Artist Way

Artist Way Cameron

“Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear. Fear is what blocks an artist. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of not finishing. The fear of failure and of success. The fear of beginning at all. There is only one cure for fear. That cure is love. Use love for your artist to cure its fear. Stop yelling at yourself. Be nice. Call fear by its right name.”

Julia Cameron, Artist Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

When I suggest to friends about writing as a spiritual practice, most begin by saying they don’t know how to start or they have no talent as a writer. It is not their gift. The best antidote to this fear of writing or this feeling of inadequacy as a writer is Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist Way. Cameron suggests starting to write by rising in the morning and writing “morning pages”, which she calls the “primary tool of creative recovery”. These are three longhand pages of whatever comes into your mind. It does not have to make sense. It is a listening exercise in the morning, imagining that it is the hand of God moving through our hand as we write. I have also experienced this exercise as a clearing or cleaning out the garbage in my head. Fearful thoughts stay powerful in my head, but when I put them on paper, some of their power over me goes away, and in some way, I am turning them over, releasing them to God, and the creative process begins. Cameron recommends that at night we pray for guidance, and ask for answers. The morning pages are a process of listening for the answers as the day begins.

 I often write down on the inside cover of books the date when I started reading them. As I reread Cameron’s book, I pull back her cover and see a date seventeen years ago. Memories flood in of the book group I read Artist Way with over one summer at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church. I especially remember Lee who had been the chair of my discernment committee who was a mentor to me, an encourager of creativity. This experience also is a reminder of how it is even more fun to read, write, and work through a book like Artist Way in a weekly book study group as you work together through the book’s many suggested activities and exercises. Today I also am reminded of how just writing down a date can be a powerful spiritual writing.

Joanna                joannaseibert.com

Spiritual direction Edwards

“We begin with the edge of mystery, because anything coming to us from the beyondness of God has an origin that is deeper than our minds can take us. The beginning of our experience thus is shrouded in darkness. Whatever we can know at the deepest place we know not through our cognitive thinking but through our spiritual hearts (the subtly conscious dimension of our souls) or through the even greater immediacy of our contemplative intuition (our capacity for direct, unitive involvement).”               

Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Director, Spiritual Companion, pp. 48-49.                                                                                    

The founder of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation shares with us his teaching and experience as a Spiritual Director and Spiritual Companion for over a quarter century. Edwards takes us on a journey with him in his book about how spiritual companionship evolved, the nature of the soul, the nature of the spiritual experience, the nurture of the Soul, recognizing a spiritual companion, practical aspects of being in spiritual companionship, being in a spiritual relationship with the communities in which we live, and his perceived future for spiritual direction.

Edwards believes that our true identity and being is our soul. He shares his longtime experience of how our soul might interact with another. The site and fruit of this interaction is love.

Edwards seems to put “skin” on the Soul. He makes the soul become more real, enticing all of us with a longing and a deep yearning to begin to connect to the Soul not only in our neighbors but ourselves.

Edwards describes an “empty experience”, the “expansions of emptiness” as an expansion of the soul.  Emptiness is not the absence of God: it is simply experiencing God in a way with which we are not familiar. We are experiencing God emptied of our normal ways of understanding the spiritual experience.”

As Edwards talks about the difference between the spirituality of men and women, I suddenly looked into the spiritual life of my father who loved duck hunting, not for the killing but to be in the marsh. That was one of his last wishes before he died, to go once more to the marsh. All my life I never thought of him as a spiritual being, but now I see it.

In Edward’s section of the nature of the soul he describes four levels of knowing the Spirit’s presence, an outer interpretive

level of knowing, a little deeper descriptive knowing, then deeper heart knowing, and finally at our inner self is immediate knowing.

Edwards reminds us that it is the Soul that does the work of direction and that we are to learn to seek and follow the Soul in a spiritual companion rather than staying with a set plan we may have in mind that may not necessarily come from the Soul. The advantage of a spiritual companion is that there are now at least two Souls longing to be loved and heard, and to teach and spread love with each other and beyond.

Edwards offers many very practical ways to listen and be open to a spiritual companion that could be useful individually or with spiritual friends. When the workplace is mentioned, we can ask if there is any object at the workplace which reminds the spiritual friend of God’s presence? At times a spiritual director can ask if there are others who are spiritually supporting the spiritual friend besides the director?

Edwards challenges us to be more aware of the Soul in ourselves and in our neighbor and be more aware of the love and peace that comes when Souls meet.

Joanna                     joannaseibert.com

Daily Office

Seeking wisdom

“Canticle:  A Song of Pilgrimage   Ecclesiasticus 51:13-16, 20b-22

Before I ventured forth,
even while I was very young, *
I sought wisdom openly in my prayer.
In the forecourts of the temple I asked for her, *
and I will seek her to the end.
From first blossom to early fruit, *
she has been the delight of my heart.
My foot has kept firmly to the true path, *
diligently from my youth have I pursued her.
I inclined my ear a little and received her; *
I found for myself much wisdom and became adept in her.
To the one who gives me wisdom will I give glory, *
for I have resolved to live according to her way.
From the beginning I gained courage from her, *
therefore I will not be forsaken.
In my inmost being I have been stirred to seek her, *
therefore have I gained a good possession.
As my reward the Almighty has given me the gift of language,*
and with it will I offer praise to God.”

Enriching our Worship I, pp. 30-31.

This Song of Pilgrimage from Ecclesiasticus is one of the canticles offered for morning and evening prayer in Enriching our Worship 1,  as one of the alternative canticles for the Book of Common Prayer BCP.

Christians inherited a pattern of daily prayer from the Jews, who set aside three daily times of prayer. More diligent Christians later took to heart the Psalm 119:164 verse that says, “seven times a day do I praise you,” and by the Middle Ages monks developed a tradition of seven daily times of prayer: Matins before dawn and Lauds at daybreak which were combined into one service; then at sunrise, midmorning, noon and midafternoon were Prime, Terce, Sext, and None; Vespers came at sundown, and Compline at bedtime. This schedule was kept faithfully by monks and nuns in monasteries. Lay people could come when possible. In 1549 in the first English Book of Common Prayer, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer revised the structure so that ordinary people might also follow a prayer schedule and praise God at the beginning and end of each day now with just two services, Morning and Evening Prayer. The present 1979 BCP restored Noonday Prayers and Compline. (A user’s Guide to Morning Prayer and Baptism, Christopher Webber)  

 The theologian, writer, and founding editor of the Religion Department of Publisher’s Weekly, Phyllis Tickle, re-introduced a shorter version of daily observing the divine hours in a series of books, The Divine Hours, which many now follow. This is her pocket edition to carry easily with you.  Her shorter versions of morning, noon, evening (vespers) and bedtime (compline) prayers, readings, and scripture are easier to observe than one would think, and offer a simple way to stop our work as we reconnect to God during the day and evening. The readings are also online at http://www.explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/hours.php and at http://annarborvineyard.org/tdh/tdh.cfm.

Joanna                   joannaseibert.com