In my most honest moments I write from paradox...

Between the Mystical and the Mess (April)

Hello,

I have been feeling the itch (pull? desire?) to write and share more personally here. Substack allows for a more intentional writing and reading experience than I’ve found on other platforms and I’m leaning in. My aim is to write a letter from Between the Mystical and the Mess once per month; read on for thoughts today on paradox, doubt, and writing our everyday stories.

Thanks for being here,

Debbie

Our 2020 twins captured by Ashleigh Angela Photography

In my most honest moments I write from paradox. In 2020 my twins were born, giving me four small people to shepherd and wipe. In the same year I also committed to the next step of training to become a spiritual director. The books on my shelf taunted me with an impossible ‘Invitation to Solitude and Silence’ while I moved in a constant whir of feeds and drop-offs.

In my Spiritual Direction work I create spaces for individuals and groups to touch the deeper themes in their lives. I facilitate a host of soul spaces to potentially connect with the Divine whether the setting and language is religious or not. And yet I simultaneously wrestle with my beliefs, my doubts, my own sense of God. 

It is here in this tension between the mystical and the mess, this intersection between family, faith and authenticity, this is where my sentences start. I have pages filled with prayer and play and processing. Paragraphs considering my life through the prism of my faith, and my faith through the kaleidoscope of my life. But I have hesitated to share them, even though I’ve found such comfort in the words of others. It’s tricky to be honest about doubt and faith shift in a culture that values certainty. I hold back my true thoughts and feelings for fear of damaging relationships¹ (I realise that this underestimates the capacity of my relationships to deal with difference). And sharing words on the internet to a seemingly infinite and potentially unsympathetic crowd? No thanks, I’ll just keep my thoughts to myself.

I have also succumbed to a culture which prizes exciting stories of triumph, rather than the magical mundane. For the first few months of this year I studied ‘Creative Writing as Spiritual Reflection’. Here I heard of ‘Spiritual Life Writing’ and realised that’s what I’ve been doing when I’ve found the safe spaces. The course left me with the conviction that these minute stories of my everyday life are worth capturing and sharing. For me, for connection with others and as an act of resistance to those who would diminish their importance. It turns out that this is what I love to do.

I recently read (and adored) Enchantment by Katherine May, where she says:

“Writing, for me, is a way of making the airy matter of thought feel real. I can open up a notebook and solidify my feelings, which otherwise seem to float around my head, ill-defined, mutable. It is a necessary act of anchoring.”

Yes, for me too, and I also resonated with this section about the contemplative life:

“I’m ashamed now that I didn’t see it: the patriarchal way that we frame spiritual development, the way that men get enlightenment and women get to look after them while they do so, all the while being mocked for the compromised practices they create in the scraps of time that remain. I appreciate the value of the monastic tradition, and I understand that some insights can come only from true solitude, but I also see very clearly how it prizes masculine knowledge over feminine, diminishing the wisdom of those of us who by necessity are anchored to the everyday.”

Yes, I am anchored to the everyday; to the favourite socks and snacks of the moment, to the walk up the hill to school, to a hundred interruptions and the regurgitation of every level of Super Mario Bros. And I am also anchored by this writing. In these words I pay attention to the life I live and the God who I find in the midst.

And perhaps these words make a story worth telling. 

Lochwinnoch RSPB Reserve taken by Emma Boyd

1. Ah, the ennegram 2 life.