I just completed the first month of The Stafford Challenge, writing a poem a day for a year. Reminiscent of the now defunct NaNoWriMo, this creative challenge requires fewer words in a day, but extends the challenge across 12 months.
Once upon a time, I produced a lot of poetry. Some of it was good; most of it was trite. I can’t say that it has gotten any better, but I am enjoying the challenge and surprising myself with some progress. I may not be winning the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, but I look forward to my mid-afternoon cup of tea and a sheet of paper to see what jumps out of my fancy fountain pen. If nothing else, this challenge has given me an opportunity to ponder my world and I’m grateful for the experience.
Many years ago, I came across Julia Cameron’s creativity-retreat-in-a-book, The Artist’s Way. It was sometimes hard, sometimes enlightening, and always encouraging as I worked through the exercises and figured out what fed my creative side.
I learned a few things that carry over to this day:
I need to write a little bit each day. ideally, I write several pages in a journal, but some days look more like several lines, sometimes copied from scripture. The point is that I show up to the page.
I need to embrace activities that feed my creativity. Over the years I’ve done acrylic and oil painting, photography, needlepoint, jewelry making, mosaic and tile work, puzzles, sketching and watercolor, and my newest hobby, 3D puzzles. I always feel refreshed when I return to the page.
I go on dates with myself, to see and do new things on my own schedule because I deserve it!
Perhaps these things have helped me be a better writer. I can say with certainty they’ve made me a writer that comes to the page with a joyful heart.
I just finished another journal filled with snippets of scripture, quotes from saints, and the occasional inspirational words from writers and other artists. I started this journaling five years ago when I thought I would never be able to string two words together on the page, let alone a sentence. Writer’s block hit hard and I felt every ounce of creativity seep out from my pores. You can do the math about one of the probable reasons, but the truth is that I periodically go dark on the page. It flies against the common maxim that writers must have a constant flow of productivity. Sure, there are many writers who are prolific. And probably just as many who very clearly aren’t. I fall into that latter group, mostly because I’ve come to recognize my own cycle of productivity. For me, the best thing to do for my creativity is to put down the pen every once in a while.
These periods of writer’s block flow more like acedia, and I’ve recently noted the correlation between periods of spiritual listlessness and writer’s block. Is one responsible for the other? I don’t know the directional flow of this scenario, but for me, the two go hand-in-hand. I think it is because I journal my prayers. I laugh at using the literary label that my prayers are epistles, but there you go. Like little Venerable Nennolina, I write love letters to Jesus.
It has taken me a lifetime to reconcile with the idea that putting down the pen isn’t laziness but an opportunity for renewal. In many ways, it is an act of faith because I know that eventually I will make my way back to the page. Spiritually, it has been a battle against stacking on more and more devotions and setting a demanding schedule for prayer when I don’t feel like praying. And there’s the problem, if on the page I was just putting words down to hit a self-ascribed word count, prayer, on the other side of that coin, becomes rote. Scrupulous. A check-list to accomplish rather than relationship with the Lord. One Our Father prayed reverently trumps zipping through the Liturgy of the Hours while simultaneously compiling a grocery list and responding to the ding of my phone.
Seeking sacred silence becomes the antidote. It’s easier said than done, but I have found renewal in the silence. A walk in the woods. An activity far away from the usual things I do. Turning off all the electronic distractions that are on 24/7. All of that resets me. The remarkable thing about the re-set is two-fold. Somehow, time opens up and I do have time for the devotions I love, and this time in prayer becomes authentic relationship with God. And the pages fill up with endless ideas and content.
How does that happen? I think the short answer is recovery. When I rest, my body heals and refreshes itself, but so does my mind, and so does my spirit. Remember that we are called to rest on the Sabbath. Too often, my Sundays become the last-ditch effort to get everything done that didn’t get done before starting the next week. What if giving myself physical rest gives me energy to get through the week without having things pile on over the weekend? What if giving my mind rest opens the avenue for creativity? What if seeking silence in a sacred space opens my heart to hear the Lord?
My Favorite Recovery Strategy
For me, journaling, or rather, not journaling, is the first sign that I am in need of refreshment. It’s time to walk or sleep or sit in nature. It’s time to seek the silence in a dimly lit chapel and stop talking and making demands and instead listen quietly to what the Lord places on my heart. It is in this rest that I gather strength for the next thing.
So what can you do when, as a writer, you want to maintain the discipline of writing even when you aren’t producing it? I turn to the quote journal where I curate writing instead of producing it. I record inspiration, wisdom, recommendations, consolations, all from saints or scripture or other spiritual writings. It feeds my soul and keeps the ink flowing until one day, my creative voice re-emerges.
I recently had the honor of leading a writing activity for fellow writers at a retreat. The activity, My Crystal Moment, was a timeline exercise that examined key points or experiences in our lives that intersected with our faith journey. And then, because we are writers, we wrote a brief reaction to those intersections.
It was meaningful to me because as an immigrant, and daughter and granddaughter of immigrants, the national conversation on this topic is close to my heart. That it coincided with the release of my book, A Beautiful Second Act, in which I examine and call upon Saints who have had to shift or pivot into second acts, new adventures, and change, was not lost on me or my examination. I humbly present to you the unedited raw response from the activity. It may be the basis of something longer in the future, but sometimes, it is the first reaction to discovery that is the best.
The story of my life is exile. I came into this world without my father. My mother was surrounded by her parents and siblings, and no other family. She was born to parents in exile from the Spanish Civil war. She never knew her grandparents or her aunts and uncles.
My mother had her parents and brothers and sisters, but not her husband.
And I didn’t have my father.
Despite that, I did not experience abandonment. I was not fatherless; I just didn’t have my father with me at the time. What I did have, and still have, is a sense of waiting. Waiting for the day we would be united.
In order to be with my father, though, I would have to leave everything else that I loved behind. Each gain in my life has come with loss. Having three beautiful children came with a loss of two in the womb. Every career move for my husband came with a loss of opportunity in mine. Every move to a new city came with loss of friends and family.
I am in a perpetual state of exile, and even as the tears burned hot in my eyes at this surprising revelation, I see that we are all exiles.
From the moment Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, all the generations and generations before us have been in exile, waiting for the day when we return to our true home in Paradise when we are reunited with our Father in heaven. As I look at this, I see that regardless where I have been in my nomadic life, God my father has been present through it all.
The one virtue I have had, always, from the moment I was born, is hope. I see that it is hope, hope in Jesus Christ, hope in his mercy, that will see me home to my heavenly Father. I’m grateful for the Holy Spirit who in his love gave me a glimpse into this Truth.
