Writing Programs
Explore the writing program, both online and in-person in Minneapolis, offered by Eye of the Heart Center founders.
The most significant outcome of writing is who we become for having written.
Writing can become a life-giving, ever-deepening spiritual practice for anyone who loves to write. If you're interested in growing as a writer and becoming a more grounded, heart-centered human being, you'll thrive in Eye of the Heart's writing programs. We believe creative endeavors nourish our lives and the wider world. Together we augment the flow of creativity’s abundant gifts.
Upcoming Writing Opportunities
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Creative Writing to Form Community, Reduce Loneliness, and Keep You Inspired
Reignite your creative spark and connect deeply with others in a space free of judgment. Using The Narrative Method (TNM) developed by Shari Foos, seasoned facilitator Elizabeth Philipose will gently guide participants through a prompt-based, short-form writing practice followed by sharing in small groups. Shared witnessing strengthens our voices and teaches us how much our creative voice matters.
Three sessions beginning June 11
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Writing Your Sacred Journey
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew to explore the art and practice of spiritual memoir writing. By creating stories of your past, you can re-create your present and find agency for a meaningful future.
In-Person & Online. Upcoming Themes:
April: Writing Mystical Experiences
May: Dialogue
June: Community and Revision -
Writing the Sacred Journey: An Introduction to Spiritual Memoir
In this two-part introductory class, we’ll ask, “What is memoir, and how is it different from autobiography? What makes memoir spiritual? How can the practice of writing memoir, either for an audience or for no audience, support spiritual growth?” Using writing exercises and readings from model writers, we will get started with the basics. We will also discuss how to sustain spiritual memoir writing moving forward.
May 15 & 22, 12:15-1:30 at Plymouth Congregation, 1900 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis, MN
Asynchronous Writing Classes
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Asynchronous Writing Classes
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew to explore the art and practice of spiritual memoir writing in these online, pre-recorded two-hour classes. Each online session will give participants the opportunity to listen, read, write, share within a community space, and practice their own writing.
Cost: $25/each.
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The Gifts of Writing Micro-Course
This micro-course welcomes you into a healthy and meaningful writing practice. We can extract ourselves from a transactional, market-economy relationship with creativity, with its relentless focus on the end produce and what others think; we can move into a life-giving, generative process that feeds our souls.
Free
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Your Story as Scripture
Your experiences are unique, significant, and shot through with holiness. Writing down memories is a way to nurture the sacred dimension of your life, participate in the creation of your identity, and offer others through your presence and stories the blessing of your evolving truth. This 75 minute sampler will introduce you to the art and practice of writing spiritual memoir.
Cost: $25
Online Writing
Community
Bring your creativity, doubts, questions, and willingness to connect into an online community that names the world as gift. Creation thrives in a flow of giving and receiving. In this space, we orient our hearts toward the gifts of writing–insight, healing, growth, and meaningful presence. Each of us is a gift to the whole, and our best gifts to others are hearts widened by creativity.
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Take a short, free writing course from Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, which will put all community members on the same page as we gather online together.
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After you complete the course, you’ll be invited to join the donation-based writing community, where we will host events, classes, and foster a space for writers to encourage one another.
Retreats & More
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July 6-11, 2025: Writing your Sacred Journey Retreat
Join Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew to explore memoir as a spiritual practice. Whether you write as a form of private prayer, as a gift for family and friends, or for publication, this week-long retreat welcomes you into the transformational possibilities of writing. We’ll introduce spiritual memoir, reflect on memory as a sacred faculty, address the challenges and hazards of writing from memory, and learn how to sustain and deepen the practice. There will be ample time for solitude.
Overnight Stay, Commuter, or Zoom options
Overnight Stay: 5 overnights, 3 meals/day
Commuter: lunch, snacks, contemplative space -
The Release: How Writing in an Economy of Gifts Liberates Writers
The spiritual toll of writing in a capitalist society begins long before our pages go to print. What writer hasn’t felt fraudulent, feared rejection, or self-censored for fear of what an audience might think? We imagine our work’s value (or even our own) is determined by its reception. Inspired co-creations slowly, imperceptibly, morph into commercial products. Our spirits suffer.
Is there an alternative? For writers of faith, writing is a chance to practice a God-centered orientation. Creativity thrives—and the Spirit moves—when we turn our hearts toward the gifts moving in and through our writing. This workshop introduces the writing process as gift exchange, helping writers lift our heads out of the product-oriented sandbox to find a freer, Spirit-led way to play.
Monday, Sep 29th, 2025, 6:00 pm - Online
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Nov. 7-9, 2025: Writing about Transformation, Transforming our Writing with Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Writers often find inspiration in experiences of surprising, radical, or gradual personal change. How can these moments become dynamic agents, changing us as we write and changing others as they read? Together we will generate narratives about transformations both profound and ordinary. We will learn practical techniques to bring potential readers along on an experiential ride, and we’ll practice opening our hearts to inspiration’s movement in the writing process. This retreat is for beginning and intermediate writers of creative prose and poetry.
Conversations
We believe connection happens over curious conversations, so we seek to foster those both in person and online. These conversations often leave us in awe of the creative capacity we humans are gifted with.
For online conversations, we record the conversations every chance we can get, but only leave them up for 30-days publicly. After that, we shift them into our online writing community.
Past Conversations:
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This in-person event in Minneapolis featured film-maker Lucy Mathews Heegaard for an immersive film and conversation experience centered around her documentary, Diplophonia: A Diary of Voice Loss.
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Charity E. Yoro left us wondering about how poetry can help us channel our rage and reverence both in a world that is falling apart at the seams, or at the very least, seems to be. Listen and be inspired by her poetic voice and learn about how writing can be a transformative practice—for all of us.
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Long-time writer friends Mona Susan Power and Elizabeth Fletcher discuss the part intuition plays in their writing practices. Readers often imagine that creative writing is a wholly cerebral enterprise where each step of the way authors make conscious choices regarding craft, character, and plot. In reality, some writers surrender to the mystery of a process that can never be controlled, but rather is accessed by an open-hearted trust in the deep intelligence of our connection to all beings, past and present.
Inactive Writing Programs
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Freedom From the Inner Critic
This interactive series (six sessions) is designed for artists, we will delve into understanding, confronting and ultimately liberating ourselves from the relentless inner critic that stifles creativity and spiritual growth.
March 2025 - Registration Closed -
Embodied Writing: A Generative Practice
This 90-minute online generative writing session incorporates movement, breath, and meditation to help writers move beyond resistance and open to creative receptivity. Led by Elizabeth Fletcher.
Currently not running. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date!
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A Month of Meditation & Morning Pages
Are you looking for a contemplative or creative reset? Do you want to explore how a consistent practice of evening pages (adapted from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way) can support a more creative life? Would you benefit from the accountability of like-minded practitioners?
Coming soon. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date!
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Contemplative Writing Circles
Modeled after Quaker clearness committees, The Eye of the Heart’s Contemplative Writing Circles cultivate the aliveness moving within both writer and text. The circle magnifies our listening and holds us accountable to our creative source. These circles ask for a longer commitment from participants so the group can build trust and learn contemplative dialogue skills.
Currently closed. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date!
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Postcard Exchange Project
Do you love the charm of handwritten letters and the excitement of receiving snail mail?
Each participant will send out one postcard per day, while also receiving postcards from fellow participants in return. Participants are asked to share a small poem, haiku, drawing, painting or deep thought - making each one a unique work of art and a little gift of inspiration.
February 2025
