My Contemplative Writing Journey: A Failed Christian
I come to Contemplative Writing as a failed contemplative and a failed writer and a failed Christian.
Let’s take the last first. I am currently immersed in a Lenten Discipline where I’m offering a Contemplative Writing Prompt each day of the liturgical season. Lent is a religious season. The season runs for the forty days that lead up to and prepare for the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross. My contemplative writing practice is full of the Spirit. It regularly brings me into the presence of God. In the two weeks I’ve been pursuing this discipline, I’ve only mentioned Jesus once, and that was in a song.
A Failed Christian: Where is Jesus?
Exhibit number two. My first published book was about making crosses from broken and found objects (Making Crosses: A Creative Connection to God, Paraclete Press.) The cross was the execution device Jesus died on. During the editing of the book, my editor said, “For a book about the cross, you don’t talk a lot about Jesus.”
Exhibit last. In 2007, I facilitated the formation of the Door of Hope Writing Group. I was encouraged to do so by a priest. His suggestion came in a class of a Christian organization, the School for Servant Leadership. The one we were serving was Jesus. During my eight years at the Door of Hope, I can count the number of times I mentioned Jesus the Son of god. Mary the Mother of God, all the time. Jesus, not so much.
Yet, Jesus is the foundational rock of my religious belief. For me, everything starts with Jesus. It has been so ever since I saw him in the Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi, and he told me to pin my faith on no one but him.
So, what is going on?
Insight on a Contemplative Writing Journey, perhaps
I practice a Christianity that is triune, though everyone in my Episcopal Church pretty much hates the Trinity. The Trinity is God, the Spirit, and Jesus. God is the physical presence of goodness in this world that I can feel and sometimes see. The Spirit is that force which translates the goodness into words and thoughts for me to understand my place in the world. Jesus is the one who guides me on how to be who God wants me to be in the world as told to me by the Spirit. Those are my definitions.
Christianity is supposed to be a tripod table, as it were, upon which our faith balances. Churches don’t balance all that well. White evangelicals have sliced off the Jesus leg so they can focus on stuff he didn’t focus on, like abortion and an anti-LGBTQ agenda and being “anti-woke” in general. Us Episcopalians and Presbyterians have hacked at the Spirit leg so we can be more uptight and respectable. Some Baptist churches talk so much about Jesus, they don’t leave a wedge for God. These are my gross oversimplifications of how we interact with the Christian religion.
The Trinity is essential to the religion I practice. But the only time I talk about Jesus is when I’m explaining why I’m reacting to God and the Spirit the way I am. Jesus leads me to God. Then I spend all my time talking about God. The Spirit. God. The Universe. God. The goodness in the world. God. Not Jesus.
See? I come to my contemplative writing journey: a failed Christian.
Next installment: a failed contemplative.
Emma
well, we are all failures. Speaking for myself at least. I’m a serious backslider – although i have no idea what I have “backslid” from or into – and all of it is mystery. In my younger years (like teens and early 20’s) I was identified as “rigidly moralistic.” Wow! At my advanced age I cannot believe how I have changed since then. From certainty, at an age when I did not know anything), to embracing the all-encompassing mysterious reality of a universal God in nature and in every soul and animal that exists. I hope over the years I have gained some wisdom – I believe I have – that there is no separation between us and God, between Jesus and God, between Spirit and God. My entire life at this point as almost become a contemplation.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I CANNOT imagine you as “rigidly moralistic.” But perhaps you can’t imagine me as a quick-to-pop-off lawyer. The grace of a long-lived life…And I love this sentence and sentiment: “My entire life at this point has almost become a contemplation.” ❤️
Joe Hawes
Very coutageous of you to share your fsith journey with us
I am looking forwatd to reading more in this vein
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Thank you, Joe. I do intend to share how I’m a failed contemplative and writer too. 🙂
Joe Hawes
And I am going to work on my tipeaux. Er tyrops. Uh, myTYPOS!
Ellen Morris Prewitt
😆
Joanne Corey
There’s been a lot of life going on for me this Lent, so I’m just reading this now, weeks later…
Of course, as a Catholic, the Trinity is a big thing for me. (One of my daughters is named Trinity, although due more to that being a friend’s name than church matters.) I think that, for me, the second person of the Trinity is better named Christ than Jesus. I’m wondering if, perhaps, it’s not that you mention Jesus, the brief human/divine embodiment of the Eternal Christ, so little, but, rather, that you communicate Christ, the Eternal Word, often but not by name.
Wishing you blessings for Holy Week. I’ll try to get caught up on your blog posts!
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Oh, my goodness–let me blog posts slip on down the stream. Please don’t worry about catching up. I enjoy your comments when I get them, and I’m glad for that. Thank you for noting the Christ or Jesus naming. And your characterization of my relationship with both is a gift–thank you! Hope your Holy Week is significant road into the joy of Easter.