My Mini Identity Crisis

as a Spiritual Writer

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

Several years ago, a writer friend of mine who has since become a soul friend, invited me and two other writers to spend a few days at her cabin writing. Between the four of us women, we were raising fourteen children. We were also holding down big jobs, tending to marriages, navigating complicated relationships with our aging parents, and diligently showing up to ourselves, our friends, and our community, not to mention to therapy to keep healing and growing. We all wrote in the margins of life, and the cabin time was an oasis to center our writer selves, hunker down into the writing cave, gain momentum, and roll around in the pleasure of creation.

Giddy, we drove away from our busy calendars and to-do lists toward a cabin next to water with no internet access to write in proximity to each other. It was absolutely obnoxious how much writing we got done when we didn’t have to take care of anyone but ourselves. And at night we gathered on comfy couches and talked about love, sex, faith, doubt, parenting, aging, healing, and getting free until late in the evening. We also talked about writing in general and spiritual writing in particular.

The host took a risk on a hunch because we didn’t all know each other. The experiment worked. It was nothing short of transformational, and we have worked to coordinate our calendars for a few days here and there as often as our busy lives allow. Every time we leave nourished, inspired, and more ourselves. Years later we have seen each other through job changes, graduate school programs, divorce, cancer, and multiple books published and hundreds of pages written. Our friendship has become one of our great romances, and we are grateful.

I am also grateful for apps that support asynchronous connection like Marco Polo and Voxer, where you can speak when you have time (without getting interrupted!) and listen when you have time. This group started a Voxer thread after our first cabin trip, where we have been connecting between writing weekends for years. We named the group Pinning Butterflies after Ann Patchett’s comparison of the writing process to murdering a butterfly. In The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, Patchett articulates an unwritten novel in her mind as “a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.”

But then, when she attaches words to the story in her mind, and pins those words to the page, she kills it. The beauty dissipates. It feels like failure. And yet we keep doing it anyway.

Patchett was referring to novels, and when we are talking about spiritual writing, is the murder of butterflies even more severe? Of the four cabin writers, my writing is the least overtly religious. I have written several books that I believe are deeply spiritual yet intentionally refrain from using religious language. My last book on trans athletes is loudly secular nonfiction. Yet even there I am noticing that my ability to engage with religious language to debunk harmful theology and use spiritual language to invite cis folks toward inner work are valued skills.

Some days straying away from spiritual writing feels like avoiding conflict. Some days it just feels simpler and lighter to opt out and write outside the genre, just pinning butterflies instead of pinning a butterfly that is a metaphor for resurrection, if you will. When writing within the Empire of America, is there a new layer to attaching words to ideas when those ideas have a God layer? How do we as spiritual writers and writers who believe creating is a spiritual practice today use words to create, hold, and invite others into a space where some things can remain messy and beautiful, formless, unique, and beyond our imagination?

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I love words. I have built my career around words. I believe in the power of words. And my relationship with spiritual words is fraught. Patrice Gopo and I recently turned in a manuscript we co-edited to Broadleaf books. It is an anthology of essays on the craft of spiritual writing. It will come out in April of 2027, and it is really beautiful. At one point in the process, the press changed the title from Whispers in the Dark to Holy the Words. I cringed at the word holy. It felt religious. Righteous. What if that word is a barrier to a writer who would benefit from reading the pages within?

I have a very complicated relationship with spiritual writing in part because it can be so powerful, and power can be used for good or ill. I fell in love with theology before I fell in love with spirituality. It hooked into my brain before dropping down to my body. I can name books that have become my friends and phrases that have become my compass. I deeply believe in the power for words for good.

I have also seen and felt the devastation of spiritual and religious words being used in abusive ways to isolate, other, and dehumanize. Religious words have inspired humans to do so much harm. White Christian Nationals use words and certainty to make beautifully complex things too static and simple. It feels like murdering butterflies, and in my overwhelm and pain and fatigue of it all I can shy away from spiritual writing. Yet I also don’t want to give them the last word. So maybe the place to start and return to again and again is a confession of sorts, a naming of the harm that has been done with spiritual language.

And then, with that humility, can we move at the speed of trust toward words that deepen liberatory theology and transformational spiritual pilgrimage toward healing and self-awareness and communion with what is bigger and more mysterious than us? Words can do harm, and words can heal. Stories can attempt to steal our dignity and stories can restore it. Maybe spiritual writers are called to dwell in the tension between harm and repair and write from within. Maybe we can write in a way that sets words and ideas free.

How can we attach words to mystery in a way that keeps it mysterious? How can we order words on a two-dimensional page that encourages spaciousness over constriction? How can we use words in a way that keeps the intangible intangible, the wonderful full of wonder, and the mysterious full of mystery? Can we find ourselves in the field beyond Google and AI, held by the unanswerable? How do we dwell in the places that are so dark they become luminous and in that place, listen to the whispers? How do we write in the spiritual realm in a way that speaks truth to power, prioritizes love over obedience every time, says what needs to be said, responds with courage and convection all while keeping big things big and shimmering things shimmering?

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The first time I ventured to the cabin with three other writers, it was so remarkable that not only did we want to repeat it, and we did and continue to, we also wanted to share it with others. We planned to invite other spiritual writers to gather, maybe once a month to write together and support each other. A local literary hub offers spaces to groups like that, and when we applied for space, they declined our request because we were doing spiritual writing. It stung. It was an explicit moment of being brushed off that felt so familiar from years of straddling the false dichotomous worlds of spiritual and literary writing. We were a diverse group of progressive writers who aligned with their inclusive values and were specifically looking for a space outside a religious building to write outside the weight of the religious institutions. And they said no. It made us feel like our writing was not valued there, like we were second class citizens because we were spiritual writers. But we also felt the weight of the inheritance of spiritual writing that has done harm. It’s the tension that rightly keeps me up at night.

One of Patrice and my hopes for the book is that its pages create a space for spiritual writers to come, dwell, and feel welcome in community. We hope it nourishes, resources, and encourages writers of all genres who understand writing as a discipline that illuminates. As we navigate the often prickly false lines of secular versus sacred, spiritual versus religious, conservative versus progressive, we hope the book gently reminds us, myself included, that we are not alone, that words matter, and art matters, and talking back to oppressive religious language matters.

I am curious to observe my own body and thoughts in the publication process of Holy the Words. I hope to bravely claim my origin of being raised by badass liberation theologians and revolutionary feminist nuns. I hope instead of hiding from those who would dismiss me, I can stand in the undeniable history of harm religious language has done and is doing and use my voice to tell beautiful and true stories that bridge to more belonging. We’ll see. I’ll keep you posted.