Copyright ©2006 Trinity Anglican Church

INTRODUCTION

“What the Spirit is Saying” explores spirituality and the craft of writing. This page contains related resources as well as occasional reflections from writers at home and abroad. To go directly to the content you wish to see simply click on the blue link in the Contents listed below. Last update: August 22, 2008.

Thomas Merton Reflection

Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. If I were once to settle down and be satisfied with the surface of life, with its divisions and its clichés, it would be time to call in the undertaker. ...So, then, this dissatisfaction which sometimes used to worry me and has certainly, I know, worried others, has helped me in fact to move freely and even gaily with the stream of life. My unspoken (or spoken) protests have kept me from clinging to what was already done with. When a thought is done, let go of it. When something has been written, publish it, and go on to something else. You may say the same thing again someday, on a deeper level. No one needs to have a compulsion to be utterly and perfectly "original" in every word he writes.

Thomas Merton. A Thomas Merton Reader. Thomas P. McDonnel, editor. New York: Doubleday, Inc., 1962:16

Thought for the Day:

All that matters is that the old be recovered on a new plane and be, itself, a new reality. This, too, gets away from you. So let it get away.

A Thomas Merton Reader: 16

CONTENTS

What is Spirituality, from Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing

Some Instructions For Writing

Reflections on Spirituality and Writing

Suggested Readings
     Writing Resources
     Poetry, Prose, Fiction, Memoir
     Spirituality: Selected Readings

What is Spirituality?
“..spirituality is not about serenely picking or rationally choosing certain spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. Long before we do anything explicitly religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us. What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality. Thus, we all have a spirituality whether we want one or not, whether we are religious or not… Irrespective of whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any explicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter. What shapes our actions is our spirituality.”

From Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing

Some Instructions for Writing

• Be present and attentive to the way things are, without judgement, listening well and deeply. Be who you really are. Care about what is around you.
• Write freely, carelessly, and unselfconsciously.
• Don’t force yourself to write in a particular way. Just write what comes up for you, and give all the sensuous detail.
• Use your own past to write from; your personal history is sacred and full of meaning.
• Don’t tell readers what to feel. Show them the situation and that feeling will awaken in them.
• Wonder at the Mystery

Reflections on Spirituality and Writing

“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.”
                                             Toni Morrison in Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth

The language we use creates our reality. We create our social environment, our reality, through words. We use words to bring to the present our moods, memories, perceptions, thoughts and visions. A story, an idea, a motivation, or a behaviour remains hidden, outside the organization’s reality, or hidden in unarticulated moods and behaviours, if it is not brought into the discourse. Our reality, the world in which we see, converse, dream, and act, is formed by the words that we and others utter.    From Appreciative Inquiry Assumptions

 “Being able to contemplatively use the imaginative powers of our minds to uncover the hidden beauty and meaning of reality belongs to our capacity as spirit.” Carolyn Gratton The Art of Spiritual Guidance

SUGGESTED READINGS

Writing Resources

Cameron, Julia The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992

Gardner, John The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Vintage Books, 1991

Goldberg, Natalie Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala, 1986

Goldberg, Natalie Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life. New York: Bantam, 1990

Hodgins, Jack A Passion for Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993

Lamott, Anne Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1994

Leckner, Carol H. The Creativity Handbook: Insights and Principles. Carol Leckner, 1997

Oliver, Mary Blue Pastures New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1995

Rilke, Rainer Maria Letters to a Young Poet. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1934

Strunk, William and E.B. White The Elements of Style 3^rd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1979

Turner-Vesselago, Barbara Freefall: Writing Without a Parachute. Toronto: The Writing Space

Ueland, Brenda If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit. Saint Paul Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 1938

Watchel, Eleanor Writers & Company. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1996

Zinsser, William Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995

Poetry, Prose, Fiction, Memoir

Avison, Margaret Concrete and Wild Carrot London ON: Brick Books, 2002

Birdsell, Sandra The Chrome Suite Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992

Birdsell, Sandra Night Travellers Toronto: Newpress Canadian Classics, 1982

Bishop, Elizabeth The Complete Poems 1927 – 1979 New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Blake, William Selected Poetry New York: Oxford University Press, 1994

Bly, Robert, James Hillman, Michael Meade The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology New York: Harper Perennial, 1992

Butala, Sharon The Perfection of the Morning: An Apprenticeship in Nature Toronto: Harper Perennial, 1994

Carver, Raymond Cathedral New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1981

Heaney, Seamus Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 London: faber and faber, 1998

Huggan, Isabel The Elizabeth Stories Toronto: Harper Collins,  1984

Huggan, Isabel You Never Know Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1993

Ishiguro, Kazuo The Remains of the Day Toronto: Penguin Books Canada/Faber and Faber, 1989

Lewis, C.S. Till We Have Faces London: Fount Harper Collins, 1956

MacLeod, Alistair As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986

MacLeod, Alistair The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976

MacNeil, Robert Wordstruck New York: Penguin 1989

Moritz, A.F. Rest on the Flight into Egypt London ON: Brick Books, 1999

Oliver, Mary New and Selected Poems Boston: Beacon Press 1992

Purdy, Al To Paris Never Again: New Poems Madeira Park BC: Harbour Publishing, 1997

Sheard, Sarah Almost Japanese Toronto: Coach House Press, 1985

Smart, Elizabeth By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept London: Flamingo Harper Collins, first published 1945

Stead, Christina The Man Who Loved Children New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1940, 1968

Thomas, Audrey Intertidal Life Toronto: New Press Canadian Classics, 1984

Trevor, William Ireland: Selected Stories London: Penguin, 1995

Spirituality: Selected Readings

Books

Anonymous The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works New York: penguin, 1961, 1978

Cahill, Thomas The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. New York: Nan A. Talese Doubleday, 1998

Cahill, Thomas How the Irish Saved Civilization New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1995

Dillard, Annie Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Perennial Classics, 1974

English, John, S.J. Spiritual Freedom: From an Experience of the Ignatian Exercises to the Art of Spiritual Guidance. 2^nd ed. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1995

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984

Gratton, Carolyn The Art of Spiritual Guidance: A Contemporary Approach to Growing in the Spirit. New York: Crossroad, 1992

Johnston, William The Still Point: Reflections on Zen and Christian Mysticism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1970

Kierkegaard, Soren Fear and Trembling New York: Penguin Classics, 1985

Kornfield, Jack A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. Toronto: Bantam, 1993

Lao Tzu Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching Translated by D.C. Lau Middlesex: Penguin Classics, 1963

Merton, Thomas The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century. New York: New Directions, 1960

Mitchell, Stephen The Book of Job New York: Harper Perennial, 1979

Moore, Thomas Care of the Soul: A Guide for Developing Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life New York: Harper Perennial, 1992

Myss, Caroline Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential New York: Harmony Books, 2001

Norris, Kathleen The Cloister Walk New York: Riverhead Books, 1996

Nowen, Henri J.M. The Return of the Prodigal Son New York: Image Books Doubleday, 1992

Pungente, John SJ and Monty Williams SJ Finding God in the Dark: Taking the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius to the Movies Ottawa: Novalis, 2004

Rahula, Walpola What the Buddha Taught New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1959

Rolheiser, Ronald The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality New York: Doubleday, 1999

St John of the Cross Dark Night of the Soul New York: Image Books Doubleday,

Saint Teresa of Avila The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila By Herself London: Penguin Classics, 1957

Soelle, Dorothy Suffering Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975

Tolstoy, Leo Confession New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993

Vardey, Lucinda, ed. The Flowering of the Soul: A Book of Prayers by Women. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 1999

Vanier, Jean Becoming Human Toronto: Anansi, 1998

Articles

Berry, Thomas “The Spirituality of the Earth” in Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology

Berry, Wendell “Out of Your Car, Off Your Horse” in Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community New York: Pantheon Books, 1993

Berry, Wendell “Christianity and the Survival of Creation” and “Think Little” in The Art of the Commonplace

Chittister, Joan “Spirituality for the Long Haul” in Compass, 1992

Gallagher, Michael P. “The Postmodern Situation – Friend or Foe?” in Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith and Culture London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997

Gutierrez, Gustavo “Encounter with the Lord” in We Drink from Our Own Wells

Johnson, Elizabeth “The History of Jesus” in Consider Jesus New York: Crossroad, 1990

Leddy, Mary Jo “Perpetual Dissatisfaction” and “The Point of Our Being” in Radical Gratitude

McFague, Sally “Imaging a Theology of Nature” in Charles Birch, William Eakin, J.B. McDaniel Liberating Life Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1990.

Merton, Thomas “Transformation of Consciousness” in John Higgins Merton’s Theology of Prayer New York: Image Books, 1975

Soelle, Dorothy “The Guarantor of Poor People’s Rights” and “Breaking the Ice of the Soul” in The Theology of Dorothy Soelle ISBN 1-6338-404-3

Swimme, Brian “The Cosmic Creation Story” in The Re-enchantment of Science. State University of New York Press, 1988

Havel, Vaclev, “The Philadelphia Liberty Medal” in The Art of the Possible. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997

King, Ursula “Spirituality, Society and Culture” in The Way Supplement No. 73 Spring 1992, pp14-23

“The Principles of a Global Ethic” in H. Kung and Kuschel, K., A Global Ethic. Continuum Press, 1993

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