July 19, 2004

"If It's Worth Living, It's Worth Logging"

Sometimes people say, "I can't journal.  God doesn't speak to me.  He doesn't respond to me."  But when they share their journal, I can see what is happening.  They are getting everything out-they might have a paragraph or pages.  Then they wait for God to respond to all those words, questions, and feelings all at the same time.  When this happens, God often will be silent. We have put so much information before Him, how do we know what He would be speaking about?  We can go into a guessing game and come out of our journaling and prayer period not really knowing anything more than when we went in.  So I encourage you to put only one thing-one fear or one question or one aspect of a problem before the Lord at a time.  Journal your question out and wait for Him to answer that part.  Then go back and ask Him another part and let Him answer that.  Journal it.  We want a dialogue going back and forth.  It's all being done in this writing process in tremendous simplicity. 

Especially let your feelings, whatever they are, come into the light.  This is important.  We encourage you to journal daily because we have events that happen in our lives that need to be brought before God each day.  We have things that happen in our lives that we need to hear about from God daily.  There might be certain times when we get that prompting of the heart and we understand what the Lord is saying.  But many times, when it has to do with our emotions, we have a tendency to suppress them or to gloss over a situation or pretend that it really didn't bother us.  "After all, I'm a Christian.  I can love everyone."  We respond to the things that the world tells us or all the shoulds in our lives-but that's not who we really are.  Jesus will meet us wherever we are.  If we're hurting, that's where He will come. 

We also journal the Scriptures.  There are so many beautiful passages of Scriptures and things that we hear at Mass that we pray through every day.  We have that "anointing," that quickening of our heart, and we know that there's more there.  So we journal, "Lord, this is what You said in Scripture.  What do I need to know?  Teach me the deeper mystery.  Break it open for me."  There are many teachings that come through the Scriptures in our journaling.  Many priests who have made retreats at Bellwether actually get their homilies through their journaling, beautiful teachings right from God Himself. 

John the Contemplative said, "As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in your hearts.  This means  you have no need for anyone to teach you.  Rather, as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true-free from any lie-remain in Him as that anointing taught you" (1Jn 2:27).  It's an anointing that is upon us when we journal.  We may not be sure of it at first.  This is why it is important to have a spiritual director, someone who knows us and the way God works with us because there will never be two journals alike.  There are never two souls that are alike.  God works with us individually and with our individual temperaments.  So it's good to check out our journaling with our spiritual director.  When we begin journaling, ninety-percent of what you receive might be just us-it could be-and maybe only ten-percent the Lord.  But as we keep at journaling, our listening antennae will become more sensitive.  We will kind of get those rabbit ears of the heart, and we will start to pick Him up.  We will be able to begin to discern, "Oh, that's the Lord" or "Oh, that's me again."  We will start to see the difference. 

Then put your journal aside, and reread it the next day.  Often we will be able see very clearly when it was God who was speaking and when it was us.  Sometimes we think "it's just me" because it can come so naturally.  But remember, God became one of us, and He speaks to us in a very natural way.  When we reread our journals, we will begin to see, "I couldn't possibly have thought of that.  I couldn't have said that."  God's word to us will always build us up.  Our journal will never tear us down.  This is one good way to know if it's the Lord.  He will affirm and build us up because He is a God of love.  He will speak truth, but it is truth in so much love that we want that kind of truth. 

There are events of the day that we might want to journal out.  Often we journal when we're waiting at airports.  There's something about waiting at airports, now more than ever, or waiting on the plane on the runway.  Just get out your journal and ask, "Lord, why did we miss this plane?  Why did we miss the connection?  Why are we waiting?  Is there anything You'd like to say to me?  Is there anything You'd like to show me?"  It's amazing the revelations that can come in these little moments.  Use these little windows of time.  Journal wherever you are.  There's something about journaling that keeps us focused.  We can talk to the Lord, but some of us are dreamers.  We can say something to Him and then all of a sudden we're off in our own dream world before He even had a chance to reply.  Journaling is a safeguard from that. 

One of the major blocks to journaling is if a person is angry or upset with God.  The block could be, "I'm not really open to hearing anything You say."  Another block could be that we may doubt that God really wants to speak to us.  If we are childlike and really want to hear from God and expect to hear from Him, it will happen.  It will happen.  An abbot once said, "If life is worth living, it's worth logging."  I always liked that because life to me, and life to each of us, is Jesus.  Jesus is worth living.  Jesus is the Word of God.  Whatever this Life says to me, it is definitely worth logging.  It is definitely worth recording and remembering. 

Excerpt from Pillars, "Journaling," Omaha, 2001.