Nine Quotes from Charlotte Donlon on Spiritual Direction for Writers®
Earlier this year I was invited to be a guest on a creativity podcast. Here are a few quotes from our conversation on Spiritual Direction for Writers®:
One Difference between Therapy and Spiritual Direction (for Christian Clients)
“I'm always going to ask, how are you noticing God in this situation? What are you learning about God in this situation? What are you learning about yourself in this situation? I'm gonna ask those sorts of questions. So I'm not here to solve any problems. It's my job to help my clients listen to God and notice God and be curious about what God's up to.”
Why Some People Are Interested in Meeting with Spiritual Directors
“I think people are wanting to have more meaningful conversations about their faith and about their doubt and about their church experiences, and what does it look like to believe after deconstruction, or what does it look like to have an integrated life where my art and my faith—where those things are more integrated instead of in their separate buckets. And I think those may be some reasons that people are interested in spiritual direction, and maybe there are more therapists out there recommending it to people like mine did for me.”
Why Spiritual Direction is Helpful for Writers and Artists
“Every single client I have met with, and I've met with dozens of clients in one-on-one sessions and dozens more in a group spiritual direction sessions, retreats, and co-writing sessions… When I'm able to have the conversation or to hear them tell me about where they're at spiritually and where they're at creatively, there are always parallels. All the time, every single time. If there's an opening in one area, they experience an opening in the other. If there's a closing in one area, they experience a closing in the other. I haven't studied it a whole lot. This is some of the research I'm doing for my book. When I talked to a new client about this last week I told her about this parallel and said, “If at any point you feel energy and desire to pray, it will affect your writing life. And if at any point you feel energy and desire to write, it will affect your spiritual life.” It unfolds differently with every person because we're all unique with our own circumstances and winds and joys and histories and baggage.
How All of Life Is the Writing Life
“I say all of life is the writing life. Our creative soul is our soul. Our spiritual soul is our creative soul. We have one soul. And because creativity springs forth from the essence of who we are, it's very connected to who we are as spiritual beings. I think writers and artists can benefit from spiritual direction because we're having conversations about these things that are meaningful. And because it is important, especially for people who have faith and who see connections between their faith and their art to pay attention and to notice what God is doing or what they wish God was doing, or what they want God to do.”
On Desire
“We talk a lot about desire during our spiritual direction sessions. And a lot of Christians have a lot of problems with desire. I'll just say it. I see a lot of patterns come up again and again and again, and a lot of different themes come up again and again and again with different clients. And that's one reason I'm writing this book. I can't replicate what happens in a one-on-one spiritual direction session, but I can write about some of the things I've noticed that are recurring patterns and themes.”
On Pivoting
“I experienced a little bit of mania during the summer of 2020. (Now I know that a pandemic can make me manic.) I had not had any mania or significant depression since 2012. So at that point, I had to make the ethical decision to fire my clients who I was meeting with once a month, kind of long term. And I was mad because I was like, I want to be a spiritual director. This is what I love doing. I am more of who God made me to be while I do this, and why, why can't I do it now? So, because of this experience, one thing I tell my clients is to ask God for creative solutions to obstacles that you face and to be open to that and to unconventional ways of doing things.
And it was through that process of spiritually directing myself through that difficult situation when I came up with the plan. I realized we don't have to do it once a month forever. We can do three sessions. And then, after that point, people who want to keep meeting with me, it's all based on whether or not I have availability and as they have desire to keep meeting. Some people keep meeting with me once a month after those first three sessions. Some people keep meeting every two weeks. Some go away for six months and then come back to me for another three sessions. But the only sessions I'm committed to on the front end are those first three. But it has been really interesting to do the things that I suggest to my clients and to have it work. I will be honest. It’s like, okay, I'm glad that worked because I've had that conversation with about 12 people and I just realized that it helped me, too.”
How Writing Helps Us Belong
“Writing helps us belong to ourselves, others, God and the world. When we have seasons where that's disrupted, you know, our creative work is disrupted, it is going to affect us. It’s going to affect us hard ways. This is one thing I learned during that season of Covid when I had mania and my dad died from Covid. There was this long season of grief and recovery from that. That was when all of life is the writing life really came to mean something for me.
I needed to believe that everything mattered. I needed to believe that the fact that I wasn't writing anything more than an Instagram post here or there, or reading more than like three lines of a poem here and there, that I was still being formed as a writer and as an artist to do the work that I would do when it was time to do the work that I was called to do. And that really transformed my view of, of grief, honestly, and how to exist and inhabit that season as a writer. It helped me kind of let go of any expectations to do the work that I really didn't have energy to do and trust that it would come. And in the meantime, God was forming me to be who I would be when it was time to write again. And every, you know, conversation, every tear, every joy, everything forms us to be who we're gonna be when we write, and when we revise and when we read and do all the things connected to the writing life. I have to believe that's true because that's the only way I can exist as a writer without feeling bad about myself.”
Being Alone and Needing Community
“I also love to be alone. I love solitude. I love silence. My kids are grown and currently out of the house. We do have a family member staying with us right now, but I still have a whole lot of say over my time and my schedule and get to pretty much do whatever I want whenever I want. So with that, I rest a lot. I am alone a lot. I prioritize those things, but I also need to be in community and I need to feel less alone in the writing life. It's such solitary work. And we can spiral into this bad place, when we're writing and alone and isolated from others. So it is important to me to find ways to connect with other writers and, and to connect with other writers who are kind of kindreds, who view that intersection of art and faith in some of the similar ways I do.”
My Job As a Spiritual Director
“It is really important to me for people to prioritize where they're at emotionally and spiritually and creatively without needing to be anything other than that. And I think that is where my spiritual director self comes into play, because that's my goal as a spiritual director is for my clients to need God more than they need me. And to notice God's presence more than they want to be in my presence. And if I'm doing something that interferes with that, then I'm not doing my job as a spiritual director.”
Charlotte Donlon helps her readers and clients notice how they belong to themselves, others, God, and the world. Charlotte is a writer, a spiritual director, and the founder of Spiritual Direction for Writers®, Spiritual Direction for Belonging™, and Parenting with Art™. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. She’s currently writing her next book, Spiritual Direction for Writers, which will be published by Eerdmans in 2024.