Spirit Quest
Adventures in Discovery
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Keeping a journal is emotional work. Diaries chronicle events. Journals map the journey of the soul. Journal-keeping tracks your emotions and focuses on your feelings. Attitude and the ways and whys of your thinking spill onto the pages of your journal and explore who you are and help you discover who you want to become. It is an adventure worth taking.
Putting your emotional history and your emotional response to daily events into a journal helps discover where you are, how you got here and where you are going. Thus, in journal-keeping the focus is on the emotions. The five senses: touch, smell, sound, sight and taste is an effective way to cover all the bases. Writing it out clarifies the idea, articulates the thought, recognizes the emotions. The final focus may be on your vision of the future. Telling it as story brings life to the pages. Making memories and jotting down special occasions can be two of the many blessings of journal-keeping. Therefore, you may wish to include a picture once in awhile. Be sure to identify it. When you distill your writing to the fewest words and still retain the meaning you will find the nuggets in the sand and you may discover a poem in the making.
When I keep shortening, rewriting, and shortening again I dig out the rich ore found in the veins of my being, buried deep in my psyche. That is the reason I enjoy writing haiku. Haiku crystallizes with the brevity of a tear drop and the clarity of a flawless diamond.
There are few rules for journal-keeping: explore the emotions of your response to what is happening to and around you, be honest with your journal and date your entries. Spelling out the truth of your feelings and your thoughts is probably the most important. Remember, you may be selective with whom you decide to share it. Or, you may decide not to share it with anyone. That is okay, too. The journal is your personal illumination and your own story.
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About the Book
Journal-keeping is an adventure of discovering the road the soul is following. Spirit Quest has a brief introduction about keeping a journal. There is ample empty space to map your path which can aid in finding your direction when you come to the cross-roads of life. It is an opportunity to celebrate the moments of joy, to weep in the times of grief, to struggle through difficult decisions and to rejoice in the growth you achieve by adding a voice to your emotions. Each page has a haiku or other brief reading that you may wish to respond to, use as idea starters, or simply read and enjoy then do your own thing. I wish you well on the journey.
About the Author
Maureen Williams is a poet who has kept a journal for many years and has on occassion conducted workshops on journal-keeping and poem-making. Since the year 2000 she has conducted workshops for Grief and the Arts Training Experience for Centering Corporation in Omaha, NE. Much of her poetry flows out of her journal pages articulating the emotions and trauma of crisis-living, celebrating her faith or struggling with her doubts. She enjoys writing haiku because it insists on being concise and precise. She is the author of two books: The Whisper of Feathers and Many Chambered Rooms. She and her husband live in Iowa. They have five sons; their only daughter died shortly after birth at a time when society did not expect a mother to grieve if she had never held her baby in her arms.