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The Spiritual and the Literary
by Cathy Capozzoli
O nourishing river
Mother of all that is written
Inspire fluent, truthful words.
May I discover the sacred river of wisdom within.
-- Invocation of Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of Inspiration
Did you ever experience a moment of great clarity, where you know that what we call “reality” really is part of something much, much more? Have you ever read something that immediately takes you to a place of deep and abiding truth? If the language of the soul is the vibration of the universe, the creative writer of the spiritual attempts to capture it in words.
Since the time long ago when oral traditions of the world shifted to written traditions, writers have tried to capture these vibrations in words, translating from the realm of experience and speech to language on paper. Since then, the seekers and faithful of the world have sought the literature of the spirit for insight and meaning. Creative writing and literature are important in every world religious tradition as expressions of the divine. Every world faith tradition has a body of literary works, beyond the sacred texts, to which seekers turn to for inspiration -- a gateway to the eternal. Elizabeth Andrew, in an essay entitled “Praying in Place,” writes:
Wakefulness isn’t meant for a later date. Nor is wellness, nor “deliverance to a place of safe-keeping,” as the Greeks defined salvation. Our creative lives -- the lives we’ve always wanted, full of revelry and rejoicing and the intricate textures of grief, the lives of potential fulfilled, time fattened with intention; they are meant for now. Salvation is this sun warming my skin.
In the Buddhist tradition, poetry is an ancient practice for capturing the experience of awareness. Many also have looked to the Hindu poet-saints of India, seeking “other.” Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, who grew up in India, voices the questions of a seeker in a poem entitled “before the beginning and after the end”:
when you wrap me in your shawl
old mother India
and feed me to the rapture of the kites
when the jewels you gave me
are fingered by strangers
and the words I am writing are my flaming
body on the river
will you sweep me up like ash on the wind
and show me all the lives that brought me here?
Whether ancient or contemporary, writers of the spiritual bravely seek to describe that which transcends all within the limits and inadequacies of language. In an essay contemplating the “literature of spirituality,” Jeff Gundy wonders: “What might a poem do, then? Perhaps merely register our longing, invoke one place and time when the world opened for a moment.” And in a poem entitled “Mystic Mountain (Long Valley, New Jersey),” Dorothy Ryan captures the moment, the longing:
I long to be back in the old laundry room, staring
at familiar shadows,
listening to the hum
of the ancient Maytag.
Here, the moon rises high
over the mountain. The wind
whips up from the meadow,
whirls around my legs. My body
floats like swirling leaves.
Am I in or am I out?
For some writers, no matter what the topic, writing is a sacred practice in itself. Other writers find divinity in writing about their own spiritual perceptions and experiences. While the spiritual journey is personal, it also is universal. We see ourselves in their writing because of the common bond that unites us all as humans. The sacred is wherever we are, whatever we are doing. Deborah Robson writes about this in an essay about the experience of singing shape note, or sacred harp, with other singers:
And the tempest grows bigger, and it’s a profound experience even if you don’t share your neighbor’s beliefs, whatever they are, and you’re singing “Our bondage it shall end, by and by,” or “Jesus, lover of my soul,” even if you’ve never found a creed you could honestly recite, but there’s a power in this room that does love your soul, and your soul loves it back. . .”
Creative writing also compliments the study of the sacred texts of the world’s religions. Together, they often reveal that many of the core teachings are similar across faith traditions. At the center of it all, we all are longing for and seeking the same God. The inner, spiritual life, as Thomas Moore calls it, is “the lining of the deep soul.” It’s the higher presence, the beyond, the other, God, or what the Hindus call “that” or “not this.” We read to move closer to what is deeper than deep, within or without a theology. The literature of spirituality cuts across all faiths and all genres. It also embodies literature of the spirit that is not connected with any faith tradition.
Does the spiritual exist? Some would argue. Does spiritual literature exist? Yes, and there is a vigorous, growing interest in it. How would we tell the difference between sacred versus secular writing? It all begs a larger question. Is everything spiritual? Yes. Are all acts, including writing, spiritual? As my yoga teacher says, “You can use the knife to cut a fruit or cut a throat.” Is the throat cut a spiritual act?
Events in our modern world call us to contemplate this. Somehow, recently, the timeless seems to have become more timely. With this, all literature of the spiritual has an even stronger voice: one that brings unity, rather than distance. We hear the voice of the spirit speak for all humanity through literature.
May we all find inspiration.
Cathy Capozzoli is a poet and author, and is editor of a guide entitled Resources for Creative Writers of the Spiritual. Her creative works have been published in Duquesne Magazine, Trouble, Beyond Bread, and the anthology Voices from the Attic. She has an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
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