This week, we were invited to think about meditative writing. I previously wrote about my discomfort with passive meditation. Like many, I find it too 'hard'. Doing something, anything, while trying to mediate helps me out, whether it's walking, singing, drawing or writing.
Have you ever tried to breathe deeply for any length of time? It's frequently used to ease into prayer or meditation. And the part that makes me chortle is when the instruction adds that it is to be natural. Hmm? As soon as I try to breathe in a particular way, it stops being involuntary. I can't not think about it.
Something similar happens when I think about meditative writing. When I think about, about writing meditatively, it stops being meditative. It becomes far more laborious.
Having said that, I can meditatively write. I just don't think about it or name it. Rather, I set the stage and write. Most mornings, my musings are definitely meditative. I read, I pray, I write. I'm in the zone. I suspect that some days they make less sense than others, and some days there are more typos and missing words than others. That's all because I'm just writing.
When I think about it, or edit it, or try to force it, I'm definitely not in the zone. It's more forced and hard.
I have the opportunity to preach this Sunday, Palm Sunday. I realized that my struggling to write a sermon could and should be erased if I approached it as meditative writing. Read, pray, write. Don't think, don't edit, don't check the word count. Then, once something is down on paper, however jumbled, let it rest. Return and edit.
This is not an untested theory; previous sermons that have been full of ease and grace followed this pattern in their creation. The sermons I struggle with are those that I allow my head to wrestle with before my soul has had her say.
This week's invitation into meditative writing has given me a name for my better sermon-writing experiences. Yesterday, I set the stage and lit the candle. I read the passages, prayed, and wrote. Today, I'll edit and fill in all the missing words.
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