Welcome to David Mundy's personal blog. David is now in his 31th year as a United Church minister and kept a personal journal for 25 years. This blog contains his musing in a journal-like format, without the classified stuff!
I don't know if you have noticed this at the top of my blog page, but I was convinced, or convinced myself, to start a blog because I have kept a personal journal for many years. I have been throwing a bunch of personal milestones at you recently, but today is yet another.
Twenty five years ago today tornadoes ripped through Ontario and one hit the Barrie area hard, resulting in a number of deaths and considerable damage. I was on my way home from a church meeting in Barrie when the tornado roared through and afterward realized that I was only a few hundred metres away from one of the worst hit areas. I couldn't see the devastation because I had driven over the crest of a hill but I had to pull off the road as my vehicle rocked back and forth. It prompted me to write daily for a week, after many months of very sporadic journal entries. I extended that discipline to a month, and then beyond, and in those twenty five years I have missed only six or seven times.
Needless to say my life is not all that exciting from day to day, but I have continued to write as a form of disciplined reflection. Not surprisingly there are a number of books on the spiritual nature of journal keeping, and when I have offered study groups on spiritual disciplines I encourage this as one prayerful option among many.
I sometimes wonder what I am trying to accomplish, if anything. I don't go back to examine my earlier thoughts and state of mind all that often. I don't want my journals to be read by others when I kick the bucket. I do try to find the "gem" in days which are often more like coal than diamonds, and focussing in writing helps me to do so. I sometimes pray for others, and give thanks to God, as well as giving God a piece of my mind for what I consider the unfairnesses of life.
Are there any other journal writers out there? Have you tried but found it difficult in life's hustle and bustle? Do you want to start, but wonder how?
6 comments:
I do write a journal, at the end of the year I burn it. No worries about anybody reading volumes of my thoughts, my rants, etc.
Thanks for your blog, it does end up in my journals sometimes.
I am one who has always tried to keep a journal and have failed each time. I find writing to be a wonderful discipline and I have also found it to be useful to me in having an outlet for my thoughts and feelings.
I have found other forms of spiritual disciplines: doing chores, playing piano, Reiki,and making bread are a few, but writing helps me to process. I haven't given up and will keep trying.
I have kept journals all my life. Some have long since disappeared, the others I keep in one place to be destroyed when I am gone.[and he better do it or I WILL come back and haunt him] I tend to write more formal stories and poetry now, which my loved ones can keep if they chose. I rarely look at my more random journals, but to throw them out seems like a painful stripping off of a layer of skin. I have tried to blog, but I am not disciplined enough.
I tend to keep travel journals. The longest was for a year when I was in my early twenties and living in Europe for a year. It was my first extended trip without family. I kept a journal for that whole year, and surprisingly looked back on it just recently after your blog about the "shroud of Turin" I wanted to see what I had written after seeing it. (Not much to be honest). Since then I have kept travel journals when we go on trips overseas, the one I go back to every August, is the one I kept when we were in China for our daughter. Now that she is older, she too likes to read my entries and feels that she can make a connection. Not sure why it's only travel journals I keep and not daily ones, maybe because when traveling, our lives are not as hectic and there is more time to pause and write.
P.S. I remember that tornado, my sister and I were headed north after being in Toronto for a bridal shower, we had to pull over on the highway just north of Barrie, it was a scary experience!
Journals are an outstanding way to keep tabs on yourself, your thoughts, and over time, how much you've grown.
I pulled out the pair I used back in university a while back, and nearly fell over laughing at my own self-absorption. No doubt my kids will love them some day, as a way to figure out just what their old man was all about back in the day.
Thanks to all of you. It's interesting to read that some of you have experiences "seasons" of journal writing. I think it is really difficult to sustain journal keeping during the "go-go" years of family life.
I have often wondered about destroying past journals Laurie, so your burning solution is an interesting one. And much less problematic than burning the husband.
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