Writing as a Spiritual Practice

Unit 1 | Facing Fears: How We Limit Our Expression

In this unit, we will talk about what limits our ability to express ourselves in language. My goals are for you to understand linguistic priming, identify a few of your own blocks, and practice writing freely around your own internal obstacles.

Unit 2 | Repetition and Echo: Experiencing Language as New

We will explore the tradition of creation stories as a shared community vision, and the uses of repetition and echo. This is a very important part of creative expression, but also spiritual work. We repeat, we echo, and we repeat again.

We are going to think about our own creation story. Every culture has at least one, and sometimes several creation stories. Such stories describe not only how the larger world came into being, but what the foundation of the community itself is. Where did the parts come from? How do they fit together?

Unit 3 | Writing From an Open Heart

We are going to talk about the nature of vows and prayers. What does it mean to reach out to a force beyond your normal ken? How do we describe the ineffable? How do we express awe and surrender within the discipline of writing?

Unit 4 | Writing About Loss

In this unit, we will tackle despair and regret. We'll look at a few literary traditions around loss and how we express the pain of loss. What is despair? We all know it at some point. Despair is a complete disillusionment that leaves no hope. How do we express this? Throughout human history, there have been individuals trapped in overwhelming events, stunned by despair, and they have still found a way to express themselves.

Unit 5 | Writing into Wholeness

Now we will bring in the experience of wholeness and connection. How do we find consolation? How do we write about connection, safety, and understanding? We find wholeness first in acceptance, and we find consolation and stability in that acceptance. Consolation can be big or small, vast or quite intimate.

Unit 6 | The Joy of Language

In our concluding unit, we will talk about the relationship between gratitude and generosity: how we acknowledge our place in the world, and practical ways to use text and line together: image and words.

We're really talking about celebration. Celebrations are public and sometimes private. So often in our writing, we're confronting problems but a great literature of celebration exists. I think sometimes we forget that as writers: it's not just about difficulty and solving problems, it's also about joy and presence, how we honor families and communities, and declarations of faith and gratitude.