Writing Retreat

Today I am going away for a week, on a writing retreat. In anticipation of this, I reflect on a moment of awe that has marked me ever since its happening. One day, as I journaled during my prayer time, I experienced myself writing. It was a moment of awakening in which I knew myself as part of God's Universe of Creative Energy. The experience was one of awe, not at the brilliance of what I was writing, but that I was writing! As I looked at myself with pen in hand, I was mesmerized by the deep reality that I can write. When I say deep reality, I refer not to the fact that I have a gift for expressing myself through the written word, although that is part of it; the amazing depth of this reality comes with the web of evolutionary (genetic, cultural, etc.) connections made by generations of human ancestors that contribute to me/us being able to write, and thus be expressions of God in this way.

Expression through writing is a spiritual activity. It can be spiritual in at least two ways. First, writing can be a way of connecting with God at the inner core of our being. Anyone who journals, writes poetry, novels, history, philosophical musings, or creates in any way, knows to what I am referring. Some call it our authentic or true self, or even 'being in a zone.' In Christian terms, writing can help us access God-in-us. We and others marvel at the beauty and brilliance of whatever it is that we create. But there is more to marvel at than our product! Creativity connects us with something even more basic; that is, our life as human expressions of God. In other words, our capacity for writing and other forms of creativity (pottery-making, singing, dancing, drawing, painting, baking, carving, sports...) point, not only to the products of our creativity, but more amazingly they point beyond us to God and the whole universe of energy that continues to create. We are called to be human expressions of that energy in everything we do. My prayer for this week is inspired by a quote from St. Iraneus:  to be the glory of God as a human being fully alive!