writing and spirituality – When Life Hurts, Writing Can Help

December 18, 2021: Winter Solstice: A Time of Hope and Renewal

Published on December 18, 2021December 18, 2021 by Sharon A. Bray, EdD4 Comments

For the past several days, I’ve been struggling to write. It’s not just about cobbling together a blog post appropriate for the season; it’s a malaise that has also rendered my precious morning writing time a struggle of inspiration and motivation. I am following my own advice: keeping my routine of writing each morning, but more often than not, my pages are filled with thoughts that go nowhere and brief, unrelated paragraphs.

Now, at a time when this blog post might be oriented to a more “seasonal” theme related to the holiday season, I don’t feel anything close to the holiday spirit as I usually do. There seems to be less in the world to celebrate with the very present impact of climate change, a worldwide fourth wave triggered by the relentless spread of the Omicron variant, and daily, news of political unrest, poverty, hardship, and suffering, overshadowing themes of “comfort and joy” in this usual holiday season. I have, as many have, been infected by a kind of spiritual malaise: call it “pandemic fatigue,” whether a constant low level anxiety or a persistent sense of languishing. Whatever we call it, it’s nigh impossible to summon up a sense of genuine holiday cheer. Rather, I can’t shake the undercurrent of more primitive fear lurking somewhere in the shadows, one that whispers that things will never be as they once were.

“Winter Solstice,” a poem by Jody Aliesan, captures those feelings in the first stanza:

when you startle awake in the dark morning
heart pounding breathing fast
sitting bolt upright staring into
dark whirlpool black hole
feeling its suction… (In: Grief Sweat, 1990)

This morning I remembered that the winter solstice occurs in the Northern Hemisphere on Tuesday morning, December 21^st.   It’s the day when hours of daylight are the shortest and the nighttime longest, marking marks the start of the astronomical winter. It is after the solstice that our days grow longer and our nights shorter, as we gradually move toward spring. According to the historians, our traditional December holiday celebrations had their beginnings in the winter solstice, as early as the latter part of the Stone Age, somewhere around 10,200 B.C.

For our ancient ancestors, the winter solstice was also associated with the concept of death and rebirth. The weather grew cold, the growing season had ended, and stores of food grew scarce as the life-giving sun sank lower in the sky. They feared the sun might disappear completely, leaving them to suffer in bitter cold and permanent darkness. But the winter solstice marked the gradual return of the sun, and its growing strength as it rose each day in the morning sky. Winter may have been far from over, but because it signaled the return of warmer seasons and new life, the solstice was a time for celebration.

As this year’s solstice approaches, we are again facing restrictions: the Omicron variant is spreading everywhere at a pace far outstripping the previous waves of the pandemic, throwing our everyday lives into question again: what life will be like when we have gained the upper hand on this virus? So much has changed because of the pandemic: our sense of freedom in our daily lives, faces still masked for protection, and interaction with others, relegated the virtual world of email and ZOOM. The toll on our personal lives has been quietly relentless. Now, more than ever, we need a re-kindled sense of hope and at the same time, to find gratitude in our here and now. That, for me, is a daily exercise.

As I was writing this post, I remembered a favorite children’s book, Frederick, by Leo Lionni. Published in 1967, I originally bought the book when my daughters were toddlers, it became a bedtime story staple for several years. Yet Frederick has such lasting charm, I’ve given it as a gift to other children, and a few adult friends as well.   Frederick also accompanied me to my writing groups, its collage illustrations, wonderful storyline, and message a gift for anyone.

Frederick is about the story of a group of field mice who are gathering their supplies for the long winter ahead—all but one, that is, Frederick. He is shown basking in the late autumn sun or sitting and staring at the meadow. When asked why he isn’t working, he replies he is working: gathering “sun rays for the cold, dark winter days” or colors, “for winter is gray” or other “supplies” of his own. Winter comes, and the mice take refuge among their hideout in the stones, at first, enjoying plenty of food and conversation, but as the winter months lengthen, they run low on supplies. They remember what Frederick had said and ask, “What about your supplies, Frederick?” Frederick climbs on a big stone and instructs them to close their eyes. He begins to share descriptions of the sun, the colors of summer, and finally, his words: a poem about the four seasons, all to the delight of the mice, who have been transported to sunnier memories, hope, and gratitude for Frederick’s supplies – his poetry, just as I was again transported, my spirits warmed, in re-reading Lionni’s priceless little story.

We will, in a week’s time, huddle together for a quiet Christmas with our Toronto daughter and her family, all of us vaccinated with our booster shots and exercising similar cautions. Just knowing we won’t be alone, as we were a year ago during COVID, is comforting.   We’ll have plenty of food for our cold, dark days, and the shared stories of Christmases past will warm our spirits and hearts. Having at least part of our family nearby, to weather this fourth wave together in our familial cocoon, is a sustaining antibody against falling into despair.   Maybe that’s also something to do with hope for the season to come.

…already light is returning pairs of wings
lift softly off your eyelids one by one
each feathered edge clearer between you
and the pearl veil of day

you have nothing to do but live

(Grief Sweat, by Jody Aliesan, Broken Moon Press, 1990)

I wish you a peaceful holiday season, gratitude for those in your lives who make a difference and for our beleaguered healthcare workers, and the hope we may find renewal and better times in the months to come.

Writing Suggestions: (Set the timer for 5 minutes and write—as fast as you can, without stopping.)

* Where do you find hope in your life?
* What, despite everything, are you grateful for?
* How has the prolonged pandemic affected your life?
* What’s kept you going through this protracted and altered time?

For April 13, 2020: Spiritual Nourishment in Difficult Times

Published on April 13, 2020 by Sharon A. Bray, EdD2 Comments

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will…

(“How the Light Comes,” by Jan Richardson, in Ten Poems for Difficult Times, 2018)

A note from Sharon: To those of you reading this post: It is difficult to find the words that capture this extraordinary time we are now experiencing—no one has been immune to the crises triggered by this world pandemic, and for the foreseeable future, our lives will continue to be affected, our daily habits changed, by the impact of the corona virus. It is a worrisome time—and for any of us who are in the “higher risk” categories, it is difficult to escape the underlying anxiety that seems to invade one’s daily life. What gives us solace? Offers hope? A few years ago, I wrote this blog post which follows, reflecting on the importance of our spiritual lives. Whatever that life involves, it’s certain that Life’s hardships thrust us into what can only be defined as a deeply spiritual journey. As we all deal with the impact of the corona virus on our lives, our loved ones, and how our lives will be change because of it, I offer this week’s post, originally published in the early part of 2014.

._ . _ . _ . _

A few years ago, when I was living in San Diego, I participated in a workshop on contemplative practices that could enrich our lives. My part in it was to invite the participants to consider the spiritual practice inherent in writing. Like so many Americans, I’ve been a lapsed church-goer for the better part of my adult life, finding I craved a deeper spiritual practice to sustain my daily life than the Sunday morning services. I had dabbled with other religious traditions, tried to learn meditation, but still, I couldn’t make anything work for me. What I hadn’t realized is that I had already had the tools to deepen my spiritual life—writing. I had always written, and during the years of a soul shattering time in early adulthood, writing was a refuge, my port in the storm, a virtual sanctuary. I just hadn’t thought of it as having the potential become my regular spiritual practice.

Within a year after returning to California from Toronto, I was confronted with the first of a series of losses and unexpected life changes beginning with my father’s death from lung cancer, and followed by mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, the onerous and painful task of downsizing a dying nonprofit, an unexpected diagnosis of early stage breast cancer, and my mother’s death. In the aftermath of my first husband’s drowning a decade earlier, writing had become a refuge, a lifesaver I clung to through those turbulent times. Writing not only helped me cope, but ultimately, became an important daily routine. As my writing practice solidified and deepened, it became a fundamental part of my spiritual life.

My writing grew to become a daily ritual and meditation, something I practiced early each morning before the outside world intervened to pull me into its noisy demands. Its place in my spiritual life has only solidified over the years; it is a regular practice that begins in the stillness of early morning when I first open the pages of my notebook, the same leather-bound journal I’ve written in for years. Like the dawn of each new day, a new page awaits, blank and inviting—reminding me now, as I write, of Rita Dove’s words in her poem, “Dawn Revisited:” the whole sky is yours/ to write on, blown open/ to a blank page…” I have no agenda when I first begin writing, no expectation. I begin with one small observation, something I notice in the present moment—the fog lifting from the canyon floor, a trio of hummingbirds at the garden fountain, the red-tailed hawk’s wings spread as he glides just beyond our deck—whatever captures my attention. Sometimes, a haiku poem emerges; other times, what I describe is enough to trigger a memory or a feeling that begs to be written. It hardly matters. What matters is that I write, embracing the solitude of the morning, intertwining the external world with my internal one, going deeper into whatever I’m exploring on the page, writing myself into “knowing.”

Writing is my meditation and my prayer. It opens me, ensures I am “paying attention” to what is before me, what is inside me. It informs my intentions for each day and ultimately, the work I do with others, helping them express and explore the material of their lives in writing. While writing might become become a spiritual practice for anyone, as it is for me, so can art, music, dance, yoga, T’ai Chi, meditation, and prayer—anything that takes us into the quiet contemplation and deeper parts of ourselves. As Thomas Merton wrote, “Art enables us to find ourselves and and lose ourselves at the same time.”

One’s spirituality is not dependent on a specific religious belief or theology. We all have spiritual needs and yearnings. What matters is that we find a way to nurture them, that we feed our souls as well as our bodies and minds. In times of hardship, life-threatening illness, or other suffering, it’s often our spiritual lives that keep us from losing hope, that keep us whole. As New York Times editor, Dana Jennings, diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer, wrote in his blog, “One Man’s Cancer,” our spiritual lives sustain us through life’s most challenging chapters:

I am not a fool. I am a patient with Stage T3B cancer and a Gleason score of 9. I need the skills and the insights of the nurses and doctors who care for me. But they don’t treat the whole man. Medicine cares about physical outcomes, not the soul. I also need — even crave — the spiritual antibodies of prayer, song and sacred study.

A cancer diagnosis is not something any of us want. It can feel like a death sentence, and it may challenge your faith, casting doubt on all that you believed was right and true. But while cancer—and many other painful experiences– may seem like a dark night of the soul and challenge your faith, it may also offer you the chance to explore your spirituality, deepening your self-understanding and compassion for others. It’s something I witness again and again in the expressive writing groups I lead: a time to explore and deepen one’s understanding and compassion, an opportunity to define what is essential and important in life, and gratitude and appreciation for the ordinary gifts in each day we have. As one cancer survivor wrote, “The community I am building with my fellow writers …is… a form of spirituality.”

Through the exchange of stories, we help heal each other’s spirits…Isn’t this what a spiritual life is about?–Patrice Vecchione, Writing and the Spiritual Life

Life’s hardships thrust us into what can only be defined as a deeply spiritual journey. We may kick and scream, rail against the injustices of those events, but like it or not, we’re forced to re-examine our lives in ways we have not, perhaps, done before. We begin to pay attention, really pay attention, to what truly matters to us—and to our lives.

“At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world~ now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.– Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, 1982.

Varda, who wrote with me for the last two years of her life, died of metastatic breast cancer several years ago. She wrote honestly about her cancer experience, her fears and her hopes, sometimes poignantly, sometimes humorously, but always honestly, voicing, so many times, what others were afraid to express. Near the final weeks of her life, she wrote a poem entitled “Faith,” that described her spiritual re-examination during her cancer treatment:

…My cancer has challenged my faith,

and I have found an incredible well I did not know I had.

I have found true surrender,

enormous peace.

I have come home to God, and we have renewed

our friendship.

(From: “Faith,” by Varda Nowack Goldstein, in A Healing Journey: Writing Together Through Breast Cancer, 2004).

Varda was thrust into a journey that can bring anyone to their knees, but her honesty, her willingness to plumb the deepest parts of her experience and write so honestly about her life, cancer and faith were humbling and inspiration to us all. Her stories were, I’m certain, strengthening her “spiritual antibodies”—not a cure, but courage to face and, not unimportantly, help loved ones face her inevitable death with grace, love, and even shared laughter. Surely this was evidence and testimony to the depth and importance of Varda’s spiritual life, and something, whatever form it takes, we all need to navigate difficult and challenging times.

And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

From: “The Wild Geese,” by Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999)

Writing Suggestions:

Reflect on what nourishes your spiritual life.
What practices or rituals have helped sustain you during cancer, other hardships, losses or struggle?
Where have you found your solace, your strength, your source of “spiritual antibodies?”
In this time of the corona virus pandemic, write about the spiritual practices most important to you.

January 11, 2020: The Necessity of Revision

Published on January 12, 2020 by Sharon A. Bray, EdD4 Comments

Half my life is an act of revision. –John Irving

Irving wasn’t just talking about writing; I think he was talking about life. While revision is an integral part of the writing process, as any writer will tell you, it can be a difficult and frustrating process. Writing demands it, but so does life.

“Revision” has been part of our vocabulary for a very long time. It was originally borrowed from the French revision (1611) and derived from the Latin, “revīsere, meaning “to look, or see, again.” Consult a thesaurus for synonyms of “revise,” you’ll find words like reexamine, reassess, rethink, alter, modify and change. Obviously, it’s not just a word that applies to the writer’s work. Revision is the process we undertake whenever we try to make sense out of something that has happened to us–job loss, relationship break-up, loss of a loved one or being diagnosed with a serious illness like cancer. Understanding or sense-making requires a process of revision, of seeing something anew or in a different light.

In part, revision is about letting go, acknowledging choices and changes we must make as our lives change. The men and women who write with me are forced, because of their cancer diagnoses, to confront mortality no matter their age, something that requires an entirely different way of thinking about of one’s life. The hard reality of any debilitating or terminal illness is that it alters lives without warning.

Yet living means that things happen to us—good things and terrible things—on a daily basis. It’s the constant creation and changing of our life stories. We turn to a new page each day. What we planned may suddenly change; we make choices that influence future events and their outcomes; others’ lives and events also affect us. Despite that, the story closest to us, our own, is sometimes the most difficult to understand. That’s when we have the opportunity for revision and seeing life in new and different ways. That’s why I like poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s description of revision as “a beautiful word of hope…a new vision of something.”

In a 1993 interview in the Paris Review, the poet William Stafford was asked why he’d chosen the title, You Must Revise Your Life (1967) for one of his few books of prose. He explained it by saying,

“I wanted to use the word revise because so many books about writing make it sound as though you create a good poem by tinkering with the poem you’re working on. I think you create a good poem by revising your life… by living the kind of life that enables good poems to come about… A workshop may seem, to those who take part in it, a chance to revise the work they bring. I think it’s a chance to see how your life can be changed…”

Revision isn’t just about writing; it is a life process. Every day, life hands you new material—and not all of it welcome. It offers you the opportunity to change your life. Each day, each year, you “talk back” to life, ask questions, try to understand, and try to make sense of what has happened to you, just as a writer ponders, even struggles, with a manuscript or a poem. Revision, as Stafford said, offers you an opportunity to see your life in a new light.

Let’s face it, clinging to a past that no longer applies to your present only seeds depression or regret. Letting go of those worn out parts of your old life is a necessary process—a life long process. But revision is not just about letting go. It’s also about deciding what to keep and what to discard as you continue to shape and re-shape your life at every stage. In that way, it’s not unlike what writers and artists do: letting the material of the poetry or narrative, the sculpture or painting talk back, helping them to see things anew and creating something better. Revising one’s life involves embracing whatever happens—in things, in language and in life. “The language changes,” Stafford wrote, and “you change; the light changes…Dawn comes, and it comes for all, but not on demand.”

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:

to be a discoverer you hold close whatever

you find, and after a while you decide

what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,

you turn to the open sea and let go.

(From: “Security,” by William Stafford, in Passwords, 1991.

Writing Suggestions:

When have you had to let the material of your life talk back to you? What changed? What did you discard? What did you retain?
Write about how you’ve had to revise your life when the unexpected has occurred, for example, loss of a loved one, a cancer diagnosis, marriage, having children, or any new project. How did these events prompted you to revise your life?
If you keep a notebook, return to an earlier time, like something written soon after your diagnosis or during the upheaval of another difficult experience. Try these steps: first, re-read what you wrote, highlighting the phrases that or words that stand out for you. Then, re-write the event, but try beginning with and focusing on the phrases you’ve highlighted. “Work” with your material. Let it talk back to you as you recall the details of that event—sounds, smells, the quality of light, words said, what you were feeling. Rewrite and then compare the two versions. What changed? What did you see differently as a result of revision?