Has there been a time when you did something important for a while? Then, because of other things you needed to do, you stopped doing it? Sometime later, you began to do it once again, and realized how important it actually was to you?
E-merging. In January 2010, I began this blog. I wrote about topics of spirituality, daily life, and social justice that emerged from my own spiritual practice and reflection. Through E-merging, it was my hope that others would be inspired to reflect on these topics and gain new insights for their own growth and the development.
After a six-month hiatus, I am now writing once again. Over the last six months, I came to understand that regular writing is important for my own spiritual practice. I realized that it’s for the good of my soul to write regularly.
Writing is important for me in that it helps me to put into words, the thoughts, feelings, and experiences which stir within me. Writing provides insight and understanding into things that are often clouded in the experience of meditation and prayer. Writing brings ruminations from my inner self and draws them out so that they become more comprehensible for me.
As I start the process of blogging once again as a spiritual practice, a passage from one of my favorite writers in the Christian tradition, Teresa of Avila, comes to mind. In The Book of Her Life, the sixteenth century mystic wrote:
“This path to self-knowledge must never be abandoned, nor is there on this journey a soul so much a giant that it has no need to return often to the stage of an infant and a suckling…There is no stage of prayer so sublime that it isn’t necessary to return often to the beginning.”
Teresa points out a very important lesson: no matter what kind of mystical experience a person may have had, or the respect a person has earned as a teacher, or despite any other measure of spiritual growth, all of us need to return again to our beginnings. We each must return to the simple practices which constitute prayer and meditation, for these are the fundamental tools necessary for developing the spiritual aspect of our lives.
As I begin writing again, I hope that these simple reflections on the spiritual dimension of life will bring clarity for my own journey, and offer inspiration to you on your journey.
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Consider: is there something that was helpful that you used to do that nurtured the spiritual dimension of your life? Is it time to begin that practice again?
Thank you for emerging, Lou…. My thoughts have been with you guys… Jim
Thanks Lou. I’ve kept a journal since October 2008. I don’t write in it every day – only when there’s something that seems important to record, and my entries are usually very short. This year I started writing a book and found that many of my journal entries have a direct bearing on the subject of my writing. I think I would have forgotten so much had I not written it down. Even so, I’m learning more and more that it’s the experience that counts, not my explanation or description of it. In sharing such things as these, it’s only those who truly share the experience who understand and maybe there are times when I’m in danger of blurting out things to people who are not ready to receive it. I don’t know at present, whether that’s a problem for them or not. It could be a problem for me – but not one that grace can’t deal with.