Read, Write, and Pray with Leticia Ochoa Adams and Catherine Ricketts: Part One
As we engage more deeply with the ancient streams of art and faith, how they inform one another, and how all of this can create profound new possibilities for belonging, we need ways to respond. The Spiritual Direction for Writers Read, Write, & Pray series uses themes and excerpts from various books, essays, and articles to help you respond to writing by a specific author.
I have not worked with Leticia Ochoa Adams or Catherine Ricketts to create this series, but I did host them for an online conversation in November 2022, which informed how I designed this particular Read, Write, & Pray series. You don’t need to own a copy of their books to complete this series, but you should definitely buy their books anyway! You can buy Leticia’s first book here. And Cat’s first book will be out in 2024.
I’m excited to invite you to explore their work in meaningful ways. I hope Read, Write, & Pray with Leticia Ochoa Adams and Catherine Ricketts helps you make space to notice God’s presence in your life and creative work. I hope it gives you opportunities to discover how making art and engaging with art help you belong to yourself, others, God, and the world.
Parts One and Two of Read, Write, & Pray with Leticia Ochoa Adams and Catherine Ricketts are available to the public at spiritualdirectionforwriters.com. Parts Three and Four are exclusive resources for those who registered for the Spiritual Direction for Writers Conversation Series with Leticia and Cat in November 2022.
Learn more about Read, Write, & Pray here.
Additional Read, Write, & Pray Resources:
Read, Write, & Pray with Leticia Ochoa Adams and Catherine Ricketts Part Two
Read, Write, & Pray with The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Read, Write, & Pray with The Great Belonging by Charlotte Donlon
Read, Write, & Pray with Leticia Ochoa Adams and Catherine Ricketts: Part One
READ
An excerpt from Our Lady of Hot Messes: Getting Real with God in Dive Bars and Confessionals
I have learned more about Jesus at bars than anywhere else…
The main thing that I learned from these regulars was how to laugh even in the middle of the awfulness of life. Even though they probably had a serious struggle with drinking considering they spent almost every day at a bar like it was a full-time job, they had a sense of humor. They taught me how to tell stories because storytelling is the main entertainment in a dive bar. I have loved storytelling my entire life, and these people helped me to get better at that craft and showed me how to tell stories honestly…
The main thing that I learned from these regulars was how to laugh even in the middle of the awfulness of life. Even though they probably had a serious struggle with drinking considering they spent almost every day at a bar like it was a full-time job, they had a sense of humor. They taught me how to tell stories because storytelling is the main entertainment in a dive bar. I have loved storytelling my entire life, and these people helped me to get better at that craft and showed me how to tell stories honestly.
The honesty they had about who they were was the holiest thing I ever saw. It was the Church that I had heard about my entire life but had not really seen in action. They showed up every day as themselves and not as some fake version of who they were. They did not deny their struggles or the many ways those struggles impacted their lives but they accepted themselves as they were. I now show up to my prayers with that same kind of commitment to honesty about myself. I do not hide from God. He already knows who I am, what my failings are, and where I struggle. So why hide it? I show up at the confessional the way those men showed up at the bar every day: with honesty and like it’s my job.
WRITE
What place has taught you about Jesus? It can be a place that some might find unconventional. Or it can be your sixth grade Sunday School classroom. It can be good things you learned about Jesus or bad things you learned about Jesus. There are no limits.
Freewrite for at least 10 minutes about this place that came to mind. Describe the place, the people, why you learned what you learned.
PRAY
Using Leticia Ochoa Adams’s appreciation of honesty in spirituality as a model, pray a very honest prayer to God, even if you aren’t sure God is listening.
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Leticia Ochoa Adams is a born and raised Tejana who loves bluebonnets, longhorns and Texas shaped Waffles. She writes and speaks on faith, grief and suicide loss because after the loss of her oldest son Anthony to suicide she saw a lack of space for honest grieving and acknowledgement of trauma so she set out to create one.
Inspired by other women who have a passion and gift for storytelling like Jen Fulwiler, Nora McInerny and Stephanie Wittles Wachs who all make stories on their own terms, Leticia set out to do the same which is to use storytelling as the means to change the world’s idea of what it means to grieve, be a mother and change dysfunctional patterns that have been set for generations.
Leticia believes that this is how we change the world, by facing our shit and healing from it.
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 for writers, and the founder of Spiritual Direction for Writers™ and Parenting with Art™. She is also the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University where she studied creative nonfiction with Paula Huston and Lauren F. Winner. She holds a certificate in spiritual direction from Selah Center for Spiritual Formation. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. She is currently writing her next book, Spiritual Direction for Writers, which will be published by Eerdmans in 2024.