For some years,
I have kept a journal, which has now become a series of lined notebooks. They
are filled with poems, book lists, draft book reviews and blog posts,
quotations I want to remember, sermon notes, notes made from presentations and
speeches, and really anything that I might want to write down. It’s not a
spiritual journal per se, but it does include spiritual thoughts and questions.
Paraclete Press has been taking a
more directed approach to journals, and specifically spiritual journals. Author
Hilda St. Clair has created a second spiritual journal, Love
Never Fails: A Journal to be Inspired by the Power of Love, that
focuses specifically on the idea of Christian love (her first, All Shall Be Well, has the theme of hope
and encouragement).
The journal’s
approach is simple. Using beautiful (and original) artwork and quotations, the
journal presents a series of simple exercises and questions. It’s not meant to
be an exhaustive Bible study or an exercise requiring extended periods of time.
Instead, the journal encourages simplicity and reflection.
The sources for
the quotations include, various books of the Bible, St. Augustine, Julian of
Norwich, Bernard of Clairvaux, Martin Luther King Jr., Wendell Berry, Henri
Nouwen, Mother Teresa, C.S. Lewis, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, among many
other Christians. And the quotations also come from more secular sources, like
Elie Wiesel, Victor Hugo, Maya Angelou, Charles Dickens, and Jewish and Swedish
proverbs.
The exercises
are simple. “Think about a tough decision you once made. What made you do it?
What role did love play?” is an example. The purpose is to encourage reflection
about the role spiritual role plays in our lives, our actions, our relationships,
and our thoughts.
St. Clair is an
author and artist who lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Love Never Fails is a book of quiet, thoughtful
exercises, designed for completion while you sit by yourself with a cup of tea
of coffee, reflecting upon the role love plays in your life.
Related:
Photograph by Daria Sukhorukova via Unsplash.
2 comments:
This sounds like a real winner, Glynn! I, too, keep several journals, but this would be a wonderful way to stay focused and organize my thoughts.
Blessings!
Thank you for bringing this to attention, Glynn.
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