep in his pasture. If we name God as our lover, then we will be named in that relationship as the beloved. – p. 127
Remember a name for God, write it down, thank God for the gift of this name … is there a new name for God emerging? How might God be naming you through either picture? – p. 128
My third child seemed to have been dropped into our family like an alien from some distant planet. I expected him to simply come along with the others in everything, but he refused. He refused any spontaneous physical affection … He liked more control … Surprises were not fun for him … As I began to follow him rather than expecting him to follow me, I fell in love again with my own son. If I asked permission, I was even able to hug him. – p. 135-136
The simplest shift in perspective can open up a whole new way of seeing.- p. 136
What makes an ordinary moment a moment of beauty and holiness is the presence and perception that we bring to it. – p. 137
God does not merely tolerate our eccentricities, but he loves and delights in us – even to the extent of counting the hairs on our heads. God himself chooses to love us in all of the everydayness (and uniqueness/weirdness) of who we are. Can we do any less? – p. 137
Go for a walk, slow down your pace, pay attention to what you see and what you’re thinking. Listen, touch. In your journal, report what you experienced. Ask yourself if you notice any shift in your perspective. – p. 138
God is the audience for your writing. Often it does feel like praying. I hope you have caught a glimpse of how hard God has laughed at the funny parts and how deeply grieved he has been for all of the suffering, then and now. I hope you have seen how delighted God is with the risks you took to come closer to his love in your life and with the times you embodied his love in your life with others. Sometimes it may have felt like a messy business. – p. 139
Although my mother refused to go to church during her last months with cancer (she just didn’t look her self), she found her community for her final passing in the oncology clinic, where she was treated as an honored guest. Patients talked freely together about their cancer, their times of treatments, their physical and emotional frustrations, and their fatigue.
She dressed with the same care she had once taken to dress for church. “What do you think?” she asked. “Would it be better to wear the gray sweater with the pearl earrings, or the red blouse with the small silver hoops?”
It was in that clinic that she received a final blessing, a way through into the arms of God. – p. 141-142
