By Frank Desiderio
Let me suggest that there are four stages of spiritual writing that mirror the four movements in the symphony of spiritual growth. What do I mean by spiritual writing? This quote from Thomas Merton is my best answer.
“If you write for God you will reach many and bring them joy. If you write for people you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write only for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.” [i]
The Four Stages
The Epiphany is the starter gun of spirituality. Something makes us realize we exist in relationship to the transcendent. An inciting incident fires us up to explore our relationship with the spiritual being beyond ourselves.
For me, God is an entity that is intelligent generative love. This Higher Power is the origin of everything, the One who began creation with a gift of self. I define God as self-emptying love that goes out of itself to create. What God creates is other selves to be relationship.
The epiphany could happen in a moment of clarity in communion with nature. It could be a tragedy we survive or a near death experience. It could be something as simple as a sermon or as profound as a mystical experience. It inspires us to seek that which is beyond ourselves. It is an energy for action.
At home and in school I was taught about the Christian God, but it wasn’t until a retreat experience, when I was a teenager, that I recognized God as love and the connection to others that love creates.
In the writer’s life the epiphany is the idea that sends the writer to the paper with pen in hand to scribble the opening sentence, to capture the image, the get down the perfect iambic pentameter line. The epiphany is the spark of the muse or, for a Christian, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Purgation is the second stage. It is letting go. We put away or renounce whatever is not life-giving. In the spiritual life we purge ourselves of that which is destructive rather than creative; we put away fear in favor of love. We renounce evil and embrace the good. We surrender what is not of God and seek what is God’s will for us.
The practice of purgation involves making our moral inventory in 12-step language. In Ignatian language we do an examination of conscience. We confess our failings and make amends; we change what needs to be changed. We quit the mediocre and seek the better. We recognize the easy way is not the best way and we become willing to do the hard work ahead. Regular prayer becomes a part of our life, especially prayer seeking to know and do God’s will.
For a writer this is the process of editing. Letting go, as you know, is killing your darlings.[ii] For me, this means taking a hard look at a line and deciding that it may be clever but doesn’t fit. It’s giving the bum’s rush to the clown at a wedding and sending him to the circus. You don’t make him disappear, you just write him in the right place, put him in another piece of writing, not this one.
Purgation is the stage of conversion. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is an example of this kind of conversion. He sweats blood when he resists, then when he says, “thy will be done” he surrenders and goes forth to do what he is called to do.
After this kind of conversion comes the next stage: illumination.
Illumination is when the lights go on, a time of insight. For the Christian, scripture starts to make sense in a personal way. We start to understand something called holiness or, wholeness in God. We grow to understand that this wholeness is not what we do but what God is doing in us. We realize that we have what we need. We just need to grow in awareness of how we are already gifted.
For a writer, this is when we fall in love with the work. This is when we say, “this is good” and want to share it with others. We want to share it with others not out of our own ego needs but because we think it will be helpful to another in some way. This kind of self-gift leads us to the final stage.
Unitive – In the spiritual life the unitive stage is when we realize we are all connected in the One. We are connected to God and to others. Our goal is to be at one with God. We realize that our relationship with God connects us to all God’s creation.
We may not feel this union all the time, but we have glimpses; we know there is a divine presence and that we are connected to it. We become self-forgetful and lose the anxiety of what others think about us. We start to become more like the God who is self-emptying love.
We allow ourselves to be transformed. We start to live for others. We realize that we are called not so much to the duty of service but to relationships, to friendships. If we are friends, then the service comes naturally.
As a writer, we are writing not for ourselves and not for the market. We are writing for others with the hope that our writing will not just be beautiful but that it will do some good for someone else.
These stages are not rungs on a ladder but, rather, interlocking moments of awareness, purgation, illumination and unity. We don’t so much graduate from one to another but continually grow in an ongoing process. We meet new challenges and grow through them as Grace remakes us.
Everyone has their own unique spiritual path just as each writer has their own story of how they became a writer and their own individual process of creating their work. The spiritual life is not about mimicking some saint but finding our own path to wholeness and creativity given our personal temperament and gifts.
Holiness is a process that is done to us, we are conformed. Our willingness and work only get us so far. Grace gets us the rest of the way. God is the writer, and we surrender to the story.
[i] Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton, p. 111 New Directions Edition, 2007. “Murder your darlings” is popular advice offered writers often attributed to William Faulkner. However, an earlier reference is found in the work of English writer Arthur Quiller-Couch.
[ii] “Murder your darlings” is popular advice offered writers often attributed to William Faulkner. However, an earlier reference is found in the work of English writer Arthur Quiller-Couch.