Journalling: Journey in the Imagination
This is the seventh in a series of posts written in mid 2025.
I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guardpost.
There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint. Then the Lord said to me,
“Write my answer plainly on tablets, so that a runner can carry the correct message to others.
In Shanghai, China, there is a historic garden called Yu Yuan, with a fish-filled lake and a pretty bridge leading over the water to a teahouse. This bridge has nine zig-zag turnings, which may reflect the ancient belief that evil spirits cannot turn corners. But our local guide suggested it was a means of slowing the traveller down, giving their body an opportunity to delight in the flashing gold of the koi carp below, and their spirit time to breathe in a moment of serenity. I really liked that thought, and it reminds me of the wise words of Walter Brueggeman about our needing to slow down and find space for imagining possible alternatives: “The speed at which we live crowds out the space for imagination to expand into alternative possibilities.” Psychologists have found that Imagination is a mental capacity that enables us to transcend present circumstances and construct alternative versions of reality. It is nurtured by various resources: books, art, education, travel and discussions with others. These build our knowledge of events and places that we have never experienced. (Heshmat 2002).
A journal is written material based on reflection. Everyone reflects, some do so instinctively due to temperament, others in response to a difficulty or incentive. The notion of journalling has been around for centuries, millennia in fact. From ancient Japanese pillow books o the Confessions of the Puritans can be added chroniclers, pilgrims, apologists, and prisoners. Journaling is in fact a discipline that favours reflection. A 1984 history of diaries by Mallon says: Writing is too good an idea to be left to authors. No one has had an easy life, and a diary is rarely kept just for oneself.
Business consultant Niaw de Leon describes it this way:
Journaling works. It alters the way you perceive time by helping you clarify your past, crystallize your present, and chart your future.
These days, the practice of writing and keeping a journal is observed by those concerned with professional, creative, personal and spiritual development. Many people have got a lot from journalling. Jennifer Moon of the University of Exeter (Moon, 1999) claims that people don’t change unless they do something reflective:
I consider that journal writing is closely associated with the extensive counselling work that I have done over the years; it has been a support and a resource and a means of exploration.
I recently took up the project of transcribing a diary I wrote in 1999 to record the things we saw and did while on an 8-month exchange in Bristol England. The exchange with another medical family meant Dr Chris Shaw took over Ric’s Northland rural practice for seven months. and he worked at Chris’s practice in central Bristol. In both cases, the children were enrolled in local schools and our families joined a nearby church. We paid each other’s mortgage and drove each other’s car; we even wore the Shaws’ winter coats and boots. Every weekend in England we travelled, sometimes just for an afternoon so Ric could work. But about half the time, we travelled away from the city, visiting castles and cottages, climbing peaks and enjoying wildlife. 
Every two or three weeks I would send home a handwritten – and later typed – missive about our travels and discoveries. These were Xeroxed for the grandparents in NZ and the masters were kept. Over the months they got longer, and occasionally images were included; this was in the days before digital camera so the images were usually postcards or the kids’ art.
It’s a great joy to be revisiting these people and places as I transfer the handwritten material to the computer with help of AI (Pen to Print). As I review these pages, I find they are a sort of journal of our experiences, which provides the opportunity for current self-reflection as well as noting past geographical and cultural discoveries. Many times a specific scene will come to mind, not just a memory but a reexperiencing of my feelings at the time, such as curiosity, loneliness, or relegation.
In a sense the process of rewriting a diary shares a lot with the journalling practices from different times and places mentioned already. But it is in my life of faith that journaling has been of most benefit, as a spiritual practice, nurturing my spirit and broadening my prayer life. Adele Calhoun, the doyen of Spiritual Practices writes in her “Handbook”: “
On the pages of a journal. in private moments, we can take tentative steps into the truth and examine our feelings, hurts, ideas and struggles before God. Over time repetitious themes, weaknesses, compulsions, hopes and concerns emerge. We begin to recognise our besetting sins, limitations and desires. During times of transition, travel, loss, illness and decision-making, journalling can provide a way of processing strong emotions, deep frustrations and private struggles. We sound off before God, so we don’t have to sound off before others.”
And here is how a Kiwi spiritual director describes this spiritual practice:
In our journal, we can reflect on a key moment, or explore a scripture passage to see what it .might have to say about our current circumstances. We can track our path through grief or transition and name the signposts of grace which emerge from the darkness of such times. We can cover a page with question marks or sketch a rainbow of thankyous, we can write a psalm of lament or wound the page with slashes of red in anger, we can find ourselves filled with unexpected joy as we discover a fresh truth in a familiar Gospel or in the lyrics of an old hymn. Small wonder then, that the act of journalling can be likened to prayer, for in the process of engaging in depth with elements of our daily experience, we reveal more of the truth of who we are to ourselves, and bring that truth to God.
(Pickering, Sue: Spiritual Direction 2008).
And remember there’s no need for beautiful hand-writing – God doesn’t mind!
My cousin is a genealogist who inherited our Presbyterian grandmother Flora’s diaries, written every day of her adult life, about 70 years. I have never seen the collection, but it records everything from what the annual wool cheque amounted to, and what crops were being planted on the farm, through the sadnesses of miscarriages and other deaths. Cuz has been writing it up for decades, and I can’t wait to see the transcript when its finished. That’s one reason why I have sorted and saved boxes of hard copy stuff ,and multiple digital files, documenting my own journey in life and faith. Like my Dad, who in his eighties wrote a memoir of his 1940’s Prisoner of War experiences, I want to pass on what I’ve experienced and learned, to my mokopuna and their descendants. But there will need to be a process of simplifying, categorising and imaginative theorising to produce something engaging; perhaps these blogs are a start.
Do you keep a journal? if so, how do you ‘harvest’ it? If not, why not start one? It will help you capture the ‘holy’ moments of the everyday.
