{"id":36,"date":"2010-04-15T08:51:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T08:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/the-joys-and-dangers-of-spiritual-writing.html"},"modified":"2010-04-15T08:51:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T08:51:00","slug":"the-joys-and-dangers-of-spiritual-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/the-joys-and-dangers-of-spiritual-writing.html","title":{"rendered":"The Joys and Dangers of Spiritual Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center\">&#8220;Almost any spiritual writer <i>ought<\/i> to wear thin for you. <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">It&#8217;s like reading criticism of poetry all the time and not reading the poetry. <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Spiritual writers have a limited purpose and can be very dangerous, I suppose.&#8221; <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">&#8211;Flannery O&#8217;Connor, The Habit of Being<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;m headed off this morning to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Calvin College&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calvin.edu\/academic\/engl\/festival\/\">Festival of Faith and Writing<\/a>. I&#8217;ll get to hear writers such as <a href=\"http:\/\/saramiles.net\/\">Sara Miles<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calvin.edu\/academic\/engl\/festival\/speakers\/karr.php\">Mary Karr<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calvin.edu\/academic\/engl\/festival\/speakers\/peterson.php\">Eugene Peterson<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/stephaniekallos.com\/\">Stephanie Kallos<\/a>. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll be writing more soon about what I hear and learn from them. In the meantime, I&#8217;m thankful for O&#8217;Connor&#8217;s reminder that Scripture and the liturgy are the source, the limitless source, for truth and grace. I&#8217;ve spent more hours in my life reading memoirs and novels than I have the Bible, but the Bible contains that words that have transformed, and are transforming, my life. Guess I should make room for it in the suitcase too.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Almost any spiritual writer ought to wear thin for you. It&#8217;s like reading criticism of poetry all the time and not reading the poetry. Spiritual writers have a limited purpose and can be very dangerous, I suppose.&#8221; &#8211;Flannery O&#8217;Connor, The Habit of Being I&#8217;m headed off this morning to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Calvin College&#8217;s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Joys and Dangers of Spiritual Writing - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/the-joys-and-dangers-of-spiritual-writing.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Joys and Dangers of Spiritual Writing - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Almost any spiritual writer ought to wear thin for you. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}