The Creative Notebook

While shopping today, I was pricing compact flash cards.  My camera is one of the few that takes that kind of card.  I take a lot of pictures.  Not only do I take them of my kids, but I like to carry my camera with me all the time and take pictures of things that catch my eye.  It’s sort of a photo-journaling thing, I guess.  I like to include some of them in my journal and use them in collage and altered books.  Try taking your camera with you for a day.  Take pictures of things that catch your eye, or things you want to journal aobut later.  Include some of the pictures in your journal.  Tape or glue them in.  I think you’ll enjoy adding this visual aspect to your writing, and you’ll have a quick reminder of things you wanted to write about.

Since my son has been sick, I’ve been overloaded with doctors, doctors advice, prescriptions, tests, technicians, and nurses.  And that doesn’t even take into consideration dealings with the school and insurance companies.

My grandmother’s best friend’s husband(did you follow that?) died because he had a faulty defibrillator implanted in him.  She is now in litigation and negotiations with the company that made it and the doctors that treated him because she made many, many trips to his specialist hours away because of problems with the machine.  She kept a journal of each and every doctor, emergency room , hospital, and testing visit writing down word for work what each person told her and what treatment was given.  She wrote a log of nurses checking on him and what they found and added to his chart.  She thought this way she could keep it all straight.  Little did she know that because of a faulty defibrillator, her husband would die, and these journals would be admitted as evidence in the suit against both the manufacturers and the doctor/hospital.

Now, hopefully my son’s problem won’t get to any where near that point, but after our first visit to the specialist and a few miscommunications with him and his nurses, I’ve decided to do the same thing.  I’m also hoping it can help me keep all the medications and tests straight as well as give me something busy to do while I’m at the hospital worrying about him. 

Keep him in your prayers, and I’ll let you know how this journaling works out for us.

Is Personal Journal Writing A Spiritual Tool - Can It Offer Spiritual Direction?
By Mary K Delurgio

You might wonder how writing about your experiences can be a valuable spiritual tool. Perhaps you think that spiritual direction is complete when you have found a teacher, a religion, a discipline using it to instruct, guide and re-enforce your inner commitment. As essential as these may be to you, Life’s questions and opportunities to grow in Wisdom are embedded in your daily living, and for you to feel truly involved with your spiritual development you must draw upon your particular life circumstance for clarity and depth.

The introspective method of keeping a journal can place you in your living world where all of the questions about the meaning and mystery of Life reside. A life explored on paper will mirror and solidify internal processes. Honest self-exploration allows you to examine events, important questions, pride-filled difficulties, fears, struggles, doubts, resistance to change, attachments.

Through the centuries saints and mystics have used a diary format to record their inner experiences, their concerns and conflicts, their developing insight. Many of their writings have been a rich source of inspiration for us. Today journaling is considered to be a valuable self-help tool and even young people in school are encouraged to record their feelings as a way of making sense of themselves and the world they live in. Personal journal keeping is now very commonplace.

All forms of self-exploration on paper are helpful, however different approaches to investigating human experience yield different results. If journal writing is used solely to blow off steam, to complain, to vent self-pity, frustration, disappointment and the like, then the writing method serves simply as a temporary release. That approach usually creates a circular situation where, for example, “I hate my job, I hate my job I really, really hate my job”, expressed over and over again comes to nothing but the release of frustration without offering insight into the real problem.

Journaling can have different goals. Some writers use their journal as a way to keep a record of the events of the day, week or month. This method is more like a reporting of facts, often without emphasis on reactions and responses. Others have used the diary as a place to record their feelings along with events. Some journal writing explores the entire history of a life with the intention of “connecting all of the dots” in order to understand how the present is influenced by the past. Still other approaches use writing as a search for deeper meaning and for inner Wisdom which seem to lie beneath the surface of the everyday interpretation.

Journals are also used as a way to enhance spiritual awareness training, as a way to keep focused on the commitment to a particular discipline. These entries act as a spiritual positioning in a daily practice. Many writers dedicate each day with inner intention as they record their thoughts and feelings, their prayer life, their conflicts and insights

When the desire to understand the meaning of personal experience motivates journal writing, much can be learned about what living in this world really means. There are wonderful published works of individuals who, in the process of exploring their lives, have come to express beautiful prose and poetry, often using metaphor to capture an inner reality. Other creative forms such as the visual arts and music, theater and dance, fiction as well as non-fiction, philosophy and social movements have emerged from the result of intense personal journaling. And is all of this “spiritual”? Oh yes. Giving form to that which surfaces from an inner Source is indeed an ongoing manifestation of spirit expressed in human experience.

In the sixties, Dr. Ira Progoff, renowned depth psychologist and author, now deceased, developed a comprehensive way to explore the many dimensions of a life – relationships, conflicts, questions, past experiences, matters of faith, health, work, family life, spiritual reality. His Intensive Journal is a complete in-depth approach to the inner process of spiritual and psychological development. Ira Progoff is the grandfather of modern journal keeping and the effectiveness of his work made a big impact in mental health and faith communities. Over the years his method of exploring all facets of a life has been incorporated by many individuals into different formats. At A Journal Workshop will provide you with an in-depth description of his journaling process. I met this inspired Life teacher in 1970 and dedicated myself to learning his philosophy and methodology. My life deepened, my insight sharpened and my ability to organize and utilize the context of an entire life history has changed my spiritual and psychological direction. I began leading journal participants thirty five years ago and out my deep work and that of countless others in my groups, Wisdom led me to write Our Journey to the Sky – A Guide to the Process of Spiritual Formation and the companion workbook Keeping A Spiritual Journal.

Mary K DeLurgio, MFT
Trusting the emerging process of inner wisdom and its schedule for insight and inspiration was a 25 year project completed now as Our Journey to the Sky – A Guide to the process of Spiritual Formation. During this extended period, Mary K DeLurgio led hundreds of personal journal keeping, self exploration workshops and classes. Observing the life process of these participants as well as her own has led to deep insight into the natural process of spiritual formation at work in the ordinary life of any human being. Currently, using her book as a manual, she is leading an ongoing group as they develop their spiritual awareness using journal writing techniques. She is a practicing psychotherapist living in Southern California with her husband and she is the mother of four sons. Spiritual Tools

By Daniel Lesser 

Journaling can help reduce the stress in your family in several ways. For one, by lowering your own stress levels, you will get along better with your family. You will be a happier person which will, in turn, make everyone else happier to be around you.

You will also learn to deal with family situations better and can teach the rest of the family ways of better managing their stress. Through journaling, you can also learn a new appreciation for your family and this will show when you are around them.

Use the following prompts to help you use your journal to reduce family stress.

“My family makes me feel stressed by…” “My family deals with stress by…” “Sometimes I get angry at my family when…” “Sometimes I resent my family when…” “If I could change anything about my family, it would be…” “One thing that would make my family better is…”

You can work your way through these prompts at any pace you wish. Be sure to keep an eye on your stress levels. Note how you feel when writing about each situation. Does writing help you “let go” and release certain emotions and feelings that could be causing you stress?

This same plan for reducing stress in your family works for your friends and your workplace. Often we get so busy in our lives that we never take the time to really think about things that are bothering us or worrying us. We just push it further back in our minds and these things keep building up. This is basically what stress is. Journaling will help you bring these things out so that they can be acknowledged and dealt with.

This tidbit from another blogger. Enjoy!

Keeping a “Limited” Journal: a “While-People-are-Boarding-the-Plane” Journal

Here are some links to articles about keeping a journal for your child, and about encouraging kids to journal.

Capture Memories of Your Child With a Journal

Help Your Child Learn to Write Well

Teach Your Child to Keep a Journal

Waiting Adoptive and Foster Families and LifeBooks

Creating your child’s legacy journal

If you find any more good links I can add to the list, let me know and I’ll add them and give you credit for finding them.

A junk journal.   Here’s the link:  http://www.junkcreation.com/junk-journal

The owner of this blog is keeping track of what and the amount of stuff they throw away each day in order to live a more planet friendly life.  There’s also some fun stuff there about re-using things you would normally throw away–which I’m all for and love to do in my artwork.

It’s so hot here!  We’ve been under a heat advisory for two days now.  I remember when I was a kid, and even heat advisories didn’t stop me from playing outside all day.  I used to get up early, and go sit on the porch to enjoy what cool air I could get that morning, because I knew the day would be a scorcher.

I used to love to ride my bike on days like this to catch a breeze.  And, I loved looking for those little tar bubbles on the road that pop up when the pavement gets really hot and ride over them with my bike and pop them.  I guess it was the poor kid’s bubble wrap. 

What do you remember most about the dog days of summer and being a kid? 

I like to write these sort of things down.  Some day I won’t be here any more and I’d love for my grandchildren and great grandchildren to read the silly things I did when I was a kid.  Or for my kids to see that some of the feelings they have as parents or husbands or wives are perfectly normal and that Mom had the same worries too.

Take time at least once a week to sit down and reflect.  These entries for me are usually a “what’s gone on so far in my week”, but today the heat advisory brought my reflection back to my childhood. 

Did you post a midweek reflection on your blog?  Click Mr. Linky and let us know.