Writing and the Divine
You can listen to an audio recording of this blog below!
I wrote a book sometime ago about well-being and it dealt with every area of life - including creativity, education, joy, physical and mental wellness and spirituality to name a few. I long wanted to turn the final chapter on spirituality into a blog post, and have finally decided to bite the bullet and do just that! While this chapter is about my relationship with spirituality and writing, I think that it can be applied to so many other forms of creative expression, so I have decided to share it - even though it feels a bit extra vulnerable. I have some new ventures on the horizon, which I will be sharing more about over the next few months, and one of my biggest worries with them is that they will take me far away from my first love, which is writing. And I am talking creative, intuitive writing. I am afraid to get lost in the land of editing, SEO and marketing copy. So I thought I would finally publish this piece to remind me of the wonder that writing brings me… And to ask you dear reader - what wonder does creativity bring you? Does it bring you closer to something bigger than yourself that you cannot name or describe? Does it make you feel connected in ways that you never expected? Does it connect you to the divine?
I’d love to know in the comments!
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
― Anais Nin
I struggled over whether or not to share this piece. Spirituality can be a topic that is so divisive, and I worried that readers might see the title, and decide to give it a miss. But since when did I let that stop me from sharing a post? (Ok sometimes it does, but I have decided that it is time for this one to see the light of day!) This post is going to be a lot of me sharing my story, and encouraging you to reflect on yours.
The quote above to me is perfect to talk about this. One of my dearest friends is an agnostic, and he has asked me on numerous occasions how people of science and education could believe in spirituality when there is so much evidence for science. But for me, I have found that quote says it all. Having a knowledge of science does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery, unless you let it..
Now I should say that while I don’t mean religion when I speak of spirituality, I grew up in church, and I know that for some of us, our religion is our expression of spirituality. For others, it may be described through meditation, intuition or some other type of interaction with a force that they know to be bigger than them.
My relationship with spirituality has been complicated. I spent over half of my life as part of the church - both in Barbados and England, and during that time, I attended various denominations, as well as spending significant amounts of time as a devoted member of the churches I went to. I got baptized, I taught Sunday school, sang in choir and served at the altar. And for various reasons, I no longer attend church.
However, I would not be bold enough to state that there is no God. I know that so much of what we believe to be true about the world and the universe is limited by the instruments that we use to measure it, and there are so many things that I believed to be true - that we all believed to be true - that have since been disproved as our instruments have become more accurate and changed in nature. One example of this I always use is the fact that a couple of years ago, a new human organ was discovered/classified. A whole human organ - and one of the larger ones I might add. So it would be remiss of me to believe that I could understand the nature of the universe, and speak about it with such certainty. However, my beliefs in spirituality have changed over the years. I find it harder and harder to connect with the image of a man sitting on a throne holding equal amounts of judgement and love. In fact, if you had asked me a few years ago, I would have cleared my throat and politely changed the subject. In truth I was trying to ignore the subject because the thoughts I had about God and religion made me angry, and I didn’t want to spend so much of my time being angry.
What changed was when I began a writing practice, after years of sporadic writing - first with my blogs, and then with a number of books. Some time ago I heard a quote from Stephen King, who stated that “the best books write themselves”, and I would dare to say - even the mediocre ones write themselves. When I started writing more regularly, I had the distinct sense that there was a force bigger than myself with me, and that I somehow had gained access to it through my writing.
I honestly feel more like a tap is being turned on when I sit in front of my computer, and the words are pouring through it from… somewhere - and presenting themselves in front of me. Sometimes it feels as if somewhere, these words are already written, and the idea was waiting for me to listen to the whispers in my heart and soul, to sit and write. Even this idea isn’t entirely new - Elizabeth Gilbert writes about it so much more eloquently in Big Magic. Other times, I feel as if I am snatching each individual word from the air, and each word is determining what the next word will be.
When I began to write, and I got that feeling of tapping into something above and beyond myself, it was actually a relief. I love writing, and it was amazing to feel that there was no pressure on me personally to perform. I felt that my creativity was unbound, and it wouldn’t run out. I wasn’t worried about running out of ideas, and in fact I found the opposite to be true - the more ideas I wrote down and worked on, the more came to me. It is true to say that the experience I had writing restored my faith in something bigger than me, even if it hasn’t yet given me a name or a description for this source, and even if I haven’t yet found a way to trust it in the other parts of my life.
It gave me the feeling during my writing of being supported and in a lot of ways, it improved my well-being. The combination of the writing itself - sharing my story and realizing how much it connected me with others, and the feeling of my writing being almost divinely inspired helped to improve my well-being a great deal. When I combined that with the process of analyzing my values and what was important to me, and focusing more on those things, I found that my health and wellbeing improved even more.
One of the other reasons I am writing about this, is because for years as I was in church, I observed people experiencing God in their worship, prayer and in the word, however I never felt as if I had experienced him for myself. I had never heard anyone describe what that experience felt like, and so I know that my own expectations were based on my imagination, and the bible stories I had read. I had an expectation of seeing something, or hearing my name called. I expected to be able to detect him with my five senses, and felt constantly disappointed when I didn’t. I felt as if something was wrong with me - that this God that I was reportedly created by and for, and built for a relationship with - and yearned for a relationship with - was undetectable to me. I was too ashamed to ask about it, as everyone around me seemed to have it all figured out. I felt rejected, and ultimately began to question if anyone was really out there.
This experience with my writing made me consider that experiencing the divine may be something else entirely outside of my five senses, and some of my anger has been replaced with curiousity.
Many of my values were born in church, amongst some teachings and beliefs that went against my values. It felt complicated and I felt pulled in many directions. When I started to pull away from the church, I knew there was much I wanted to leave behind, and I questioned how much of it might be the values that were important to me, and that I loved. I worried that I would turn into some sort of heathen, without the guidance of those values (which made me stay far longer than I might have done), but I found that many of them ran so much deeper than the ritual of attending church, and by returning to my values, I even found peace and joy in some of the rituals that I used to practice there.
If I have learned anything from my experience, it is that there are things about this world that I believe, but that I don’t understand, and that many of these things can still bring me joy.
It also has been great to feel connected to a source outside of myself. While I would not say that my faith has been restored, and I wouldn’t call my writing a spiritual practice, I can say that writing and feeling supported in that activity has brought immense joy and wonder to my life, and dare I say it - a connection to the divine - and this connection is something I will continue to explore through both my writing and other forms of creativity.
I leave you again with the questions I asked above: what wonder does creativity bring you? Does it bring you closer to something bigger than yourself that you cannot name or describe? Does it make you feel connected in ways that you never expected? Does it connect you to the divine?
And I will also leave you with one of my favourite prayers from St Francis of Assisi - which speaks to my values at my core - the values I worried that I would leave behind when I left the church, but which I still try to cultivate in my life, and continue to move towards daily.
“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
― St. Francis of Assisi
And I send you big love from a small island.
PS I have written other posts about this which you can check out:
How I measure the value of what can’t be measured.
5 Things I know to be true about writing.
PPS I took the beautiful sunset photo above a couple of weeks ago. Aside from writing, it is the beaty in nature - such as breathtaking sunsets - that makes me feel less angry, and more curious about what could be out there that is bigger than we are.
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