Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction by Dinty W. Moore

Author:Dinty W. Moore [Moore, Dinty W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: epub, ebook
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2010-08-11T06:00:00+00:00

WRITING THE SPIRITUAL ESSAY

“I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?”

— Anne Lamott

If the essayist’s primary charge is to dive headlong into the uncertainty, it is no wonder that writing about spiritual matters has always been front and center in the personal essay tradition.

The Confessions of St. Augustine, written in the fifth century by a Christian bishop and theologian, may indeed be the world’s first memoir, and the truth is that all of these centuries later, the book remains powerful and startling.

Why?

Because Augustine was honest. He didn’t claim that his Christian beliefs were uncomplicated or that he fully understood every difficult aspect of his faith. He went straight to the doubt and contradictions.

The spiritual memoir may exist within a specific religious tradition — Judaic, Islamic, Sufic, Hindu, Christian, Zoroastrian — or it may be rooted entirely outside of organized religion. There are, in fact, spiritual writings from atheists and agnostics, from those who embrace New Age philosophies, and from those so uncertain of their basic beliefs that they have no idea where to place themselves.

What unites the spiritual essay, however, is the quest to explore life’s basic mysteries: Is there a God (or Higher Power, or unexplained force that knits the universe together)? How do we know? What should we do with our doubt or certainty about what this God or power expects of us? If we are to live our beliefs, what is the proper way to act?

Philip Zaleski, editor of the annual Best American Spiritual Writing anthology, has defined the genre in a similar fashion, saying that spiritual writing “deals with the bedrock of human existence — why we are here, where we are going, and how we can comport ourselves with dignity along the way.”

All that is needed to write a spiritual essay is honest curiosity about the questions that surround us. Speaking for myself, I can’t imagine how anyone could not have that curiosity and some measure of uncertainty. Faith, by definition, means we don’t know for sure.

But perhaps there are those people who feel one hundred percent certain.

Well, then, let me say this:

If you feel altogether sure that every question and mystery can be answered by following the teachings of a particular religious tradition, or, alternately, if you are steadfast and entirely secure in your atheism, then enjoy the benefits of your certainty, sleep well at night, use your confidence to do good in the world, and don’t bother tackling the spiritual essay.

If you are conflicted, however …

Ah, that essay is just waiting to be written.

A Note on Spiritual Conflict

Understand that the spiritual essay is not meant to be a forum to attack the beliefs of others. The conflict within a spiritual essay is not between different religious traditions, alternate interpretations of scripture, or competing opinions on which faith is the one true faith. The conflict of the spiritual essay is internal. Most often, it has to

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