Hope Lyda

I have always written...since gradeschool when I drafted the longest novel I could. I think I made it to page 120. I wrote plays and poems and strange stories about purple aliens. My readership was zero, but that didn't matter. The desire to write was there. Always an observer, maybe I took to writing so I could observe self, others, and what wants to rise up and be set on a page, a screen, a heart. Like a lot of writers, I make sense of my experience through the act and practice of writing. In college, I continued to explore my love of story and expression. With a double major in Journalism and Film I had the ultimate opportunity to feed my imagination and quest for story, unfolding awareness and imagery, and meaning behind the words. I've been a writer and editor in the publishing industry for more than 20 years. A few years ago I went through training to be a spiritual director. In the majestic beauty of the New Mexico desert, I attended sessions every six months with an amazing cohort of pilgrims and friends. Each of us eager to learn how to listen to another and hold holy space for that listening. I realized how my work of coming alongside other writers to help them draw out the message that was to be shared, is my spiritual direction practice. With this awareness, I hold that role with a deeper sense of reverence and gratitude. Whether I am asking myself questions to see what emerges on my blank page or I am encouraging another to do the same, it is spiritual work. The Mystery of writing, to me, is the Mystery of the soul and our connection to God and others. Hopefully, through it all, I keep the quest for meaning, compassion, understanding, faith, and discovery at the forefront of my writing. I hope others connect with it. I think we all can learn great lessons from one another...that is what the exchanges between writer and story, reader and story, and writer and reader can do.