prayer and writing
Posted: January 27, 2014 Filed under: Blogging, Prayer, Writing 3 CommentsTwo distinct points: 1) One of the things that my spiritual director and I discuss intermittently is my relationship to prayer. 2) I’m a big fan of Sister Joan Chittister.
The two came together very nicely in this quote, courtesy of the good folks at Weavings Journal.
Spirituality without a prayer life is no spirituality at all, and it will not last beyond the first defeats. Prayer is an opening of the self so that the Word of God can break in and make us new. Prayer unmasks. Prayer converts. Prayer impels. Prayer sustains us on the way. Pray for the grace it will take to continue what you would like to quit.
― Joan D. Chittister, In a High Spiritual Season
I’ve long been somewhat ambivalent about prayer in my life, in the sense that I struggle with what form of prayer really works for me. So I paid attention when one of my Facebook friends posted this.
In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
—Denise Levertov
That clicked with me. I think it makes sense. Maybe it’s a cop-out, but I think it makes sense.
I work to be disciplined about my blogging. I make every effort to post five days a week, four of which contain my writing and one of which is Sacred Music Friday. The actual writing is not evenly spaced, as prayer probably ought to be, but that is a factor of the world of making a living.
I try to keep the tone of my blog conversational. I hope I succeed for the most part. Malcolm Boyd was conversational in his prayers in Are You Running with me Jesus? (I prefer the original rather than the updated version.) Boyd published a book. My reflections are in the electronic in the blogsphere. Boyd addressed God and Jesus. I address my readers but I trust God knows that I am speaking to him/her as well. It’s not all that different is it?
For me writing, my blog, is a form of prayer.
my point being 
Writing and prayer are often one for me too, Mike.
Prayer is something that I am strangely disciplined about – we can see that blogging is not! 🙂 Yet, each day I write in a journal as part of my daily prayer routine.
What you do here is not only prayer, but it is also food for the souls of us who come to your pages. And thanks be to God for this feast!
Thank you so much, Fran! I really do appreciate that.
[…] but which are on my mind. This blog is, among other things, my form of prayer, as I recently discussed here. As Malcolm Boyd in his original edition of Are You Running with Me Jesus? talked to God is […]