![\"Imbolc](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/441\/2015\/02\/IMG_1013.jpg\")
<\/a>I realized it didn\u2019t feel right to snap\u00a0a picture of the hearth\u2013that, in a way, it was no different than drinking\u00a0the offering we\u2019d left there. \u00a0The altar was not for me, and it wasn\u2019t even for my community, but for my gods.\u00a0It felt like photographing the altar would have been a kind of theft.<\/p>\n
In the end, I left the picture untaken.<\/p>\n
One of the dangers of writing about my spiritual life\u00a0is that I risk getting my\u00a0priorities scrambled. \u00a0It\u2019s the \u201chere I am wasn\u2019t I\u201d of meditation raised to a near-infinite degree; by recording my spiritual life, I risk making the recording, and not the life, the center of my acts. \u00a0And it is true that in the middle of meditation, in the middle of worship, in the middle of a walk in the woods or a ritual or a Tarot reading, part of me is always asking, \u201cHow can I write about this?\u201d \u00a0And part of me is taking notes\u2026 not participating in the moment at all.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a loss.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just spiritual writing that can lead to this, of course. \u00a0When my husband and I were courting, we lived about a hundred miles apart\u2026 and this was in the bad old days before the Internet, when words took days to travel from one city to another. \u00a0Perhaps because of that, we managed to pen over five hundred letters to one another. \u00a0We also each kept a journal, and like Dr. Who and River Song, when we met, we traded journals.<\/p>\n
For over a year, virtually every word I wrote I wrote with Peter hovering invisibly over my shoulder. \u00a0Eventually, I felt\u00a0it changing\u00a0how I lived in\u00a0the world. \u00a0Everything around me became grist for another letter, another journal entry. \u00a0Was I looking up at the stars to see them, or to see them so that I could write to Peter about them? And of course, every experience had to be\u00a0remolded slightly, repackaged, in order to fit into a\u00a0container of words to\u00a0share.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve long\u00a0said\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0no such thing as non-fiction.<\/p>\n The very act of writing changes experiences; turn them\u00a0into stories, and you make a hundred tiny decisions about which parts of the story to bring forward and which to let fall away. \u00a0Try to describe the ineffable quality of a spiritual experience, whether it\u2019s watching a sunrise or\u00a0the bioluminescence\u00a0of the ocean\u00a0at night, and you wind up creating an altered version of the experience\u2026 One that has been simplified, flattened for transit from brain to brain.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t think that\u2019s so? \u00a0Think about recording your dreams. \u00a0Before you write them down, they have layers of resonance and significance that defy explanation. \u00a0After you write them down, though, there\u2019s a false certainty in all the details. \u00a0In your dream, it might have been a book, or a scroll, or\u2013just possibly\u2013a take-out menu that you were handed (by a god? \u00a0your best friend? \u00a0or your great-grandmother?). But once you\u2019ve written it down, the words on the page will record a version of your memories that seems so absolute that it may\u00a0replace the fading memory of the dream itself.<\/p>\n To write about Spirit is to risk distorting or distracting from the experience itself, whether of ritual, dream, or gnosis. \u00a0Words are two dimensional, even when they create the illusion of more, and we always change the map of the world when we render it flat.<\/p>\n Given all that, the risk of distorting or distracting from the realities of my spiritual life, why do I write about\u00a0it?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve had a lot of different reasons to blog, over the years. \u00a0I\u2019ve half-joked with members of my Quaker meeting that they should all be grateful that I blog, because it is an outlet for the messages that don\u2019t quite rise to the level of vocal ministry, but which I\u2019d probably blurt out in meeting for worship if I didn\u2019t have a blog. \u00a0That\u2019s true enough, I suppose\u2026 but it doesn\u2019t answer the question of why I feel that\u00a0pressure to speak in the first place.<\/p>\n I suppose the truth is, with writing and with spoken ministry, I just really love the feeling<\/em> of Spirit flowing through me in words. \u00a0There is a sensuousness in being a conduit for even glimmers of what\u2019s sacred, and I\u00a0deeply love the feeling when I have done it well\u2013when I\u2019ve\u00a0found words for a numinous experience that doesn\u2019t fit into words precisely, and when I\u2019ve done it well enough that another person has felt\u00a0what I did.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean to oversell what I do here. \u00a0Of course, a lot of the time, I\u2019m not so much conveying a spark of Spirit as I am groping for some matches in the dark. \u00a0And even on those days when I am responding to something bigger than myself, as Quakers say, \u201cthe water always tastes of the pipes.\u201d \u00a0My personality, warts and all, seeps into whatever I write, Spirit-led or no. \u00a0I can\u2019t help but muddy the water I\u2019m trying to share.<\/p>\n Still, that instinct, the instinct to write<\/em>, is deeply-rooted in me, after all these years. \u00a0I have been blogging since 2006, and journaling about my spiritual journey for twenty years before that. \u00a0So when I see the firelight reflected on the altar chalice\u2026 when I watch one neon streak in a sunrise otherwise lost in\u00a0gray\u2026 even though I know I will fail, my impulse is to at least try<\/em> to catch\u00a0that flash of wonder.<\/p>\n For better or for worse, I am always trying to bottle the lightning, and to share it with the world.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To write about Spirit is to risk distorting or distracting from the experience itself, whether of ritual, dream, or gnosis. Words are two dimensional, even when they create the illusion of more, and we always change the map of the world when we render it flat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1904,"featured_media":1506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[89,9,13,74,23,75],"class_list":["post-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cats-posts","tag-discernment","tag-faithfulness","tag-practice","tag-prayer","tag-worship","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a>