Spiritual Writing

Hildegaard von Bingen

When a person writes from a spiritual place and to the spirit of others or themselves, this is spiritual writing.  Any kind of writing can be spiritual, no matter what genre.  

What matters is the writer's locus of intention.

With this being Lent, I thought this a timely topic.

As a member of the Christian clergy, serving a church, I regularly open and read spiritual writing: The Bible.  It goes well past our sacred book.  Spiritual writing is all around me, in the prayers, liturgy, and songs of the church, and in commentary and Bible studies that I read.  So I have ingested a great deal of it over my lifetime, and enjoy reading and writing it.

Spiritual writing does not have to be religious.  An entire growing sub-genre has been created in recent decades: Non-religious spirituality.  After all, spirituality is first and foremost a personal experience.  No one religion owns spiritual writing.  Religion as a whole does not own spiritual writing.  Spiritual writing just is.

So how does one write spiritually?  The answer is fluid and defies simple explanation.  Still, I will try.

The purest form of spiritual writing, and any kind of art form, comes out of effervescence.  Something inside wells up, and demands expression.  It demands to be shared, even if only in a journal.

It is best not to try to control the expression.  In the Red Book of Carl Jung, we see that Jung tried first and foremost just to capture the imagery and message of his dreams, before he started analyzing them.  

Spiritual writing can have just as much darkness as it has light.  Our world suppresses the difficult spirituality of our soul, but we do not have to do so.  In our personal writing, we can detail anything that wells up, the difficult and the beautiful.  

Once the expression has started to come out, our minds can go to work.  The key here is that once spiritual writing starts its expression, it is important to continue a non-judgmental attitude towards one's self.  

Our mind can be surprised at what we express, but try not to judge.

Our minds can be our spirit's partner from here on out.  If we keep the original expression as our source material, our mind can help us find the words and genre to express our spiritual writing.  For example:

For Hildegaard von Bingen in the 12th century, she was able to shape her expressions into prayers and song.

For Kahlil Gibran in the early part of the 20th century, he was able to shape his expressions into poetry that often became the source material for songs of others.

Kahlil Gibran

As I have talked about with other posts in this blog, an important part of maintaining a non-judgmental attitude is to let go of the process and the outcome.  Spiritual writing is unique in that it does not necessarily have a predetermined outcome or reason.  In my terms, spiritual writing in its purest form is led by the Holy Spirit.  In non-religious terms, one might say its direction is dictated by one's human spirit.

Perhaps out of all genres of writing, spiritual writing does not necessarily have to have a set outcome.  It can, such as teaching the Bible or teaching an important spiritual point.  But it can also be something that dictates itself.

Spiritual writing can be bigger than the writer.

This has been a difficult concept.  When I was first starting out, my spirituality writing felt like "my" writing.  As I aged and matured, I realized more and more that I was part of something greater.  It was obvious (to me) that a greater purpose was at work.

Letting that greater purpose (higher power) dictate my writing has become a central goal.