“My sacred desire is to reveal the grace, beauty, and love alive in prayer, transforming prayer from a thing you do to the way you live.”

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“My sacred desire is to reveal the grace, beauty, and love alive in prayer, transforming prayer from a thing you do to the way you live.”

My Writing Life

I stumbled upon deep soul writing on April 23, 1997, in the midst of trying to navigate a terrifying divorce. That morning my Great Dane puppy somehow pulled my untouched copy of The Artist’s Way off a bookshelf in my office and dragged it down a long hallway to me.

Startled out of ceaseless sobbing, I wiped off the drool and opened the book. A few pages in, I learned that when Julia Cameron has a problem she can’t solve, she goes to the page for help. I threw down her book, grabbed an untouched journal, scribbled hello, and begged for guidance. Guidance came.

That day and every day since.

Divine guidance carried my son and me safely through three chaotic years of trauma and loss.

Divine guidance lifted me out of bankruptcy in an impossibly fast sixty days. And divine guidance opened door after door after door to this beautiful life of writing books and gathering soul communities to explore the fields of the soul.

Early in 1997, an astrologer told me April 23 would be the most important day of my life. That day came. And went. Nothing happened. Twenty years later, as I prepared to celebrate two decades of deep soul writing, I opened my first journal to the first page dated April 23, 1997.

The Romance

I picked up a pen one day and asked:
Are you there?
Are you real?
Do you hear me?

And a Voice answered:
Yes, Beloved, is there something you want to say?

And in that moment,
that sacred, ordinary, sitting-in-my-chair moment,
the round door between worlds opened
and Love walked through.

We’ve been meeting on that threshold ever since,
each day a revelation, a comfort, a query, a sigh.

This is what I want to tell you:
The Romance is Real.

The Romance

I picked up a pen one day and asked:
Are you there?
Are you real?
Do you hear me?

And a Voice answered:
Yes, Beloved, is there something you want to say?

And in that moment,
that sacred, ordinary, sitting-in-my-chair moment,
the round door between worlds opened
and Love walked through.

We’ve been meeting on that threshold ever since,
each day a revelation, a comfort, a query, a sigh.

This is what I want to tell you:
The Romance is Real.

Janet's Story...

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2009

Guidance led me to write Writing Down Your Soul (Conari Press, 2009) which transforms journal-writing from self-reflection in the alpha brainwave state into divine dialogue in theta. Writing Down Your Soul shot into #1 in the journal-writing category, sold out in eight months, and is now in its ninth printing.

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2011

Shortly after Writing Down Your Soul was published, I was blessed to create My Soul Pages, the first journal designed for deep soul writers. It, too, sold out and is in its 2nd printing.

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2012

My next book, The Lotus and The Lily (Conari Press, 2012), and it's companion journal transforms manifestation from asking for anything to living the soul conditions that naturally produce the beautiful life you are here to live.

SoulDirectedLife

2013

In 2013, I created The Soul-Directed Life radio show which has been downloaded over 230,000 times. From 2008 to 2017, I also led six global deep soul exploration courses each year.

lowSoul Vows

2015

In 2015, Soul Vows introduced a mystical prayer practice that gathers the Presence of the Divine in and through and as you.

FINAL SDCB COVER

2016

In 2016, I was blessed to co-create The Soul Discovery Coloring Book with the brilliant artist Christine Pensa. This very unusual coloring book invites you to explore five fun ways to access your soul's wisdom.

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2017

Find Your Soul’s Purpose followed in 2017, guiding the reader along a mystical spiral to remember who you really are and why you chose to be here.

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2018

I accepted the call and have become a Prayer Artist. Mystical, beautiful prayers flow through me, and I find great joy in sharing these prayers through my writing, intensives, and prayer performances. (This is the sign for love).

janet podcasting

2019

Praying at the Speed of Love Podcast launches in February. Each week, I interview guests about prayer. It's real conversations. With Real people. About Real prayer.

I stepped into 2018 expecting to continue writing and teaching and hosting the radio show.
But something happened that changed the trajectory of my life—and perhaps of yours.

Love Comes Calling

In the wee hours of February 24, 2018, I semi-woke, clearly hearing “prayer artist.” Even as I scribbled the words in the dark, I knew this would change everything.

And it has.

The next morning, I had a long conversation with “Beloved Vibration of Sophia!”—the intimate name of the divine for me. I asked what led to this radical new calling.

Quickly, I saw that this adventure actually began on the Winter Solstice, when I woke in the middle of the night hearing “Sophia’s Voice.”

Really? You want me to be the voice of the divine feminine? How can I possibly live up to that.

I clutched The Radiance Sutras to my heart, asked for guidance, and opened to this rapturous line: “The god of love is courting you.”

My (very) unexpected teacher

That night, I opened Facebook to visit my private online soul communities. At the top of my feed, I saw a new Andrea Bocelli video. I pressed play but some red-haired kid in a blue baseball cap started to sing. I didn’t know it, but the kid was Ed Sheeran, and within days his lyrics began to pop up in (very) mysterious ways carrying unmistakable messages of cosmic love.

I wanted to understand the creative force behind these songs, so I listened to a few of Ed’s interviews. In one, he told a BBC interviewer he considers himself an “acoustic artist.” That’s how artist—a word I’d never used to describe myself—got planted.

Then, I heard Ed say he gives guitars to young musicians, but first writes “Play This Every Day” in black ink on the guitar. The next morning, I wrote Play This Every Day in gold paint across the cover of my black journal.

On a video deconstructing his megahit, “The Shape of You,” a musician who writes with Ed said something odd: “Ed is the instrument.”

The next morning, I stared at the cover of my journal and realized Play This Every Day is not a reminder to me to play the instrument of my journal. It’s an invitation to Sophia to play this instrument called Janet, transforming me—and now you—into an “instrument of grace.”

I could see the intertwining rivers of words and images that led to prayer artist, but I still didn’t understand what it meant or what I was being asked to do. But I said yes anyway. Taking a deep breath, I wrote: “If you want me to be your prayer artist, then I will be your prayer artist.”

Immediately my first prayer as a prayer artist, “Sometimes I Pray,” poured itself onto the page in one giant gulp.

Yes

Something is being awakened in me.

I hear silent love songs and know they are mine.
I see whole performances in the hour before dawn
and know this is what I am to do.

I hear these prayers.
The words wash right through me.
And I am moved.

The palm fronds applaud.
The ospreys scream encore.
The squirrels stop and stare.

I sit in the garden
and whisper yes.
Yes, Beloved, Yes.

I am willing to become your prayer.

Yes

Something is being awakened in me.

I hear silent love songs and know they are mine.
I see whole performances in the hour before dawn
and know this is what I am to do.

I hear these prayers.
The words wash right through me.
And I am moved.

The palm fronds applaud.
The ospreys scream encore.
The squirrels stop and stare.

I sit in the garden
and whisper yes.
Yes, Beloved, Yes.

I am willing to become your prayer.

Everything has changed.

Prayers have been arriving ever since. But they don’t look like standard issue prayers. Nor do they look quite like poems. But if they’re not prayers nor poems, what are they?

On March 14, “Do You Feel That Breeze” arrived whole and unbidden. This is the prayer that taught me what prayer is. Here’s a stanza that grabbed me by the heart:

You are not moving
You are being moved
You are not singing
You are being sung
You are not praying
You are being prayed—
Prayed at the speed of love

I read “Do You Feel That Breeze” aloud and found myself swaying.

That was the moment I finally understood: These prayers are lyrics. Prayers are love songs.

This is my definition of prayer now:

“Love songs of your personal, intimate, embodied communion with the Divine.”

Everything about prayer has changed for me.

So everything I do lined up for change, too. I’m now:

  • creating a whole new genre of prayer
  • leading radical new prayer intensives
  • partnering with other artists to create a new genre of YouTube videos—prayer videos
  • creating multi-media interactive prayer performances
  • developing a new podcast “Praying at the Speed of Love”
  • writing my first Artist Statement

And of course, my website had to change, too.

Here are some exciting new things you can do here:

I hope everything I offer helps you, too, live and create and pray at the speed of love!

Artist's Statement

janet hugging journal

“I am a writer. Today I write.”

Those are the opening lines in the Writing Blessing I have spoken every day since May 15, 2007. My Writing Blessing made me a writer. And for eleven years I have loved every minute of being a writer.

But now I am called to be a prayer artist.

I still write. I write words every day. These new prayers come to me in the form of words. But I also see them as videos and movement and performances. I hear them as love songs. I feel them deep in my body as sacred communion.

And each day I fall even more in love with life.

Artist is a new word for me, so I ask myself: What makes an artist an artist? An artist surrenders her hands, her heart, her whole body to her medium—be it words, paint, food, music…—and something happens, something emerges, something that did not exist before—something not even she could predict.

What, then, is my medium?

It’s still words, but it’s also images, emotions, movement, color, music. It’s rivers of mystical messages flowing through me, whether I recognize them or not.

My medium is my life. All that I am. All that I have been given. All that I shall ever be. My medium is my ancient longing, my divine purpose, my beating heart, my sacred love.

My medium is the Beloved expressing in and through
and as me.

My medium is me. I have become prayer.

Where is prayer taking me next? I don’t know.

But I want to go there.

Dive into Prayer.

Join our global community, learn "How to Become a Prayer," and deepen your prayer practice with Janet's weekly Notes from the Field.