Spiritual Disciplines for the Soul: Journaling

William Gaultiere, Ph.D.

In a way the Bible is like Jesus’ journal – it’s all about him. The Eternal Word was with God in the beginning and spoke the creation and the Scriptures into existence. Then in the incarnation he entered time and set aside his divine privileges and accepted human limitations forever. He discovered himself and his mission in the Old Testament and then he lived out his life accordingly. He obeyed the law. He prayed the Psalms. He fulfilled prophecy. He brought past and future history to its culmination.

Writing in a journal is an essential way of paying attention to our relationship with God over the course of our lives. It’s a way of getting at the heart and soul of our lives. It’s far deeper and more relational than a typical diary. In a spiritual journal we put down in writing our answers two questions:
      1.  What is going on with me that I want to share with God?
      2.  What do I sense that God is saying or doing in my life?

Writing about out our interactions with God in this way helps us to see in concrete examples how our life stories are imbedded in God’s larger unfolding story of creation and salvation. In specific situations I can see that indeed God is active in my life and My Story is wonderful because it is a part of God’s Story.

St. Augustine (354 – 430) provided the first recorded example of a spiritual journal, published as The Confessions of St. Augustine. He records the account of God working in his life through his youthful debauchery, conversion to Christianity, battles with sin, and growing devotion to Christ. His detailed self-examination before God helped him to notice and interpret the movements of the Spirit in his everyday life. When I was on retreat with Howard Baker, a professor in the area of spiritual formation and a Spiritual Director, he told me that he thinks of a spiritual journal like St. Augustine’s as being a “Fifth Gospel”, so to speak. As we go back and re-read our journal entries we realize that they form a sacred story of the Good News of Jesus’ life in your or I.

In the Psalms David show us how to journal a “Fifth Gospel.” David opens his heart to God and he listens to what God has to say him. And in between the times that David is talking or God is talking they are quietly together, sometimes indicated with the word “Selah,” which means, “pause and reflect.” David and the other Psalmists share with God a rich variety of experience: longing for God, songs of thanksgiving and praise, laments of grief, fear of danger, angry curses for enemies, complaints about God’s absence, and responses to God’s self-revelations.

Whatever we’re experiencing there is a Psalm to help us journal our feelings and form them into the prayers and songs that make up our stories with God. Some people journal like this most every day. Others journal in times of difficulty, for their retreats or spiritual direction appointments, or when they sense God wanting to give them a special message. As part of our Christ’s Ambassadors group each week we’ll write in our journals about our journey with Christ.