Healing Ministry 1
Volume 16, Number 1, Winter 2009
Journaling in spiritual
formation + direction
Father Dn Thomas Johnson-Medland, CSJ, OSL
Journaling is a critical tool in
helping discern, focus, and deep-
en. Journaling on a consistent
basis can help us to not only take
the pulse of our spiritual direc-
tion and formation but also meet
the challenges of the ongoing
spiritual growth.
The whole idea of journaling is
very prevalent today, even in the
business community. People
from all walks of life have seen
the value of this art in helping
them to plan, develop, and exe-
cute all manner of projects, ideas,
products, and arenas of growth.
Let us take a look at this form
of art and review how to create
journals. Let us also analyze and
discover ways to look at, under-
stand, and interpret them and the
impact they have on us. What do
they reveal?
It is this second portion of the
discussion that helps this tool
become reflexive and gives us a
Father Dn. Thomas Johnson-Medland, CSJ,
OSL, Lighthouse Hospice, Cherry Hill,
New Jersey.
glimpse into how journaling is
vital in our spiritual formation
and direction. Without discover-
ing ways to look at, understand,
and interpret our journals, we
fall prey to just doing one more
thing that may have no real
impact on our growth. We need
to dig and find out what they
reveal to us about who we are
and what is going on in our lives.
Let’s start with methods of
journaling. Many of us have
begun a journal at a critical junc-
ture in our lives. We have had
something monumental happen
in our life and we wanted to
process it, so we go out and get a
journal and begin to write. I think
almost everyone I know are con-
vinced of the value of journaling
and has tried it at some point in
their life.
What is it we should write
about?
What we write about and how
we write about will vary through-
out our life. As we get more famil-
iar with our own ability to express
verbally on the written page, we
will change our style and
approach and also experiment
with them as well. So, how we
journal at one point in our life
will be different from that at
another. Let’s look at some sim-
ple places to begin.
• Write only questions that
you are having about issues,
experiences, people, and sit-
uations in your life.
• Write only descriptions of
what you are experiencing.
• Write only your feelings
about what is going on.
• Write as if you are writing a
letter to someone who is
going to help you process
your life.
• Write poetry about what is
going on.
• Write only list of words that
“get at” what you are going
through.
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Volume 16, Number 1, Winter 2009
• Write down statements you
have heard others make that
are important to you.
• Draw what is going on.
• Journal what you are think-
ing (mind).
• Journal what you are feeling
(heart).
• Journal what you are desir-
ing/hoping (soul).
Whichever of these threads of
journaling you choose, you will
create the vital material that will
be necessary for you to cull
through at a later date to grow. It
is very important that you are
consistent. You want to develop
a large repository of material—
over time.
There will be no spiritual for-
mation or direction at all if you
are not consistent. You must
write every day. It does not need
to be a lot of writing, but you
must write every day.
I actually think you should
begin by only using one page a
day for a while. Whatever format
for writing you choose, just write
one page a day. Make sure that
you are alone and undisturbed.
Try to do it at the same time
every day.
If you have a hard time with
routines, reward yourself for
doing it for three weeks straight.
Find some little gift to give your-
self if you write consistently for
21 days. It takes three weeks to
make a habit stick, so reward
yourself for your first hurdle.
It is also critical that what you
journal must come from your
heart. It must come from the
deepest and most central place
inside of you. It must come out of
you from inside. Having an
image of a chord connecting your
heart and your pen may be a
helpful tool while writing. Some
just try to feel the heart in their
center as they write. How you
connect to the heart while jour-
naling does not matter. What
matters is that, you connect to
your heart.
There is a wonderful quote
from the Gospel of Thomas that
reveals the importance of letting
things out from deep within us:
If you bring forth what is with-
in you, what you bring forth
will save you. If you do not
bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth
will kill you.
—The Gospel of Thomas,
verse 70
There is that whole sense that
freedom as children of God can
only come from living openly,
allowing things to come forth
from us. This does not mean that
there is no need to purify the
stuff that comes out of us or what
comes out of us will always be
good. If we do not put on the
table what it is that is going on in
side of us, then we will have no
idea of what there may be to
work on inside of us.
This is clearly one of the values
of all of the expressive arts. Done
honestly with a connection to the
heart, they can provide an arena
of observation for what it is that
is going on inside of us. They can
be a visual image for the shape of
the interior landscape; of its
health and nature.
I am reminded of the habit of
writing when I think of the Frost
and Stafford and Bly (Robert
Frost, William Stafford, and
Robert Bly—it also includes Gary
Snyder, Robert Haas, and Naomi
Nye) school of poetry. These
poets had the daily practice of
getting up and writing from the
space they lived in the first few
moments of being awake. The
routine of MORNING POEMS is
something their students know
of and practice.
There is no editing of these
poems. The sense of shaping and
fashioning the work comes from
experiencing what comes out
and then allowing that to impact
them over time. This of course
means that writing is a process
built on the habit of writing regu-
larly. It is shaped by the experi-
ence of writing itself. We are
changed into a being that is
affected by our own process of
journaling (this, by the way, is a
core role and function of spiritual
formation and direction).
It takes a keen ear to be able to
write what it is that the heart
experiences. And, therein is what
makes it a path that helps lead to
spiritual formation and direc-
tion. We first learn to let it out of
our center. Then we must learn to
look at it and find out what it is
saying to us about who we are
and where we are.
What I suggest is going at the
journaling for three weeks, 21
days. At the end of that time, pull
out the journal and give yourself
an hour or so to go through it.
Review each page and soak in the
essence of whom you have been
and where you have trod. Allow it
to wash over you and affect you.
Pretend that it is the work of
someone you love and admire
and see how it impacts you. Ask
yourself some basic questions
about the work:

• What does this reveal about
this person’s heart?
• What does it reveal about
how they think?
• What does it expose of their
hopes and desires?
• How is God/the spiritual
life revealed in these pages?
• Is there a common thread?
• Do you sense a direction
this person is headed?
• What has been revealed
about this person?
• Where is Love in this whole
thing?
• Where is nurturance in this
whole thing?
• What is this person yearn-
ing/crying out for or to?
• What has helped you grow
from this work?
• Who would benefit from
this kind of work?
You can add your own sets of
questions to these. However,
these are the beginnings of some
good notions to look into or good
paths to go down when you are
considering the work of spiritual
formation and direction.
It is good to do this again after
two months of journaling. Then,
again review your work after
Healing Ministry 3
Volume 16, Number 1, Winter 2009
three months. Once you have
done this practice for three
months, set some regular inter-
vals into your calendar for you to
sit and glean the insight that your
heart has to offer you in your
path of spiritual formation and
direction.
Again, journaling must be
done consistently and over a
span of time. And, you must
review what has been journaled
over a span of time if you are to
gain the reflexive help available
from the heart’s ability to lead
us in spiritual formation and
direction.
“The heart is the hub of all
things. Go there and wander.”
—Bhagawan Nityananda of
Ganeshpuri