Ordinary Time is expansive. This year it lasts from June 8 to November 30. This makes Ordinary Time a perfect season to dig out a journal bought for a New Year’s resolution, open a journaling app that a friend recommended, and try journaling.

Why and How I Journal

I’ve been journaling at least once a week for many years. While my journaling takes many forms, my journal entries are generally observations with thoughts and comments about what I’m seeing.

When I was younger, I chronicled what was happening or had happened on a day or during a span of several days. I basically recorded the actions, trials, and successes of my young life.

As I matured and moved from being the center of the universe to merely one of the spatial bodies, my journaling changed and became much less about me and more about that expanding universe I was part of. As such, I could look at events, hear conversations, and feel impulses from around me, and I began to write about them, insert myself into places where I was not actually present, or even alter those scenarios to create new realities and possibilities. In time, I began, at a very simple level, to consider what being a person of faith meant in those many real and altered realities.

Journaling has provided breadth and depth to two spiritual practices of mine. My day usually begins with the Daily Office in “The Book of Common Prayer” or a combination of daily readings and devotions. I use my journal to explore questions I have about words, their meanings, or the scriptures themselves. I may write directly about what I’ve read or use the readings to consider the passage’s relevance for today or other points in history. Sometimes I’ll look up a definition and then spend some time pondering how ancient words have evolved as time has passed and cultures have changed. Journaling during this time also leads to sharing my thoughts on the readings with family and close friends.

Another one of my spiritual practices is taking notes during sermons. Phrases, analogies, names I’m not familiar with, and books or music mentioned provide journaling prompts on a weekly basis. On Palm Sunday, for example, our associate rector’s sermon included the phrase “The Passion is not a performance, it’s a mirror.” This dramatic summation of his points about where we stood historically and presently during Holy Week was an excellent lead-in for my journaling about Jesus’s journey that week.

Tips for Journaling as a Spiritual Practice

I have led workshops on journaling for adults as well as youth. Here are some ideas and suggestions that I have shared with these groups for getting started with a journaling spiritual practice.

1. Journaling Can Take Many Different Forms

At a workshop I led for the men of a previous parish, I asked if anyone kept a journal. Well, no one admitted it. When I explored why that might be, many expressed that they had once been made to do journaling that was limited to retelling what they had done that month or season.

As I distributed a mix of formal journals and everyday school notebooks, I offered several different prompts they could use for journaling. Here are a few to consider:

• Write about an experience in the church
• Jot down notes about an activity or a friend
• Write a prayer
• Draw
• Use multiple colors
• Add stickers
• Use it to keep mementos like church bulletins, flowers, or restaurant menus from places you visit

2. Make It Your Own

In my workshops, I remind people that the journal and its content belong to them. Journaling is not a homework assignment or for anyone else.

3. Explore Faith in Both Everyday and Memorable Moments

My daughter-in-law asked me to discuss journaling with her youth group as they prepared for a pilgrimage to Scotland. I encouraged them to start using the journals before their trip, to carry them around as they saw fit while on pilgrimage, and then visit them often when they returned. My message was to use the journals to enliven their faith through their everyday encounters. By journaling, they could also document memories about their pilgrimage and faith formation.

4. Journaling Can Be a Mode of Prayer

Two years ago, while I was in docent training, my seatmate shared a picture of a page from her journal celebrating something. The page was alive with sketches, words, exclamation marks. She shared that she journals most days and always starts with a note to her late mother and to God. For her, faith is real, and this spiritual practice of hers celebrates and reinforces that faith.

5. Incorporate Journaling into a Formation Program or Small Group

Journaling provides a way of recording growth and development in faith formation. It is a flexible practice that can be incorporated into a formation lesson or small group. Formation leaders can allow time during gatherings or between sessions for journaling, either prompted or unscripted.

Conclusion

Ordinary Time is perfect for engaging faith on your own schedule and in your own way, and journaling can help you be intentional and find new ways to explore your faith in this long church season. Whether you fill your journal with the mysteries of Christ’s resurrection as often as each day’s sunrise, an occasional act of kindness, a relative’s birthday, books read, conversations shared, challenges encountered, fellow travelers met on your formation journey, or prayers, I hope journaling may enrich your spiritual life as much as it has mine.

Featured image is by Cinthya González on Unsplash