Dr. Gordon Hilsman on writing from our souls

Writing Yourself Whole

Happily stunned minutes after being fully certified as a CPE Supervisor in the fall of 1981, my presenter, Gerry Babinski, made a suggestion to me. “You need to further integrate your sexuality with your love of Catholic tradition,” was more or less her message. In May of 2007, Sheed & Ward (Rowman & Littlefield) published my book aimed at finally following through on her tip.

Intimate Spirituality emerged from the depth of my being, over decades of churning over why romantic, erotic, and passionate loving is not more openly recognized in Christian circles as a God-created spiritual arena of life, as powerful and significant as prayer, meditation, and communal worship.

Finishing this book has confirmed for me that writing carries the potential to further integrate our different personalities – if we write what we want to rather than what we think somebody will like, celebrate, or buy. We need to write from our souls to heal, to clarify and to bring the various components of our personalities together.

Growing up in a quiet, small-city Catholic parish with a school run by kindly nuns, Catholic culture became a part of my life when I was a toddler. I was reared loving the beauty of the rituals, the mystic feel of organ music, and the array of taught virtues that made sense to living a quality life and contributing to society.

But when sex came alive in budding adolescence nobody seemed to know anything anymore. Catholic teaching had no wisdom about the primary happenings in my body, except indirectly implying that all of it was bad. Period. I needed to search elsewhere for wisdom that made sense.

I did not find that cogent perspective from the nuns and priests, God bless their generous, gentle souls. I didn’t find it at a Catholic college, or even in a 60s seminary during the Vatican II Council. In fact, I never found it. I needed a few decades of ministry, education in clinical supervision, one good therapist, prayer, and pondering the intricacies of a 28-year marriage in order to foster wisdom.

Since finishing Intimate Spirituality I’ve said to several friends that I feel like I can die now. I’ve expressed myself the best that I can. Sexual loving, not sex itself, is for many of us, the clearest experience of being loved by the Divine. Theologians need to begin taking this common experience seriously. I believe that Intimate Spirituality will give them a start.

Whether your own inner conflict is about sexuality, faith, consternation over spiritual leadership, the over-complexity of hyper-regulated religious organizations, or something I can’t even imagine, I encourage you to put pen to paper (or finger to key!) to write yourself clear. To start, you could imagine a serious, sincere person a thousand miles away. Then begin laying out the struggle to that person in the clearest words you can find. Maybe nobody will ever read your efforts except you, but it just may clarify your soul as it did mine.

You will find a review of Intimate Sexuality in PlainViews, Volume 4, No. 23: http://www.plainviews.org/v4n23/r.html

Do you have thoughts about education & research you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.