writing

Practicing the presence of God through writing

There are many ways to practice God’s presence. Writing is one such practice. This is not true for all writing, but these days, the writing I do here and at Holistic Budo is one way that I practice God’s presence in my life. That doesn’t mean that everything I write is divinely inspired—far from it. Rather, I can feel God’s presence within the practice when I write with my mind on God. 

I don’t write for myself. In truth, it was never my goal or desire to write as much as I do. I write because I feel called to do so. It feels like a spiritual requirement for me, something that God is asking of me. Much like when I don’t pray or meditate, when I don’t write, I feel out of sorts. It’s as if God has given me a gift, and when I squander that gift, he lets me know it. 

I also don’t publish my writing for attention. I publish what I have written to free myself of it, let it go, and put it into the world without shame, judgment, or expectation. I publish my work as an act of not hiding. This is me not hiding behind my fear, my insecurity, or my concerns over the opinions of others. This is what I wrote. Here it is. Love it or hate it, I sat down today to write, and this is what came out. 

Writing has become, for me, a form of prayer. It’s an act of listening. I sometimes sit down with an idea in mind of what I want to write about, but that idea is usually just the thing that gets me started. Once I begin writing, it rarely, if ever, goes the way I expected. I’m merely a conduit for that which wants to be written. I’m not trying to write. I’m trying to get out of the way. 

My best writing comes out of the quiet spaces between my thoughts. When I don’t know what to write, I wait. I listen. I feel what wants to come out, and then I do my best not to taint or distort it. Some days, it’s a struggle—it’s like grappling with a ghost. Other days, it’s easy, like the Holy Spirit is writing through me.

The more I write, the more I realize how insignificant I am and how much God truly loves me. I know that my words and blog are a drop in the ocean of creation. I don’t write, however, to make waves or even ripples in the water. I write because God has given me the ability and the inspiration to do so. And it is my way of thanking him for the Spirit he has sent to guide me. It’s an act of gratitude. It’s a practice, a method for practicing the presence of God in my life. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations on God and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

I don’t believe in writer’s block

…and then I had nothing to say. 

I’ve been writing my daily blog at Holistic Budo for a really long time. It has changed over the years and the most recent iteration is what I would call ‘divine poetry.’ As part of my morning prayer hour, I write a poem-like prayer based on whatever inspiration comes to me at that time. 

Most of the time, it feels effortless. The words just come. Some days, I will write several poems and since I only post one a day, that means I have a large amount of unpublished work sitting in a folder. 

For the last few days, however, something feels different. The words simply aren’t there and neither is the desire. It feels like I have nothing left to say on that platform, but I’m not sure why or what to do about it. 

I’ve been so committed to putting out daily posts for so long that it feels wrong to stop, but I have nothing to say. While this may just be a phase, I also acknowledge that everything changes, especially me. I’m not the same person I was when I started the blog. I’m not even the same person I was at this time last year and my writing reflects that. 

Maybe I’m entering a new season in my life. This could be the proverbial door closing so that another door can open. Or maybe I just have writer’s block, although I don’t really believe in writer’s block, and clearly I’m writing because, well, I’m writing. I’m just not writing there. 

Time to pray…

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

When you make your bed, make your bed for God

At night, my wife is always cold and I’m always hot. We used to try to share blankets, but inevitably, one or both of us was uncomfortable. For this reason, even though we sleep in the same bed, we sleep with separate blankets. This is our low-tech way of adjusting our personal heat settings. 

Because of our schedules, we both wake up fairly early, but I tend to wake up earlier. In fact, if my wife wakes up and I’m still in bed she knows I’m either exhausted or sick. In these rare instances, she is kind enough to just let me be and she gets our daughter ready for school, which is usually a task that we share. 

Each morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, the first thing I do is get on my knees to pray. I thank God for another day, I ask him to remove the things that are blocking me from being of service to him and my fellows, and I ask that he guides my thoughts, words, and actions so as to bear witness to his love, power, and way of life. 

After my initial prayers, while trying to remain quiet as to not wake my wife up, I fold the blankets on my side of the bed and go downstairs. This morning, however, when I looked at the blankets, I simply didn’t feel like folding them. I got up, looked at them, and turned to walk away, but then the thought popped into my mind, “When you make your bed, make your bed for God.” 

With this thought, I was overcome with a sense of great peace. For a moment, it was all so clear. Whether making my bed, brushing my teeth, cooking breakfast, washing the dishes, or giving my daughter a goodnight kiss, if done in a prayerful manner, it is all prayer. 

By setting my intention toward God and focusing my attention on the task in front of me, I’m no longer just folding of a blanket. I’m participating in an act of thanks, praise, and supplication. Maintaining this attitude of constant prayerfulness is not easy, but acknowledging the possibility and desirability of such a posture is a step in the right direction. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

These are the only moments like this that we get together

Sometimes, all of the things my daughter needs from me can feel like a nuisance or a burden. Sometimes, she asks too many questions and I just want some quiet so that I can do my work. Sometimes, I don’t want to listen to Taylor Swift or Blackpink in the car. 

But then I remember that someday, my daughter won’t need me anymore or at least not as often. Someday, she’ll live on her own and won’t be around to ask me questions all of the time. Someday, I’ll be driving in the car by myself missing her and wishing I could have this time back even if it means listening to Taylor Swift or Blackpink on repeat for hours at a time. 

Sometimes I get frustrated with my daughter or impatient with her. I’m only human and I have a limited amount of energy and attention, and sometimes I give so much to others or to my work that I have very little left for my daughter. But then I’m reminded just how fleeting these moments are, and just how precious they are. 

These are the only moments like this that we get together. God willing, there will be more moments together, but these are the only moments like this. And we don’t them back. What we get is what we get. There are no do-overs and there is no rewind button on life. Every single interaction is unique and special, and I can either push them away or embrace them

Someday, my she will ask me for a piggyback ride for the last time. Someday, she will ask me to do her hair, to take her to a school dance, and to put her to bed for the last time. For these reasons, and many more, I pray to treat every time like the most important time. I thank God for my little girl every day and I’m beyond grateful that I get to spend the time with her that I do. I know it will not last forever and that makes me appreciate her even more. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

God got my attention today

I’m not a very patient person. Well, that’s not altogether true. I’m not very patient when it comes to waiting for other people. When it comes to me and my responsibilities, however, I’m more than patient. In fact, I’ve been known to take my sweet old time and wait until the absolute last minute to get things done. 

If I’m being honest, I have a plethora of double standards. It seems as though, as soon as I become too full of myself, God shows me the truth, which is that I’m just as flawed and broken as everyone else. By a Godly standard, I have no leg to stand on when it comes to judging or being impatient with other people. 

In spite of this, I’m still not a very patient person. This evening, for example, when my daughter and I got home from jiu-jitsu class, I got out of the car and started walking toward our house. I was hungry and looking forward to taking a hot shower and having dinner. But when I looked back, my daughter was still in the car. 

I immediately grew impatient. I stood there staring at her, wondering what was taking so long. Then, right as I was about to say something, I suddenly turned away and looked up at the evening sky. As I did, a peace came over me and it’s as if time slowed down. 

I stood there staring at the fluffy white clouds floating by atop a light blue backdrop and everything just felt okay. I was no longer agitated and I was no longer in a hurry. The only thing that existed was that moment, the clouds, the sky, and my awareness of them. 

I’m not sure how long I stood there, but it felt like both an eternity and an instant. Then, I heard my daughter scuffling around and I turned back to see what she was doing. As she got out of the car with her jiu-jitsu gear, her backpack, and her viola case, she said, “Daddy, can you help me shut the door?” 

A few things occurred to me in that moment. First, God is good and he is always there to remind me when I need to simply be still in his presence. Second, my daughter probably would have gotten out of the car sooner if I had offered to help her with her stuff. Finally, it’s really not that big of a deal. 

Sure I was hungry and sure I wanted to take a shower, but these selfish concerns were not and are not more important than being present to both God and my daughter. I can’t promise that I’ll do better next time, but the when next time comes, which it will, perhaps I’ll remember those clouds, that sky, and my daughter’s sweet voice asking me to help her. God got my attention today and I’m willing to change for his sake and hers. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul

I’m supposed to be writing my graduate school admission essay, but it’s hard. It’s hard because it matters. It’s hard because it’s personal. It’s hard because it’s about me and that brings up all of my fears, insecurities, and self doubt. 

Doing something like this brings me face to face with the stories I tell myself about my worth and my worthiness, about what it means to be accepted, and about what it means to be loved and received as I am, not as I pretend to be. 

Writing about myself, why I want this, and why I am the right candidate and this is the right school for me terrifies me because it exposes me. It exposes me because I refuse to give them only part of me. I don’t know how, and that’s not what they are asking for. It terrifies me because, if I give them all of me, what if that is not good enough? 

This fear, this paralyzing, mind-numbing, soul-shaking fear is how I know it’s important. It’s how I know it’s real. It’s how I know that I have to do it. The fear tells me where to go, even if I don’t want to go there, even if I hate the feeling of moving forward. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul. It won’t leave me alone. It calls to me. It draws me nearer. It’s an inevitability. With every passing day and every toll of the bell, I can feel the pull toward the work that I must do. Even as I write this, seemingly in avoidance of the call, it has brought me one step closer to finishing the hard work of facing myself. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Keep writing

As I said in Evolution of a Blog Pt. 1, I’ve been publishing daily blog posts for a long time on Meditations of a Gentle Warrior. In addition to publishing to my website, I also post my writing on social media. Social media being what it is, when people feel so inclined, they comment on what I post. 

Over the years, the feedback I’ve received has been mostly positive, which is nice. It’s good to know that others find value in my work. But since feedback is not the primary aim of my writing, I tend to glance at it, acknowledge it, and then move on. I suppose I’m afraid that if I get too caught up in what others think, it will change the way that I write, so I try to take it with a grain of salt.

That doesn’t mean the feedback goes unnoticed and unappreciated. It actually means a lot to me when someone takes the time to tell me they like what I am doing. At the very least, it’s reassuring, but it can also be fuel to keep going. I’m only human and, like most people, I feels good to be acknowledged for the work I’m doing, even if I make a concerted effort to not let it get to my head. 

When I receive criticism, however, it’s a different story altogether. I read it, reread it, worry about it, and obsess over it. If someone doesn’t like my work, whether it be the content or the style, I can’t stop thinking about it. It doesn’t matter how many positive comments I receive, one negative comment will make me question everything I’m doing. 

Recently, I received such a comment on one of my poems I had posted to a group called Contemplative Christianity on Facebook. Overall, it’s a good group. The folks on there seem to be respectful and supportive, but one group member took the time to write a long comment on one of my posts that really threw me for a loop. 

In her remarks, she stated that, while she enjoyed my writing, she felt that I posted too often and that my doing so is a sign of spiritual immaturity and borders on arrogance. In reading this, I was crushed, but also confused. I post once a day, it’s always respectful and in alignment with the group’s rules and focus, and I’ve never tried to push my ideas or my work on anyone. Not only that, everyone has the right to choose whether or not they want to read what I post. No one is forcing anyone to do so. 

I did my best to be respectful to her and to try to understand her position, but I was really taken aback by it because all she had to do was to not read my posts. The whole situation got me thinking though. It made me question why my reaction to negative feedback is so much stronger than my reaction to positive feedback. Why is it so lopsided? 

Why did this comment bother me so much that I read it over and over again, and couldn’t stop thinking about it? Was this enough to make me change my style, my frequency of posting, or quit altogether? No. Then why was I giving so much space in my head? 

I had to remind myself that I’m not writing for feedback, either positive or negative. I’m writing to write. I share my work as not only an act of bravery, but also an act of generosity. Some people, probably most people, are not going to like it. It’s not for them and that’s okay. My job is to keep writing for as long as I feel called to do so. Maybe someday I’ll have published work that people will pay to read and write negative comments about. What a blessing that would be. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Evolution of a blog pt. 1

Every day, for quite some time now, I have been writing and publishing a short blog post for my Meditations of a Gentle Warrior blog. I’ve been doing this for several years and, other than missing a day or two here and there, and a couple of longer periods where I thought I had quit altogether, I have been faithful to this practice. I honestly can’t even remember how or why I started, but I do know that I got the idea of posting daily from listing to an interview with Seth Godin who has been writing and publishing a daily blog post for well over a decade.

My blog didn’t start out as what it is now. In fact, if I remember correctly, I was posting on an entirely different site than the one I’ve been using for the last few years. The name has also changed over time. At first, I don’t think it had a name. Then, it became Holistic Budo. 

Sometime before my first martial art teacher, Joe Sheya, passed away, I had started doing a form of qigong, a mind-and-body movement practice for developing so-called internal strength, to supplement my hapkido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu practices. Upon hearing that I was studying qigong, Joe said to me, “That’s good, but don’t make the mistake I made by thinking your qigong practice is separate from your martial art practice. Find a way to integrate them.” 

The name Holistic Budo was meant to embody this idea of the integration of the holistic arts with the martial arts, with budo being the Japanese word for ‘martial arts.’ I thought that I would use my blog to document my journey through the arts, but art tends to have a mind of its own and the idea we start with is not always the art we end up with. In spite of my intentions, Holistic Budo evolved into my writing short philosophical posts wherein I shared experience, wisdom, or advice for living a better life. 

Sometimes I wrote about something I had experienced throughout the day. Sometimes I was writing to myself, basically giving myself advice for how I could have handled a situation or experience better. Other times, I imagined that I was leaving a trail of literary breadcrumbs for my daughter should she need it someday if I were no longer here to talk to. Eventually, wanting a name that better reflected what the blog had become, I changed the name to what it is now, Meditations of a Gentle Warrior. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

God’s goodnight kiss

As I finished my daily writing, my wife and my daughter were both fast asleep. Normally, I’d be right behind them, but on this night I was up later than usual. I had overbooked myself that day and I was behind on my work. The fact that I had overslept that morning didn’t help, but I needed it. It had been a long week with lots of jiu-jitsu classes, wrestling practices, appointments, meetings, and a tight schedule all around. 

Normally, I wake up at around 5:30am to do my morning prayers before my wife and daughter get up for work and school, respectively. On this day, I slept until nearly 7am. Actually, we all did. With only one bathroom, this caused quite a scurry to get everyone out the door on time and, being unwilling to give up my morning prayers, which, between my daily readings and meditation usually take about an hour, I was late for jiu-jitsu. I wasn’t scheduled to teach, so it wasn’t really a big deal, but my tardiness set the tone for the rest of my day. 

Fast forward and now it’s time for bed and I still hadn’t finished my writing for the day. So I sat down to write and, of course, I was stuck. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been more of a morning person than an evening person. My creative work is no different. In the morning, if I’m not distracted, the work just seems to flow out of me. At night, it’s much more of a struggle. Being tired doesn’t help. So here I am, past my bedtime, stuck at my keyboard determined to get something out. 

You could say I had writer’s block, but I’ve learned that there is no such thing as writer’s block. What feels like writer’s block is really just pride manifesting itself as fear, frustration, and perfectionism. Somehow writer’s believe that everything they write should be their best work and, if it isn’t, they convince themselves that some mysterious force is blocking them from writing. In actuality, no great creative work happens without a lot of mediocre, or even terrible, work happening first. The key to good writing, therefore, is to just write. 

So I started to get some ideas out. After a lot of false starts, typed and deleted sentences, and prideful disappointment in myself, things began to flow. After about an hour, I finally got to a point where I was pleased enough with what I had written that I was willing to publish it. I posted it to my blog, closed up my laptop, and got myself ready for bed. 

At night, before I lie down, I always go into my daughter’s room to check on her, give her a kiss on the cheek, and say my evening prayers at her bedside. This night was no different, except it was. My routine was the same, but as I walked away from her, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Maybe I was just overly tired. Perhaps it was a sense of release from having gotten through a very long day. But it felt like more. 

I went into my room, laid my head on my pillow, and was struck with a feeling of pure love coupled with a vision, like a waking dream. It lasted but a moment, but in that moment it was as if God uploaded into my consciousness a lifetime’s worth of information all at once. 

What I saw in my mind’s eye was me giving my daughter her goodnight kiss, but I saw it from the outside looking in. Words come up short, but in this single kiss, I could see the love transferred between us. I could see my love for her flowing from me into her, her reception of my love flowing back into me like the closing of a circuit, and God’s love for both of us surrounding us and flowing through the entire relationship. It felt like God gave me a glimpse, even if ever so briefly, into what he sees. 

This experience passed as suddenly as it came to me. Exhausted from the day, I fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up remembering what had happened the night before. As life goes, however, the day’s demands distracted me from reflection. It wasn’t until much later that I was able to really acknowledge and process this experience. In my reflection, I realized how easy it is to ignore, deny, or dismiss these moments and to simply move on with our lives, but I refuse to do so. I can’t. 

These experiences, fleeting glimpses into the mystery of God’s love, leave me longing for more, longing for God, but also extremely grateful that he chose to come to me in this way. Now my task is to not allow this transformative experience to go to waste, to use it, like so many others that I have had like it, as fuel to go deeper, to get closer, and to be still and present more often. But knowing that I cannot manufacture spiritual experiences, that I cannot make God come to me, and that grace is a gift undeserved, the best I can do is to pray. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Grappling with a ghost

In December of 2020, Jerry Seinfeld did an interview on the Tim Ferriss Show where, among other things, he talked about helping his daughter develop a writing habit. One recommendation he made to her was to set a time limit on her writing. “Just do an hour,” he told her, “Nobody writes all day. Shakespeare can’t write all day. It’s torture… You have to have an end-time to your writing session. If you’re going to sit down at a desk with a problem and do nothing else, you’ve got to get a reward for that. And the reward is, the alarm goes off, and you’re done. You get up and walk away and go have some cookies and milk. You’re done.”

As someone who is often plagued with all-or-nothing thinking, this really hit home for me. It’s important, when building a habit, to start small. Ask yourself what amount of time and effort each day is both sustainable and productive. It has to be both if you are going to stick with your practice, and that is really what building a habit is. It’s a practice. Your practice has to be sustainable because otherwise you will quit when it gets too difficult or inconvenient, but it also has to be productive because, if you don’t see noticeable results, or at least progress, you are also likely to quit. 

But the thing that really struck me about what Mr. Seinfeld said was that the reward for writing is to be finished with it. That, for him, the reward is not in the writing process itself. Rather, the reward is that it’s over, that he gets to stop, to get up, and to move on to something else. I can see the truth of this in my own writing practice. Like many writers have said before me, “I don’t like to write. I like having written.”

Writing, especially when it’s personal, is difficult. The best way for me to describe it is that it feels like I am grappling with some hidden, mysterious force inside me. I am simultaneously attempting to submit it while also submitting to it. Much like my jiu-jitsu practice, writing is not something I dreamt of doing or even necessarily desired to do before I started. It’s something I felt and feel compelled to do. It’s like chasing a ghost that is also chasing me. 

Also, like my jiu-jitsu practice, writing is often painful. It’s a struggle. It’s a fickle mistress. Some days, it leaves me feeling accomplished, inspired, and fulfilled, but other days, it leaves me feeling hurt, frustrated, and disappointed. In the long run, however, I am always glad to have done it. I’m glad to have shown up to practice, to have put in the effort, and to have faced myself in the process. And so, for better or worse, day in and day out, I will continue to grapple. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.