"Most Spiritual Writing is Constipated."
A decades-old comment still brings challenges — and possibilities — today
“Frankly, it seems to me that most spiritual writing is constipated.”
It was a bold, earthy, and even slightly disturbing comment. The speaker was a Trappist monk. The occasion: the first retreat I ever led (or, actually, co-led, working alongside another monk). It was a writer’s retreat, almost twenty years ago, and this particular conference featured a panel discussion involving myself and four Trappist monks. We were all published writers in some form: some of us had written books or chapbooks or magazine articles, some wrote blogs, some did both. The retreat was geared not only to writers who were (or wanted to be) published, whether in traditional print or online, but also to those who simply wanted to keep a private journal. We didn’t care if your topic was “spiritual” or not — if you were writing, or interested in writing, and wanted to explore your craft in a retreat setting, then this weekend was for you. The monastery guesthouse was packed.
As the discussion progressed, it seemed to me that we were all playing it pretty safe. We were talking about things like the importance of making prayer a part of your writing process, and remembering to keep your writing focused on serving the needs of your readers, blah blah blah. Not bad advice, of course — but everything being said was predictable; unsurprising; safe.
Someone on the panel spoke yet another platitude, about the importance of making sure you were always telling the truth in your writing. That’s when the monk whom I’ll call “Brother Blogger” dropped his bomb on the discussion.
“Frankly, it seems to me that most spiritual writing is constipated. We get so worried about not offending people, or not sounding like a heretic or some woo-woo flake, that we just censor all the life out of our words before they ever see the light of day.”
The room crackled with energy. This was a challenge to us all. Not only was his earthy, bodily image itself somewhat startling, but its clear meaning had at least two dimensions to it:
Most spiritual writing seems full of it.
Most spiritual writing feels stuck.
Perhaps you can discern even other nuances in what the good monk had to say — although these two challenges are plenty. If you are a writer, no matter how private or public or what your medium might be, this challenge is for you too.
Recently I had a dream about a topic that many might say is controversial. In the morning, I realized that it’s actually one of several topics I tend to shy away from in my writing. My first thought was to just leave it alone — and that’s when it hit me.
Holy crap!
Sorry for the pun, but I realized that all too often I have a tendency to play it safe too. Maybe it was time to take a dose of mystical magnesium.
Paving the Road to Hell
I am sure that most people who write about spirituality do not set out to come across as performatively safe—or stuck in a narrow playground of appropriate, acceptable, “nice” writing. But if we are not careful, that’s exactly what we end up doing.
Why? Why does spiritual writing tend toward a respectable dullness?
Brother Blogger had it right, of course. But I can see how writers can fall into the problem he was describing even out of the best of intentions.
I, for one, want my words to be spiritually nurturing to readers. My goal as a writer is to bring qualities of inspiration and invitation to my audience: I want you to feel invited to go deeper in your spiritual practice, and inspired to consider just what a difference a meaningful spirituality can make in anyone’s life.
If blogging (and later, podcasting and social media) has taught us anything, it’s that controversial content gets the most clicks. Yet the monks taught me something even more important: some things matter more than building your platform. Spiritual writers can bring to our craft a commitment to writing for the sake of art, or beauty, or truth, or honoring the Spirit, and not just a motivation to get more attention. Of course, every writer wants to make a real impact — but not at the cost of our core spiritual values.
But if we are not vigilant, we can easily drift from “honoring our values” to “avoiding difficult topics” — which sooner or later leads to spiritually constipated writing.
Contemplative writers need to write at least some material that is controversial, creative, or edgy — but by definition, that means content that some readers might find alarming.
Here’s what seems to be the central question: how can we, as spiritual contemplative writers, create content that is edgy, creative, maybe even a bit untamed or controversial, while not abandoning our focus on writing that is truly contemplative: quiet, silent, pastoral rather than prophetic?
But before we get to that, perhaps one important step is for spiritual authors to identify their “magnesium topics” — topics that we might find challenging or even scary to write about, but that require us to keep our writing fresh, insightful, exciting, and, well, edgy.
Okay, magnesium topics is slightly weird as a way of identifying these edgy themes. I’ve started calling these “dark wonder” topics. Not dark in a negative sense, but dark in a mystical, dark-night-of-the-soul sense. Topics of dark wonder are those that invite me into a type of writing that challenges me, invites me to grow, forces me to be honest and sometimes even to take a stand. If garden-variety spiritual writing can sometimes feel too safe and confined, dark wonder writing feels like it is untamed, perhaps a little wild, slightly dangerous but always in service of some sort of higher or greater good. This isn’t about chaos for chaos’s sake. But in making sure my writing flows, I’m embracing darkness and wonder and even a measure of chaos as part of my overall commitment to the deep spiritual values of the mystical and contemplative way.
I can quickly come up with at least five such “dark wonder” topics, that I want to explore more fully. These are all issues that matter to me personally, but they are also all areas of concern for most of us — including most spiritual seekers. These are not easy topics to write about, but it seems to me they are topics of deep spiritual importance.
Mental health and wellness. Anxiety and depression have been a part of my story — and a significant reality in the lives of many people, both inside and outside the contemplative community. How do spirituality and mental health intersect? It’s not an easy question to ponder, but it is a matter of vital concern to many.
Gender and sexuality. How does gender impact the way we envision God? Why do many Christian communities marginalize or scapegoat LGBTQIA+ persons? Can spirituality contribute to creating a culture of joy and reconciliation? Plenty of big issues that won’t be solved quickly, but they require our attention and care.
Psychedelics as therapy. I participated in a psychedelic clinical trial, and discovered it was as powerful a spiritual experience as it was an experience of healing. But many spiritual communities are suspicious of these medicines. But can we find ways to integrate psychedelic medicine and contemplative spirituality?
Struggling with institutional Christianity. Many people chafe against the limitations of organized religion, even those connected to contemplative spirituality. Others continue to defend traditional religion vigorously. How can contemplation contribute to a world where religion seems to be rapidly changing?
Politics and Current Events. If religious conflict is hard to engage with, our polarizing political life seems nothing short of terrifying. Contemplative perspectives on political issues are, frankly, desperately needed — if only it weren’t such a fraught topic for any contemplative thinker to take on.
Every writer’s dark wonder topics might be different, which is to be expected; but it’s worth asking yourself, “What topics feel risky and dangerous for me to write about? Why is that? How can writing honestly and fearlessly about those topics be, in itself, a spiritual practice?
Again: this isn’t about trading controversy for clicks — but there’s nothing to be gained by being so conflict-avoidant that my writing ends up, well, stuck.
Professional writers, especially professional spiritual writers, are tasked with a responsibility to serve our community of readers. To what extent is constipated writing a result of timidly avoiding hot-button topics, for fear that readers will be upset, or worse, will turn on us if we write about certain topics too much? That may just be the voice of inner anxiety, but it’s a voice worth responding to. What can we do to keep our writing fresh and edgy while still serving readers who prefer their contemplative content without quite so much spice?
In other words, how do we write even bold and daring material, without alienating readers who just want our gentler, more inspirational posts?
Substack’s graceful solution
I believe contemplative and other spiritual writers need to write at least some material that is controversial, creative, or edgy — but by definition, that means content that some readers might find alarming. Most readers will not be quick to unsubscribe every time a writer annoys them, thankfully. Nevertheless, there needs to be a way to make inspirational writing available to readers who may not want an author’s edgier work — and vice versa.
Substack actually provides a way to handle this problem beautifully. There’s a tool called Sections that can help writers who want to write enough edgy content to keep from getting spiritually “clogged up,” while also generating plenty of writing that is aimed at being inspirational rather than in-your face.
Likewise, readers can find the Sections feature valuable: a way to enjoy a newsletter while reducing the number of emails you receive, and making sure you are only getting notifications related to the topics you care about most.
If you want to see how I’m using Sections on my newsletter — including detailed descriptions of each section and instructions for customizing your notifications — read my recent post: A Guide to Carl McColman’s Substack. This is a great feature for helping writers to expand their personal repertoire, while giving readers the tools they need to tailor their reading experience to the content that matters most to them.
Keeping Spirituality Real
We’ve all heard of problems like dissociation or spiritual bypassing — situations where spiritual practitioners will use their spirituality as a way to avoid challenging, difficult topics that are necessary to face for personal healing and growth, and/or for the benefit of others. Maybe this notion of “constipated spiritual writing” is just another way in which bypassing can undermine healthy and authentic spirituality.
But we can restore a healthy spiritual practice by fearlessly facing the challenges that we are tempted to avoid. In a similar way, those of us who are spiritual writers can make it part of our practice to write about the difficult or controversial topics, meeting our normal anxiety about such work with a deep sense of trust and a willingness to match our spiritual aspiration with down-to-earth authenticity.
Spiritual writing is offered as a ministry of service — to spiritual seekers and practitioners. My dear Trappist friend encouraged us to do the hard work of keeping our craft authentic, supple and flexible; when we do that, readers benefit too. And when we find a way to reach readers who want our daring edge as well as those who simply prefer words of inspiration, we create even more possibilities for our words to serve.
If you are a spiritual or contemplative writer, what are your “dark wonder” topics? Please leave a comment to let me know!