The Spiritual Journée

Join Cameron Dezen Hammon, award-winning spiritual memoirist and writing instructor for a Spiritual Writing Workshop, Sunday, October 24, 6 -8 p.m.

When I say, “Spiritual writing,” what do you imagine? Does the image of a darkly clad Victorian lady transcribing messages from the great beyond pop into your head? Or do you think of St. Augustine, pouring out his Confessions? A medieval monk prayerfully copying the Gospel by candlelight in a high tower?

Or do you picture yourself in more modern settings with contemporary tools: a Moleskine prayer journal, where you transcribe prayers and respond to them, or where your original prayers flow freely onto the page? A blog where you click and share your devotional thoughts with others in real time? 

Spiritual writing has taken many forms over the ages, but its purpose has always been to answer the same question: How do we connect with the divine? How do we capture the concept of infinite Love with a few nouns and verbs? How do we convey our feelings and questions about God to other mortals? Words fail.

But words are often all we have. And they are a powerful starting place. Henri Nouwen said, “Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories.” By writing, he said, we claim what we have lived, and we can integrate it more fully into our journeys. In this way, writing can become lifesaving, for us, and for others. It can connect us, to ourselves, to each other, and to God.

We’re all on a spiritual journey, and we can benefit from writing our stories. Whether you want to write your experiences to process them for yourself or to share them with other travelers, the first step is to take pen to paper to capture the details.

It’s interesting that the Old French root for both journey and journal is journée: a day’s length, a day’s work or travel. We experience our spiritual journey one day at a time. If we are going to write a spiritual memoir, we need to begin capturing our experiences one day at a time, journaling until we can begin to see pattern or direction emerge. At that point, we can begin telling the stories of our journey in ways that provide even deeper meaning for us and for our fellow travelers. 

Join us this Sunday evening, October 24, 6 p.m. til 8 p.m. when Cameron Dezen Hammon, who teaches Creative Nonfiction and Spiritual Writing in the English Department at Rice University, leads us in a Spiritual Writing Workshop. She will delve into the ways we take part in a spiritual story that connects us to one another, to the Divine as we understand it, and to the natural world in which we live. We will investigate our own spiritual experiences through writing prompts, conversation, and a short reading from her award-winning spiritual memoir, This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession.

Take the first step on the writing journey, or find companionship along the path you are already following. Whatever your experience with writing, this evening promises to be centering, enlightening, and encouraging.

Join us before the workshop at The Well, a contemplative Celtic Eucharist, and for Tea & Toast by the bookstore in Latham Hall.

The cost of the workshop is $20, and it includes a copy of This Is My Body, as well as a journal. Register to attend by clicking here. For more information, click here. And, if cost is a hardship, please contact the Rev. Becky Zartman by clicking here.

I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
~Flannery O’Connor

Spiritual Writing with Cameron Dezen Hammon is presented in partnership with Brazos Bookstore.

Eat. Pie. Love.

Tara Royer Steele grew up working with pie. She came to realize that God can use something as small as pie to build relationships and further his kingdom. Join her October 3 to learn more — and make pie!

There’s a well known Zen koan that says, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” We have to do the work, and we have to keep doing the work — in every area of our lives, no matter how enlightened, or exalted, or exceptional we may become. Like any koan worth its salt, it suggests other things, too: Maybe enlightenment is the chopping of the wood and the carrying of the water. Maybe doing the work is what enlightenment’s all about.

Maybe instead of trying to solve all the problems of the world, or telling everyone else how to solve them, or crumbling into an anxious heap because there are so many problems, we should just do the work that’s in front of us. Maybe the work is as easy as making pie.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of going to Royer’s Round Top Cafe or Royer’s Pie Haven in Round Top, Texas, you know that they’ve done the work when it comes to pie. And you know that enjoying the fruits of their labor is a real pleasure.

Royer’s is a family company, and Tara Royer Steele grew up working with pie. In doing the work, she came to realize that God can use something as small as pie to build relationships and further his kingdom. She set out to share that message as widely as possible, and now she’s written a book: Eat. Pie. Love: 52 devotions to satisfy your mind, body, and soul.

On Saturday, October 3, from 10 to 11:30 a.m., Tara is going to share her insights about pie, life, and God’s love (and how they criss-cross like a perfectly woven crust) with the Cathedral. Sign up by September 30, and she’ll provide a list of ingredients to make a sweet & salty pie, a copy of her devotional, a journal, and a mug for the coffee you’ll want to drink with the delicious pie she’ll teach you how to make. The cost is just $45, and it promises to be a very satisfying morning of cooking and connecting.

So, for just one morning, put the newspaper aside and stop trying to make it all better. Join Tara, and just do the work: Eat. Pie. Love. There’s meaning in all three, and she’ll show you how they intersect in a very tasty, soul-filling way. Before enlightenment, Eat. Pie. Love; after enlightenment, Eat. Pie. Love.

To register for Eat. Pie. Love: A Virtual Women’s Event, click here.

I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world. 
― M.F.K. Fisher