Some use notebooks to merely record their thoughts. An even better way is to write down inspiring passages of scripture and the words of saints.
My heart is overflowing with a good theme; I recite my composition concerning the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
Psalm 45:1
How about starting a notebook?
I’ve been a routine user of notebooks for writing what I call ‘daily pages’. I was initially inspired by a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The book is for those who want to recapture or reclaim a lost sense of creativity. The book itself is like a 12-step program for writers and artists, and anyone who wants to become ‘more creative’. One of the important elements of her program is to begin keeping a daily journal called ‘daily pages’. Daily pages is simply sitting down at a sheet of paper, staring down into the abyss, and writing your thoughts. It’s a good exercise when you’re blocked, or you’re in between projects. And it’s good to do it daily.
Where the daily pages have been shaping for me is they are becoming not a stream of consciousness of my thoughts but a collection of quotes and passages of reading that inspire me, particularly in matters of spiritual practice.
Setting Your Mind on Things Above
How many times do you see a passage in a book, or a friend texts you a passage, or you come across something that inspires you? Where do you put it? Where do you keep it? This is where the ‘living notebook’ becomes an important part of spiritual life.
St Paul writes,
Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3
There is so much going on in the world, so many issues, so much media. The futurist Alvin Toffler wrote a book that he entitled Future Shock. It’s a report on the rapid change of technology that eventually would give one a kind of shock of living in the present while living in the future as well. There are times when I feel like I am in that future shock. And there is the shock of mass information that is all part of this future shock. I mean it’s likely that we are currently living in the singularity: what Ray Kurzweil called a state in technological growth when machine intelligence reaches the level of human intelligence.
Nevertheless, there is so much of the manufactured world, what Baudrillard called ‘simulacra’, that is in our faces every moment of the day. Just think of how many devices you have in our home right now … How are we to process all this information? And what is it doing to us, this 24/7 barrage of ‘news’? How are we not to be distracted by it all and instead attempt to live in a way where we set our minds on the things above, not on earthly things? Starting a notebook is one way to do this.
Look what one finds embedded in the Matrix film …
Your Notebook For Inspiration
While writing in my notebook, I paused to search for some points of inspiration and stumbled on an article that Father Seraphim Rose wrote about St Patrick. The article itself was inspiring enough, but there was one quote in particular that I needed to write down.
Father Nicholas Deputation says:
“When I get into a very low mood, very discouraged and despondent, then I open one of my notebooks, and I begin to read something that inspired me. It is almost guaranteed that when I read something that once inspired me, I will again become inspired because it is my own soul that was at one time being inspired and now I see that it was something which inspired me then and can nourish me now also. So it’s like an automatic inspiration to open up something that inspired me before.”
This kind of notebook keeping that Father Nicholas Deputation describes is a qualitatively different kind of exploration of the self and God than simply keeping one that merely recounts a current or stream of thoughts. What Father Nicholas explains is beautiful: that the soul that wrote down the quote or passage at some point in the past is the same soul that seeks inspiration at a given present moment; and thus the journal captures a state of one’s soul inspired that can be inspired in the same way again.
Note also the word ‘inspire’: the key to the notebook is inspiration—a way of keeping one’s mind above the distractions of the manufactured world by finding and collecting that which inspires. And ultimately we know who is the One who inspires us through the quotes and passages and the keeping of the notebook: the Holy Spirit Himself.
Thomas Merton’s Notebook
As a way of closing this little article, here’s a quote that has made its way into probably several of my notebooks. One of my favourite quotes from Thomas Merton (who is quoted as saying, “My best writing has always been in journals”) …
There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that his change is a recovery of that which is deepest most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
The notebook is one way of documenting this becoming of our true selves. It’s a way of seeking this “newness for renewal,” and “a liberation of creative power.” To gather and write down and re-read inspiring quotes, scriptures, and passages of saints is a way of seeking “to awaken in ourselves” that force that changes us from within. It’s one way of “recovering” that which is deep, “original, and most personal in ourselves.”
What kind of notebook is best?
Anything notebook will do. I would recommend a hard copy notebook. It could be a smaller one you carry around. But I would add to that a larger one that you transfer the quotes to and add commentary in longer entries. Such an exercise will help you make what inspires you more personal, for you will connect it to your life at that particular moment.
