Do you have a method for writing?

Several people have asked me recently about my writing method. Writing method? I don’t think so.

But, upon reflection, I can see that I probably do have a method, although it may be somewhat unorthodox.

It started when I was a child, maybe ten or eleven, when I got a diary, one of those hard-cover books with lined pages and a lock. I poured out my deepest hopes and fears on those pages, until the day my older brother found it, broke the lock and read it. From then until my twenties, I did not commit anything personal to paper. I kept writing, but only in my mind.

In my twenties, I began journaling, but I was still cautious about what I wrote down—in case there was a repeat of the diary episode. I was still processing my deepest hopes and fears, but they didn’t make it to paper; I wrote about deeper issues in my mind.

At some point, I realized that I was constantly writing in my mind, creating content that would never be committed to paper. Most anything could spark a reflection which became an essay.

 It wasn’t until my late forties that I actually wrote and submitted an essay for publication.

At lunch, sharing this with my friend, I said, “I can write about most anything,” and then, picking up a bottle of water from the table, I said glibly, “even this bottle of water.”

The next day, the bottle of water came back to me, and I wondered if, in fact, a water bottle could be a writing prompt. Then I remembered this:

At Easter Sunday Mass, the priest used a peace lily as a visual aid. He shared that this plant had come into his life his first week as pastor, twenty-seven years ago. He has divided and repotted it several times over the years, but the real key to keeping it healthy is that once a week, he fills a bottle with water and pours it into the plant.

He analogized the weekly watering of this plant with tending to our spiritual life. I realized he was mainly speaking to those people who only come to church on Easter and Christmas, but his homily made me think of how I tend to my spiritual life.

Before meeting for lunch with my friend last week, I had seen my spiritual director for our monthly meeting, one way I tend to my spiritual life. Once a year, I go on a retreat for a more in-depth watering of my spirit. Daily prayer, weekly church attendance, monthly spiritual direction and annual retreat, four components of how I tend my spirit.

And reflection—whether I am walking, knitting, baking or gardening—any quiet time can provide quality reflection time.

How about you? How do you tend your spiritual life? And do you have a particular writing method?

So, Megan, yes, even a water bottle can be the prompt for a reflection. This one is for you.

Making new friends

“You always have to be making new friends,” a friend said the other day. This friend was one of the first people I met when I moved to Michigan ten years ago; we become friends and have remained friends.

Her observation stems from some recent changes in her life—a life-long friend moved out of state, and another died—and the holes that those kinds of big changes create.

I relate to her recent experience because when I moved here, I needed to make new friends.

Making new friends requires an openness on both sides—as the new person, I need to put myself out there and be willing to try new things; and the people I am meeting need to be willing to create a space for me in their lives.

When I moved here, I tried to keep my expectations of others realistic because I knew everyone I was meeting already had full lives. I was the one who was looking for new friends, so I had to be willing to be flexible and adapt to the ways of new people. I had brought with me an understanding that it would take time to build new relationships and that no one owed me anything; I was willing to put in the time and effort necessary to create a new life.

Above all, I was grateful to and for every person who created a space for me, who reached out to me, who invited me and included me. I have been so fortunate over these past ten years to have been befriended by so many warm and welcoming people.

My friend’s comment the other day was in response to my telling her about a new friend I met on my trip last fall and how this new friend and I are planning a trip together.

One of the gifts of travel, especially on a tour, is meeting like-minded people. We share a love of travel, and shared interests are a good starting point for friendship.

New friends offer many gifts, including the invitation to look at myself through new eyes.

I remember one of the men on my tour last spring saying to me, “I don’t imagine that you are afraid of anything.”

“You don’t know me,” I replied, and I thought of some of the things I fear—starting with my fear of disappointing people and moving through my fears about being out of control and feeling vulnerable. This man, who did not know me well, saw my strength, but he did not see how my strong personality can be a mask for my insecurities.

His comment, though, made me more aware of the masks I wear and was an invitation to make myself vulnerable. I shared some of my story with him.

We often become comfortable with our current state of friendships and are rocked when something changes—a move or death or divorce. Being open to making new friends along the way can create a cushion.

More light

More light seems to be the theme of this time of year. The winter solstice was the other day, so every day will now get longer; the four candles of the Advent wreath are lit; the Menorah is getting brighter every day; and tomorrow, we celebrate Christmas—more light.

Thinking about the light of this season makes me think of where I have experienced light throughout the past year.

The first thing that comes to mind is my sister and her two grandbabies. When these babies were born in 2021 (one in November and the other in December), my sister offered to mind them two days a week. Her children took her up on her offer. She asked me to be a back-up, and I happily agreed. Spending Mondays and Wednesdays with my sister and her two grandbabies has brought a great deal of light into my life. The babies are pure joy, and my sister’s generosity inspires me. Every time I see the babies, I see some new development, and they remind me that God is always doing something new—in them and in me.

Was there something new in your life this year that was a bright spot?

This year has been one of abundant travel, starting in January with a trip to Arizona to hike in Sedona and to visit family. Then in spring, I spent a month in Europe, and then I spent a second month in Europe this fall. In between those European trips, I visited friends in Pennsylvania, and a friend from Delaware visited me. Travel expands me and reminds me of the importance of taking risks in order to keep growing.

Did you have any adventures this year?

I also completed an Internship in Ignatian Spirituality this year, a program that began in 2020. The program was intensive and arduous, and there were times when I wanted to drop out, but I persisted, and I am glad I did. I learned a lot through all the readings and lectures, and now I have joined a peer supervision group for on-going support and to continue developing my listening skills and ability to accompany people on their spiritual journeys.

What is helping you to grow spiritually?

Recently, I have been noticing how often I use the word invitation, as in “I got invited to be the guest speaker for a nonprofit fundraiser,” and “I was invited to meet with a nonprofit consulting firm,” and “I got invited to be one of the dancers in a nonprofit’s version of DWTS.” I said yes to all three of these invitations, each of which was a surprise invitation, and each of which challenges me in some way. These invitations remind me that God is still shaping me and that I am still growing into the person I was meant to be, doing what I was meant to be doing. And each invitation reminds me that the best is yet to come.

Where are you being invited to grow?

Gratitude haiku

Happy you came to

Visit me and brought a bit

Of  your energy.

Discovering beauty

A prayer I kept taped to the bathroom mirror for many years read, Lord, help me to accept the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. This prayer was given to me by a friend who was aware of my insecurities and low self-esteem.

When I first read this prayer, I gasped when I reached the word beautiful. “Ugly” was the word I had anticipated. Lord, help me to accept the truth about myself, no matter how ugly it is. That was the prayer I had been praying for most of my life, to accept my ugliness, my inner darkness, my sinfulness.

This new prayer challenged me to first find my inner beauty and then accept it.

I recently celebrated my 70^th birthday, and several friends wrote messages in their cards about the positive impact I have had on so many people.

Praying to see and accept the truth about myself seems to have shifted something inside me, because I smiled as I read each of these messages and thanked God for how I was created and the woman I have grown into.

Ask no more

I did what you asked,

and it wasn’t enough.

So, ask no more of me,

because you will be disappointed,

and I will feel demeaned.

What we hear

In the early days of our friendship, Ted asked me to go out for dinner. The conversation went something like this:

“You probably don’t want to…you will probably say ‘no,’ but would you like to go to dinner with me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s ok,” he said. “I didn’t think you would want to.”

“Ted, I said ‘yes,’” I countered, but he could not hear me. He was so certain I would say “no” that he could not hear my “yes.”

Over the next thirty years, Ted and I had many dinners together—always as friends.

He often returned to that initial conversation, saying, “Remember when I asked you out and you said, ‘no’?” I would remind him, “I said ‘yes.’” It became something of a joke among our friends, like a scene in a pantomime, because he loved to retell the story, “I asked Madeline out once and she said ‘no.’” They would say, “She said ‘yes.’”

That memory came back to me the other day when I was thinking about how open I am to hear God. I wonder if I predisposed to hear a message that may not be the message God is sending or if I shut down before something has a chance to take root. I sometimes wonder if I am exasperating God with all the times I say, “yes, but…” in the same way Ted’s retelling of our first-date conversation could exasperate me.

I know I can jump to a conclusion that shuts God out of the process, perhaps because of negative messages I have heard about what I can and cannot do, my low self-esteem, fears, anxieties, past failures, etc.

God asks us to try and try again, even when we don’t succeed at first or second or third. God asks for persistence (like the story of the widow who kept pestering the judge in Luke 18:1-8) and openness (let those who have ears hear, Matthew 11:15) to hear what God is saying.

Often these blockages are blind spots—we don’t even see them. What can help us become aware of our blind spots is to listen to what others might see in us and say about us.

Those conversations can be difficult to have. I remember the first time someone tried to tell me I was smart and capable. I thanked him, but he could tell I did not believe him, so he repeated it. “I heard you,” I said. “No, you didn’t,” he replied, and then he told me again that I was smart and capable. He could see my discomfort, because smart and capable were not words I associated with myself.

That conversation was the beginning of my questioning what I believed about myself and trying to see myself as God sees me.

I don’t know how Ted and I would have gotten on romantically (mutual friends suggest we would have had a rocky relationship because we were both independent and strong-willed), but we never had the chance to try.

The next chapter

“Don’t buy me any green bananas,” my mother likes to say. We are celebrating her 95^th birthday tomorrow, and she jokes that she might not live to see green bananas ripen. On the other hand, she bought a new dishwasher this week.

Her optimism is a constant reminder to me to welcome each day, to embrace what life brings and to look forward to whatever is coming down the road.

For the most part, my mother does what she wants; she is fiercely independent. When I once called her stubborn, she said, “Don’t call me stubborn. I am not stubborn. I just know what I want.”

And when she knows what she wants, she goes for it with gusto, not caring one whit what others think.

In many ways, I am like my mother (my younger brother likes to point to us and say, tree…apple), but I don’t have her self-assurance in going after what I want; I am easily swayed by the desires and opinions of others.

I am at a crossroads in my life. It is a familiar place because I was basically at the same place a year ago. I made a decision then, announced my decision and then did not follow through because I was dissuaded by what someone else wanted. Ugh.

Again this year, I have come to the same decision about my future, and when I told a friend, she said, “You already made that decision,” sounding like she was speaking to a fickle child. Yes, I make and remake the same decisions. I move toward a new direction and then step back; it is tedious.

I feel stuck at the crossroads. This is one of those ways I wish I was more like my mother—decide and then do it, others’ opinions be damned.

I recently found a note I had written at the beginning of last year, asking, What do I need to do, believe in or allow for myself? It was probably a message to bolster my decision, and it is still relevant.

More than enough

During my morning prayer on Christmas day, I asked, what is being birthed in me? Where is God inviting me to grow? In what ways am I being called to live more fully alive?

I went through a list of new projects I am pondering for the future or already working on, of my dreams to visit distant friends and my hopes to travel in Europe for an extended time. I thought about my writing and considered attending a workshop on writing a memoir.

As I let these ideas play out in my imagination, though, another thought popped into my head: Heal your need to please others.  

What? Is this the secret to my being able to live more fully? To give greater glory to God? Do I need to move past my fear of disappointing people and my need to please in order to give birth to my true calling?

Ugh, I sighed. It is so much easier to work on external projects than to deal with my old nemesis, that voice inside my head that tells me that I am bound to disappoint people, that I am not enough and that whatever I do is not enough.

It is a message I heard from early childhood through my teens, this idea that I am not enough. For many years, I have worked on erasing that message and replacing it with more affirming words, reassuring phrases that shift parenting from my mom to God or to my adult self, changing the messages in my head to ones that remind me that I am not only enough, but that I am more than enough—I am plenty.

But every once in a while, my you-are-not-enough button gets pushed. It happened just before Christmas when two people made demands on me that I could not meet.

Their needs were real, but I was already taxed by other responsibilities and could not do what they asked of me.

My internal critic spoke up, telling me that I was not enough, because if I were enough, I would be able to do what these people want.

I was in a snit all day and night, feeling guilty and angry. The next day, after talking it out with a friend, I got a different perspective.

That is the thing about those old messages—they are powerful and can take control in a blink of an eye.

Maybe it is time to tape up affirmations around my house and read them multiple times a day to remind myself that I am enough. Things like:

I am good enough.

I am loved.

I respect myself.

I honor my own needs and desires.

And perhaps it is time to return to Scripture passages that affirm that I am precious to God, that remind me that I am wonderfully made (Psalm 139) and a royal diadem (Isaiah 62:3).

Maybe I need to create a screen saver that says, I am an exquisite gem, and God delights in me.

Coming home

“That sounds like reading tea leaves,” my spiritual director said. We were talking about discernment and how I discerned God’s will for me in major life decisions. I had just told her the process I had used at twenty-five to decide whether to move to Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Ohio, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My decision was made when my car radio play Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John. Not very prayerful, perhaps, but I took it as a sign.

Most of my major life decisions have been made in a similar fashion. When deciding to move to l’Arche, for example, I had wanted to go to l’Arche Toronto, but then a man from Winnipeg randomly appeared and said there was a l’Arche community in Winnipeg. It was a sign.

Or when someone from Midland, Michigan, tracked me down during a time I did not even have a phone and was staying with friends. Their persistence in pursuing me for a job seemed like a sign from God. Off to Midland I went.

When I look back on my life, I look a lot like a leaf blowing in the wind.

But my life also looks like a great adventure that has taken me to places I never would have considered.

Growing up, my future seemed predetermined—after high school, I would work as a secretary for a while, then get married, have babies, be a mom and then a grandmother—all very straight-forward.

But, I stepped off that path early on. I continued working as a secretary at the FBI until I was twenty-seven. Then a new plan formed—I would become an FBI Agent. It made sense; I had worked for the Bureau for eight years and becoming an Agent was a logical move.

Then I was raped, and all plans flew out the window. I spent my thirties bouncing from one job to another and one place to another. Even decisions I made in my forties and fifties were “like reading tea leaves,” once leaving a perfectly good job because of a picture I saw in a newspaper (it was a sign). I can only shake my head!

Now I am learning more about discernment and how to make decisions that are based on what I want and need.

Moving “home” to Michigan seven years ago has felt like I dropped anchor.

I wanted to come home; I needed to come home. Since moving here, I have had offers to move to other places (often to go back to Philadelphia) and I say “no” with confidence. Even if I heard Elton John singing Philadelphia Freedom or the twenty-first century version of that song, I don’t think I would be swayed.

Now the roads I want to travel all start and end here. I can visit other places, and I look forward to the time after the pandemic when that is possible to travel safely, but this is home. This is where I have decided to be.