Afterthought #12 – Spiritual Memoir

When people ask what I write, I usually reply:  nonfiction, personal essays, and memoir. When I describe my current project, I say I’m writing a memoir that braids leadings about my work with the story of the two years my family and I lived in a remote mountain village. 

Lately, I’ve been reading a craft book by Elizabeth J. Andrew - Writing the Sacred Journey - The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir.  My copy looks a little ragged. I’ve turned down corners of about half of the pages with exercises I’ll use in my writing practice.  I’ve underlined sections that speak to me, such as Andrew’s belief that “spiritual memoir is a form unto itself…a genre in which one’s life is written with particular attention paid to its mysteries.”  She also describes well my experience that “…the writing itself becomes a means for spiritual growth.”

After a break from MFA classes and my job, plus a renewing family vacation, I’m eager to resume work on my own spiritual memoir.  Writing the Sacred Journey will be a good companion.

Giving Up the Life You Have

A couple inches of dust coat my grandmother’s cherry writing desk in the corner of my bedroom; I haven’t yet replaced the dead battery in the clock that sits next to my journal; lint litters the brown sheepskin in the rocker where I usually sit. Since starting my MFA in writing program, I’ve shortened—or many days skipped—my morning writing meditation.

A poetry reading a few weeks ago, though, nudged me back.  More specifically, poet Holly Hughes spurred me with meditations and exercises in The Bell and the Pen, the book that she co-authored with Brenda Miller. Thumbing through it at Holly’s reading, I knew I had found kindred spirits in its authors:

            As writers who have incorporated spirituality as a part of our lives,

             we have found that writing, in and of itself, can be a powerful form

            of contemplation…we also believe that contemplative practice can

            strengthen one’s writing; the two work synergistically to support

            and reinforce each other.

Those lines, and others in The Bell and the Pen, have sent me again to that corner in my bedroom. Today, after I blew off dust on the votive candle and lit it, I noticed something tucked under the stack of books teetering on the desk.  It’s a tiny accordion book that I made in 2007 while a student at Pendle Hill Quaker Study Center.

Its folds, twists, and turns symbolize the way leadings have unfolded for me. The hand-written text includes some of the new understandings I came to during the Pendle Hill course, “Discerning Our Calls.”  On one page I printed a quote by James Hillman, a Jungian psychologist:

You have to give up the life you have 

to get the life that’s waiting for you.

Those words had greeted me one afternoon when I entered a room for a time of worship-sharing. I can still remember the burn in my belly when I read them. Just as I had thought – to be faithful, I have to give up all of the good and beautiful things in my life.   My stomach churning as I tried to settle into the quiet of the room, another sensation prickled. What IS the world that is waiting for me?

I no longer can recall any of the sharing by others in the group that day. But at some point in that hour of expectant listening, the churning in my gut eased, and I heard what I was to give up. The life I have to give up is a life lived in fear.

Fear of loss, of failure, of disappointing others. Fear of making mistakes, being wrong.

I also heard that the life that is waiting for me­—the life that Spirit wants for me (and all of us)—is one of joy.

I’ve made some progress giving up worry and anxiety about those things I can’t control. I’ve gotten more clear about the dangers of trying to please everyone. And I remain certain of God’s desire for us to experience joy. But just like the dust on my writing desk, fear creeps in when I allow the busyness of life to keep me from regular times of contemplation. I’m grateful for being pulled back to my pen, my hand-bound journal, the flicker of a candle, and the quiet. I have more giving up to do, more life that is waiting for me.

Afterthought #11 - Praying Through an MRI

I’ve known a few people lately who’ve had MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) of the head. I’m just claustrophobic enough that even thinking about my body sliding into one of those cylinder-shaped tubes makes me sweat. One friend from Philadelphia wrote to tell me about advice she’d received before her recent test:  Use that half hour to pray for all the people you like to pray for.

So, while listening to classical music, that’s just what my friend did. She started with her “best beloveds on the West coast,” picturing everyone as she thanked God for their presence in her life and asking blessings for each.  Then she worked her way east and prayed for everyone she could think of who she feels connected to.  “It was a terrific way to spend the time and a good distraction from all the banging that is part of the MRI process,” my friend reported. “It took up the whole half hour, and I even thought of a few folks on my way home that I had overlooked.”

I’ll pass this suggestion on the next time I hear of someone having an MRI. And for now, I’m praying that my friend’s report comes back negative.

Listening

“Happy Birthday,” I croaked to friends being honored at a party recently. Four days earlier, my head cold had turned into laryngitis. My throat burned from days of coughing, and when I tried to talk, all that came out was a squeak.  But I didn’t want to miss this celebration to honor three friends with November birthdays, so I went to the potluck and uttered few words.

There’s nothing like laryngitis to give you a lesson in listening.

Conversations swirled around me. I knew that I couldn’t respond or interject my thoughts and opinions, so I just listened.  For once, my mind wasn’t doing double duty of processing others’ words while formulating my own. Well, OK, I did think of some snappy retorts I would have made if I’d had a voice. But all I could do was nod, shake my head, or smile.

I remained silent. And listened.  I realized that I was hearing the voices of several of my friends who often are less talkative. And because I wasn’t planning replies, I heard them in some new ways.

Image from Yardley (PA) Friends Meeting 

“Listening is at the core of Quaker faith and practice,” writes Michael Wajda in the Pendle Hill pamphlet, Expectant Listening. In the silence of worship, we gather together to listen for the “still small voice” of God. It’s my chance to listen to the Divine with no requirement that I reply. To take in that Presence in silence—kind of like being at a dinner party with laryngitis.

Caroline Stephen, a 19^th Century Quaker (and the aunt of Virginia Woolf), writes, “The silence we value is not the mere outward silence of the lips.”  Losing my voice after my cold took care of that part.

But, as Stephen reminds, “…in order to hear the divine voice thus speaking to us we need to be still.” Whether at Quaker meeting or in my daily practice of “expectant listening,” the silencing of the lips is just the first step toward the stillness that opens me to God’s voice. There’s often plenty of internal noise that continues—lists of tasks to do, worries about friends or family, self-criticism. 

Now, if I could just have laryngitis of the voice in my head. 

Reinventing Work

Work. It’s occupied my thinking and my writing for a long time. Disillusionment with my work as a nurse, work I had seen as a calling, spurred me to a family sabbatical in 1994. Photographs of hands engaged in work inspired me to put into words the satisfaction that can come with manual labor and resulted in my first book, Hands at Work. Now, as I write my memoir, I’m uncovering even more about the meaning of work in my spiritual journey.

I’ve been re-reading journals from the two years my family and I lived in the isolated village of Stehekin in Washington’s North Cascades. Those years of 1994-96 frame my memoir, Hiking Naked—A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance. One of the books I took with me to Stehekin was The Reinvention of Work by Matthew Fox. Published just months before I acknowledged my burnout and quit my job as a public health nurse, The Reinvention of Work was a timely guide in my search for “soul work.”

In his book, Fox, a theologian and Episcopal priest, considered that we were in a radical and creative moment to redefine work itself. I believe we still are. Fox recounted the impact of the historical shifts of the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, shifts that pushed us to focus on productivity and consumption. He called readers to attend to our inner work, “…that large world within our souls or selves,” in order to change the ways we define, compensate, and create work.

Health care was one of the areas of work that Fox believed needed reinventing, and I couldn’t have agreed more. Even though my nursing education in the 1970s and 80s acknowledged the connections between mind, body, and spirit, I worked in systems shaped by the industrial revolution’s emphasis on technology and its view of the body as a machine. Five years into my nursing career, I witnessed the beginnings of health care becoming privatized and for-profit. This shift wasn’t doing anything to assure access to health care, and public health seemed the safety net best equipped to catch those who would fall through the inevitable cracks.  I viewed public health nursing as a way to promote justice, especially for the poor and underserved, and I embraced it. Eventually, public health, too, was undermined by the breakdown of the entire health care system. 

I’d broken down, too, from not attending to my inner work. So, in 1994, instead of just vacationing in Stehekin, my family and I moved there. My husband and children welcomed the adventure of living in a community to which no roads led, just a ferry stop at the end of 55-mile long Lake Chelan; the wonder of bear cubs digging for grubs outside the cabin; the drama of being at the mercy of a finicky hydroelectric plant, a river flooding its banks, and forest fires. I embraced adventure, too, but even more, I sought escape. In Stehekin, there would be no newspapers, radio, or TV newscasts to link me to the rest of the world.  No phone service for updates about families I had worked with or the latest communicable disease outbreak. And no doctor or public health clinic. I took a job kneading dough into loaves at the local bakery.  I also delved into Fox’s book and filled the blank pages of four journals with questions about what work I was called to do.

Nearly twenty years after first reading Fox’s vision that “…work is an expression of the Spirit at work in the world through us,” I continue to experiment with my own vision. I have gotten clear that writing is at least a part of it. So, each day, I light a candle, grasp a pen or place my fingers on the keyboard, and go to work.

Afterthought #10

Here’s another of my last-day-of-the-month afterthoughts (a hybrid drawn from my writing and Quaker communities as a form for brief reflections on headlines, quotes, comments overheard, maybe even bumper stickers).

Sometimes my “Bum Glue” (see Oct. 29 post) needs a little reinforcement.  Today I turned to a new book by Dinty W. Moore, The Mindful Writer - Noble Truths of the Writing Life. 

Moore has come to understand that his “… lifelong pursuit of writing and creativity has helped to open me to the path of Buddhism.” Specifically, writing has taught him about the power of releasing control.  His new book offers quotations and reflections on how writing and mindfulness can intersect.  The following two especially spoke to me right now:

“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.”  ~ Barbara Kingsolver

“There are significant moments in everyone’s day that can make literature. That’s what you ought to write about.”  ~ Raymond Carver

Time to get back in my writing chair.

Bum Glue

Several years ago I picked up a valuable tool at a writing conference. The familiar Elmer’s bottle sits on my desk; reading its modified label always makes me smile:

BUM GLUE

Directions:

Apply

to seat

of pants.

Sit.

Write.

Many days, getting my bum into my desk chair is the most difficult part of writing. In my home office, I'm easily distracted by the phone, e-mail, and household chores. Then there’s Buddy, my yellow lab/German Shepherd, his tail tapping a rhythm like Morse code: W-A-L-K, W-A-L-K.

A dozen years ago I made a commitment to myself to schedule writing time on my calendar just as I’d always done for my jobs. It was one of the techniques I used to convince myself that, although writing doesn’t provide a paycheck, it is my work.  I came to this decision after a time of discernment about what God calls me to. For nearly twenty-five years I was clear that I was called to nursing, and I still feel led to that work part-time.  But now, I balance nursing with writing and am nearly halfway through a low-residency MFA in writing program.

Even with this clarity and commitment, I regularly dawdle when it comes time to turn on my laptop and open a blank document, or return to the memoir I’m drafting and revising. Even knowing the joy of discovery and the pleasure of crafting sentences and paragraphs into essays and chapters, I hesitate.

My stalling to get to my desk reminds me of when I postpone times of silent worship. Both writing and worship challenge my obsession with being productive, my desire to have something to show for my time. Evidence that I’m doing something. Results.

Hard as it can be, though, I keep putting my bum in my chair. At my writing desk. In my meditation rocking chair. Among Friends at Quaker worship. For when I do, I eventually get to that centered place where I open to the presence of the Divine.  And that’s always “productive.”