Any Spiritual Journal-ers Here?

[Maximilian75]

If so, do you follow a format, a basis for your entries?

Mine is something like

-things I am grateful for today
-Reflection on the Daily Readings
-Reflections on the book of the bible through which I am working at the time
-Reflection from another book (Saint’s life, devotional)
-Look back at my journal entry from a year back
-General inercessions/journaling/worries/'talking to God"

 

[pianistclare]

Mine is nearly always some new insight or account of an inspired event.
I used to have to write reflections for the school, and I just don’t anymore.

 

[Shakuhachi]

Since 1977.

I have tried different things including the Ira Progoff Intensive Journal Workshop. But I prefer a free for all. I just write whatever I feel like. Things of a more poetic of prayerful nature I indent. It has been my therapist. I now have a stack of them in my closet. It is sometimes interesting to go back 20 years or even to the beginning.

 

[Seagull]

Max, you sound like a regular Thomas Merton !
I do jot poetry …
even then, though, I don’t have the time to really create -
not to mention to reread - reflect - and fine tune.
So it has to be a pretty good thing that strikes me -
esp. if I’m to remember it hours later, near a notebook.

But I do have some quality stuff.

A word of warning. Be careful not to post on internet.
I totally lost most of my major things - when someone’s website crashed -
I hadn’t bother to have any second copy, back up -
JOB - the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

 

[Maximilian75]

Ha, you really overstate my journaling quality. But thank you

 

[CRM_Brother]

I’ve been spiritual journaling since the beginning of my religious formation. It is regularly prescribed by superiors to help develop spiritual dialogue among aspirants to the religious life… I tried following a format in the beginning, but I all too often found myself trying to force it. Mainly I just transcribe my interior dialogue with the Lord onto the page. I’ve found that if I try to force it, many times it was not the Holy Spirit speaking onto the page, but my own pride as to what I wanted to write.

 

[Ann_Stanton]

I use to journal, but years of teaching high school English destroyed my love for a journal. Kept wanting to correct the writing. I am glad you all are doing this to improve your lives.