I’m adding Writing the Sacred Journey to my Box of Books. And I’m adding it because of something the author, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, a writer and teacher in Minneapolis, does very very well. She manages to honor the process of writing and the crafted product that comes through and from writing, and she manages to do so with a particular balance—and wisdom—that I find rare.
This is a book—small but not too small—just the right size and shape for carrying around in a backpack or purse and then when you find yourself with an unexpected twenty minutes—say, in a waiting room—you open the book, and potentially lost time becomes found time. Or say you’re starting to write one morning (or evening), and let’s say it’s one of those times—not a clear morning lit with energy but one of those fuzzier mornings, foggier, and say you read over what you wrote the day before or the week before and you find yourself thinking good grief, who cares? Who in the world cares about this? Who in the world will ever care?
Instead of letting such questions loop around and around, over and over, you can, if you like, pull out Andrew’s book, turn to page 35 and find this:
Every story has inherent worth. Even knowing this, too many writers are haunted by the question, Who cares? Some never begin writing because this question, unanswered, stops them cold. Too many of us have given our validation rights over to others. Someone else (the market economy, the publisher, the grant review board, the neighbors, readers, a parent) has been given the authority to determine your worth—
. . . The ‘Who cares?’ question assumes writing to be a product, valuable inasmuch as others are willing to consume it. But writing is a product only at the tail end of a long and arduous process. The writing process, like any spiritual journey, is worthwhile for its own sake.
That’s the kind of balance I’m talking about.
And it’s not that this is entirely new territory that she’s exploring—this valuing of process. Others have been this way. I’m thinking of Peter Elbow’s work, especially in Writing Without Teachers, Natalie Goldberg’s work, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Also the article, Writing Well by Mark Robinson that I wrote about last year. And there are others. But my sense reading Ms. Andrew is that she’s of the next generation in this work; she’s benefiting from those who have come before. She’s standing on their shoulders and seeing further out on the horizon—and with a clarity and confidence that I find refreshing.
Consider her reflection on a common niggling question that can arise in the process of writing for healing—or in any kind of personal writing for that matter. Is it selfish to write about the self? Is it too self-absorbed?
In response, Ms. Andrew, who has done her own share of personal writing, who describes her journey as one in which she’s written herself, “out of the closet, out of depression, out of regular employment, and into work that fosters a simple passion for writing in others,” here she conjures the character, Janie, from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. And she does so with a line from Hurston's novel: "She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
What a line. And then Ms. Andrew carries the line forward: “The universe is packed into your very cells; the molecules of your body are made of stardust flung from the Big Bang. Think of yourself as holographic, every fragment of your being containing the whole universe.” The self as holographic. She’s in Sogyal Rinpoche’s territory here. She’s touching on that Net of Jewels. She’s talking about personal writing as something with the potential to go very very deep, and, in so doing, the potential to encounter something very very large.
Well, I could go on. But let me simply offer one more thought. I haven’t yet mentioned the subtitle of her book—The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir. This is a good book if you are considering or are currently writing a memoir. But I would also add that even if you’re not writing a memoir, of any sort, but are simply looking for a calm and wise companion, if you’re in this writing thing for the long haul, and are on the lookout for good company along the way----consider this one.
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If you’d like to learn more about Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew you can visit her website. Here you’ll find an excerpt from the above book, information on her other books—two memoirs—one with the wonderful title, On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness—and you can also find 5 excellent writing exercises. (The writing exercises can be found under the heading Writing Resources.)