Read, Write, and Pray with Danté Stewart: Part One
As we engage more deeply with the ancient streams of art and faith, how they inform one another, and how all of this can create profound new possibilities for belonging, we need ways to respond. The Spiritual Direction for Writers Read, Write, & Pray series uses themes and excerpts from various books, essays, and articles to help you respond to writing by a specific author.
I have not worked with Danté Stewart to create this series, but I did host him and Nefertiti Robinson for an online conversation in September 2022, which informed how I designed this particular Read, Write, & Pray series. You don’t need to own a copy of Danté Stewart’s first book, Shoutin’ in the Fire, to complete this series, but you should definitely buy his book anyway! You can buy it here.
I’m excited to invite you to explore Stewart’s work in meaningful ways. I hope Read, Write, & Pray with Danté Stewart helps you make space to notice God’s presence in your life and creative work. I hope it gives you opportunities to discover how making art and engaging with art help you belong to yourself, others, God, and the world.
Parts One and Two of Read, Write, & Pray with Danté Stewart are available to the public at spiritualdirectionforwriters.com. Parts Three and Four are exclusive resources for those who registered for the Spiritual Direction for Writers Conversation Series with Danté Stewart and Nefertiti Robinson in September 2022.
Learn more about Read, Write, & Pray here.
Additional Read, Write, & Pray Resources:
Read, Write, & Pray with Danté Stewart: Part Two
Read, Write, & Pray with The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
Read, Write, & Pray with The Great Belonging by Charlotte Donlon
Read, Write, & Pray with Danté Stewart: Part One
READ
Writing had become a place of sanctuary, a place of following Jesus into the wilderness when I felt overwhelmed. It had become a church, a place where I would meet with God and have the voices of the ancestors guiding me, a sort of spiritual and historical connection, rootedness. I didn’t need optimism in those moments; I needed people who understood what it meant to try and fail at being Christian, who could walk with me like a child walks with their parents, like the little children in the embrace of Jesus. I needed weight. The old folk would say, “Don’t forget where you come from.” I didn’t. Their books pulled me in, they never let me go. I didn’t know whether I was in the tradition, whether I was doing liberation right, letting words become balms of healing
—from Shoutin' in the Fire
WRITE
How does writing help you meet with God? How does writing help you feel rooted to yourself, your specific place, and this world?
PRAY
Meditate on this quote below from James Baldwin. Take six deep breaths with a six count inhale and a six count exhale. Then read the quote aloud a few times. Or copy it down a few times. Or do both. Then sit in silence for a few minutes. Journal, too, if you like.
“One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”
—from Notes of a Native Son
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Danté Stewart is a writer and speaker whose voice has been featured on CNN, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Comment Magazine, and more. He is the author of the debut memoir Shoutin’ in the Fire. As an up and coming voice, he writes and speaks into the areas of race, religion, and politics. He received his B.A. in Sociology from Clemson University. He is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
Charlotte Donlon helps her readers and clients notice how they belong to themselves, others, God, and the world. Charlotte is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder of Spiritual Direction for Writers™ and Parenting with Art™. She is also the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University where she studied creative nonfiction with Paula Huston and Lauren F. Winner. She holds a certificate in spiritual direction from Selah Center for Spiritual Formation. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. She is currently writing her next book, Spiritual Direction for Writers, which will be published by Eerdmans in 2024.