{"id":3884,"date":"2013-08-22T10:29:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T14:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3884"},"modified":"2013-08-22T10:39:10","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T14:39:10","slug":"journal-writing-as-a-spiritual-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3884","title":{"rendered":"Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been keeping a journal since 1959.\u00a0 Sometime in late 1991 I read Natalie Goldberg\u2019s Writing Down the Bones<\/a>, and really liked the idea of \u201cwriting practice.\u201d\u00a0 I saw that it was pretty much what I was already doing.\u00a0 I liked the idea of lighting a candle and setting the timer for 30 minutes.\u00a0 Timed writings are a great idea, the one constraint is to \u201cKeep the pen moving.\u201d\u00a0 Spelling doesn\u2019t matter, grammar doesn\u2019t matter, there\u2019s lots of room for creativity.\u00a0 I also began a number of visual journals, where I did drawings and collage as well as verbal entries.\u00a0 Most of them were never finished.\u00a0 I would get started with a burst of enthusiasm, and then get triggered which would stop me in my tracks.\u00a0 I could still write in my journal because that was a truly safe place.<\/p>\n

For more about my journal, see the pages My Journal<\/a> and Journal Background<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most writers have had the experience of starting to write out something they have planned ahead, only to have the character suddenly say something completely unexpected and the story had to change course.\u00a0 Sometimes I have experiences, like the one where I was climbing up the clouds to the pearly gates with my thin harvest, that I write down afterward.\u00a0 but sometimes the amazing thing happens as I\u2019m writing.\u00a0 This is true for \u201cAmazing Self-Love<\/a>\u201d which I published two days ago.\u00a0 It also happened a lot as I was writing the \u201cLefthand pages\u201d of The Feminine of History is Mystery<\/a>.\u00a0 One writing that still means a lot to me was the one that happened as I was writing a fictional account of a solstice celebration<\/a>.\u00a0 I wanted to be there, and I cried out \u201cO my People, are you the past or the future?\u201d and they said \u201cWe are both the past and the future, we are where the circle meets itself, never fear, you too are enclosed by the circle.\u201d\u00a0 At the time I wrote that, I was doing folk-dance, I had even been to Brittany and danced with 100 people in a field to live music, but I had never heard of \u201cSacred Circle Dance.\u201d\u00a0 Recently, dancing with my friends, I realized that I had found \u201cmy people\u201d and here we were, at the place where past meets future.<\/p>\n

“climbing up the clouds to the pearly gates with my thin harvest” \u00a0I thought I had posted this story, but can’t find it. \u00a0As soon as I can find it, I’ll add it to the blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been keeping a journal since 1959.\u00a0 Sometime in late 1991 I read Natalie Goldberg\u2019s Writing Down the Bones, and really liked the idea of \u201cwriting practice.\u201d\u00a0 I saw that it was pretty much what I was already doing.\u00a0 I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-journal","category-present-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}