Daily Nourishment for August 10, 2024: Joy and Sorrow Together
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 40 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 13 minutes
“Joy and sorrow are the parents of our spiritual growth.”
— Henri Nouwen
Pause.
Mediate on Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. (Click on the box in the upper right corner to expand the image.)
Prompt.
Journal for ten minutes on the following questions:
What are you grieving right now?
What are you celebrating?
How might holding both grief and joy at the same time draw you closer to the heart of God?
Practice.
In four hours, do the writing prompt again, noticing the griefs and joys, both small and large, you’ve experienced since your first time doing the exercise.
Want More?
Read Nina Riggs’s memoir The Bright Hour
*
Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—The August Co-Writing Schedule is live.
—Spiritual Direction for Writers® + Enneagram for Creativity Gathering will take place on Saturday, September 28th. Recordings will be available if you can’t join us live. You can register here.
August 31— Online Revision Stations Designed by Lauren F. Winner
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Catherine Ricketts. This Pause, Prompt, and Practice were originally shared on April 10, 2023.
Catherine Ricketts is an essayist, songwriter, and writing instructor. Her nonfiction on the arts, grief, joy, and spirituality appears in the Kenyon Review Online, the Ploughshares blog, Electric Literature, The Christian Century, Image, The Millions, Paste, and the music blog for the NPR-affiliate WXPN. She studied writing at the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MFA in nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University. Her first book is The Mother Artist, a work of literary nonfiction on motherhood and artistic practice. Find her on Instagram at @bycatherinericketts, or stay in touch via her newsletter.
*Please help us protect our intellectual property, our creative process, and the integrity of our work. Spiritual Direction for Writers® Daily Nourishment is covered under the Spiritual Direction for Writers® trademark. You are welcome to share this link with others, but any other use (written or spoken) is prohibited without written permission from Charlotte Donlon.