Journaling can help us focus our spiritual journey

Fifteen months ago, my eye doctor told me I had cataracts on both eyes.

One month ago, she told me the cataracts were at a point where they could be removed and my eyesight likely would be much improved.

Clearer focus and brighter colors are in my future, and my visual astigmatism might be a thing of the past. That sounds like a very good deal to me.

So sometime in May or June, I’ll have those cataracts removed and look forward (pun intended) to much-improved eyesight.

I wish our spiritual journeys could improve as easily.

My own spiritual pilgrimage has never been smooth or straight. I’m sure God must feel I’m like herding cats.

For those of you who care about such things, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, just a few days from now. (While today’s column focuses on a Christian tradition, those of you who are from a different faith tradition or are seeking faith in your own unique way still might find a few notions useful.)

Next Sunday, I’ll teach an adult class in a Spokane church on “Journaling Our Way Through Lent.” Journaling is a tool that can help us refocus our spiritual journeys.

I can’t guarantee it will provide clearer focus or brighter colors, but successful cataract surgery isn’t a guarantee, either.

My experience with journaling is pockmarked with stuttering starts and stops. But I keep coming back to it, because I intuitively know it can offer both focus and structure for my journey.

Spiritual journaling is much more than keeping a daily diary. Diaries can be filled with information that is important (at the time especially).

Journals tend to focus on the long-term spiritual growth of a person, one day at a time. You may not write in your journal on a daily basis, but that doesn’t devalue it.

At their most helpful, I see journal entries as snapshot pictures of your fuller life story. Sometimes the pictures are out of focus; sometimes they focus on what seemed important at the time but now you wonder why.

Each picture represents a glimpse of who you were, who you are, or who you want to be.

Journal-keeping can provide both structure and focus for our spiritual journeys. The structure is found in the simple telling of part of your story on a given day, be it a long telling or a short telling.

Journaling is a very private experience in many ways. But it also invites us to depend on more than ourselves.

Two things are helpful in my own journey.

My focus, or refocus much of the time, is found in the discovery process called “discernment.” It is also found in the recognition of how “prevenient grace,” as 18th-century theologian John Wesley called it, is at work in our lives.

Discernment is a simple yet profound act of paying attention to the movement of God in our lives and the lives of others.

It can occur as you seek wisdom privately or in a group. It may come through questions significant to you, or affirmations that “ring a bell” with you.

Prevenient grace is a term coined by Wesley to describe the grace of God that “comes before” us, that is seen later as preparing our way through a certain time in our lives. I like to call it “hindsight” grace, because we often see grace acting in our lives only in hindsight.

I spoke earlier of cataract surgery to reflect the sort of change that journaling can bring to our journeys. Feel free to find your own metaphor.

Simply consider the pluses of journaling your way through Lent. It’s only six weeks of trying a new focus.

What do you have to lose? Better yet, what do you to have to gain?