Writing Your Sacred Journey
Stories to Transform Self and World
Hidden within your life experiences is a wellspring of hope, wisdom, truth, and connection. Painful memories reveal ultimate values; fragmented memories make way for unity; languageless memories find voice. Writing is one way to draw from this bottomless, life-giving source. By creating stories of your past, you can re-create your present and find agency for a meaningful future. If you want, your inner story can move the inner life of a reader, passing the gift of transformation forward.
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew to explore the art and practice of spiritual memoir writing with monthly online and in-person classes. Each session will give participants the opportunity to write, time for conversation, inspiration from model writers, and insights about craft, content, and practice. These monthly practice sessions are meant for writers of all levels, including absolute beginners. New participants are encouraged to take Elizabeth’s introduction to spiritual memoir workshop or read Writing the Sacred Journey. Because practice sessions are not consecutive, you can drop in as you’d like. Over three years, the curriculum covers the significant aspects of the craft of writing memoir, common themes, and the invitations to transformation inherent in the practice.
Writing Your Sacred Journey
Guided by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
In Person, monthly on Fridays, 1:30-3:30 PM CT: 1/31, 2/21, 3/21, 4/18, 5/23, 6/27 at Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Online, monthly on Mondays from 6:00-8:00 p.m. CT: 1/27, 2/24, 3/24, 4/21, 5/19, 6/23
Spring 2025 Series
January: Writing Our Way to Hope
Writing, when understood as a spiritual practice, invites us into a new relationship with hope—away from hope for an outcome toward hope as a wellspring. Together we’ll harvest memories of this more mystical experience of hope and cultivate healthy, hopeful writing practices to sustain us through difficult times.
February: Art as Theft: Imitation Writing
Pablo Picasso famously said that all art is theft. We’ll test the boundaries of plagiarism by fearlessly borrowing gifted authors’ ideas, trying on a variety of voices, and imitating skillful techniques.
March: Compassion
When we exercise compassion we take hurt seriously, treating it as worthy of our loving attention. We’ll explore memoir writing as an act of compassion—toward our younger selves, our present-day selves, our readers, and humanity as a whole.
April: Writing Mystical Experiences
When the veil between worlds thins, we’re often left speechless and confounded. What’s a writer to do? We’ll explore literary tricks that help us receive, integrate, recreate, and find the broader context for such encounters with Mystery.
May: Dialogue
“How can I write dialogue if I don’t remember what was said?” Come find out! We’ll learn to represent past conversations honestly, bowing to the truth of our experiences while lending voice to those who people our stories.
June: Community and Revision
Stephen King says, “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open”—but we can open that door slowly and deliberately. We’ll explore sharing writing as one life-giving way to “see it again.” How can we preserve our sense of safety, freedom, and exploration while facing an audience? Might sharing memoirs deepen our connections with others?
Fall 2025 Series
September: Writing Place/Setting
What’s your spiritual geography? By writing memories of place—the landscapes of childhood and adulthood, with their unique imprint—we’ll uncover the sacred gifts and challenges of location. We’ll also explore the role of settings in our stories.
In person: Sept. 19
Online: Sept. 22
October: Re-imagining Prayer
“The more we come alive and awake,” writes Brother David Stendl-Rast, “the more everything we do becomes prayer. Eventually even our prayer will become prayer.” By writing about our past, we wake up to what happened and are enlivened by the process—in other words, we pray. Together we’ll write memories of prayerful experiences, explore the evolution of our understanding of prayer, read spiritual memoirs that include prayer, and write as a prayerful gesture.
In person: Oct 24
Online: Oct. 27
November: Symbols and Metaphors
In this season of encroaching darkness, we’ll search for the images that act as guiding lights within our stories, transcending the ordinary and bringing us hope. Our memories are rich with symbolism; memoir writing can ignite these symbols, in our lives and for our readers.
In person: Nov. 21
Online: Nov. 17
December: The Audience Within, the Audience Without
Who are the many audiences already at work within our private drafts? How might writing for an external audience become a radical act of hospitality? If every spiritual journey worth its salt lands in community, what does this mean for our most intimate, creative work?
In person: Dec. 19
Online: Dec. 15
Registration:
Cost:
$30 per session. Available to buy as individual classes and a six-class package.
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is a wisdom teacher and writing coach dedicated to facilitating creative emergence.
As a writer she elicits the spirit’s movement within stories; as a teacher she supports transformation within writers and on the page. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Hamline University, her spiritual direction training from the Center for Spiritual Guidance, and her contemplative formation from the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Living School. You can connect with Elizabeth at www.spiritualmemoir.com and www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com.
Want to take these classes
and others asynchronously?
Looking for a free online writing class from Elizabeth Jarrett Andrews?
The Gifts of Writing Micro-course will orient you to the gift of writing that you both receive and give as a gift to others. Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, author and writing teacher, will lead you through four short lessons to orient you and open you and your writing up for transformation.
Note: this link will take you to join the Eye of the Heart online community space, but you do not have to stay to enjoy free access to the course.
