At the end of this month, my book Writing to God: 40 Days of Praying with My Pen comes out from Paraclete Press. I’ve dreamed of and worked on publishing a book for years, so this is incredibly exciting … and enormously humbling, as I receive feedback from blog readers and book previewers who find that my written prayers somehow help others pray too. (Meanwhile I’m remembering to myself, “I was simply taking a walk that day when a sycamore tree caught my eye” or “That prayer came out of a stressful day when I longed to slow down” or “I just needed a prayer to help me clean the house!”)
The book is an invitation to take things to the next level: to not only read my prayers, but to practicing writing your own; to sit down with pen and paper (and your favorite coffee or tea, I often suggest) for your daily devotions; to embark on a 40-day journey through a new spiritual discipline; to make that conversation with God tangible by taking it out of your head and putting it on a book’s page; to wholly feel a prayer as your hand moves the pen and your mind develops the words and your spirit encounters the Holy.
Already I’m hinting at some of the reasons why I prefer to pray with a pen in hand. Here are additional reasons why I love it … and why you might, too!
in conversation with the Word.
worry, joy … and praying with my pen heightens
my awareness of those things too.
thirty minutes — absolutely nourishes me.
whether words of prayer, or details of a meeting, or items
on a grocery list — when I write them down.
that language is a tool for grappling with the Mystery that is God,
because I’m convinced that historically & culturally we have limited
our language for God … which lends itself too easily
to limiting our ideas of God,
to restricting our understandings of God in community,
to repeating worship as a ritual without relevance or vitality,
to losing that spark of creativity which emboldens faith.
(Now I’m having a soapbox moment.)
personal connection with God.
again and again.
You can write to God as a solo discipline or as a small group experience. You can use Writing to God as a companion through Lent or as a tool for any 40-day journey of spiritual growth. However you envision using it, I encourage you to check it out, test it out, and take a new adventure in writing and praying!
(P.S. — Many online retailers indicate that the book will be available in March; in fact, the printing process has gone smoothly and those who have pre-ordered books should be seeing them by the end of January/early February!)