Today's Writing Prompt: When life gets confusing, I will continue to write, anyway because....
Welcome to And Now You Write. We are grateful you are here today to write alongside us. If this is your first visit: hooray! This is the just right time for you to start. We only have five more lessons, so consider this your personal, short term intensive writing program.
Before you read the lesson, allow the prompt of the day to seep into your mind. Don't actively seek the words yet, instead allow it to just be there, settling into your mind, as you go through the lesson itself.
Today's audio includes a tiny error: I mention Natalie Goldberg and instead of saying Writing Down the Bones I said "And Now You Write" - intriguing slip of the mind and tongue or divine call? Anyway - today's audio may be experienced by clicking the player below:
Feel free to call in on our live calls this weekend before we leap into our final three days of And Now You Write 2010.
Simple dial (712) 432 3100 conference code 440137. I look forward to connecting with each and all of you
Beloved Weekend Writers:
This session of And Now You Write has been significant on several levels.
I used to run what I call "big, bad ass programs" on a regular basis. I created three different 42 day programs in rapid fire order and had hundreds of participants across the planet every time.
Then life got dicey - some of you may remember the private hell I went through in 2006/7 starting with when my brother got critically ill and eventually passed away. My Mom got cancer right after that. Samuel had been struggling behaviorally in school while my brother was dying and in the fall of that year, he was diagnosed with autism and I pulled him out of school until the school system could devise an appropriate program for him. Amidst all my emotional upheaval, I was now homeschooling my special needs child.
Business took a back seat to everything else.
When people ask me how I got through those days, I can't give them a firm, crisp, concise answer.
I have to go back and read what I was writing then to begin stoking the fires of memory.
What I do remember is I continued to write. It may be what saved me in the midst of so much loss.
I would write into what I didn't understand to hope to receive some form of understanding and be comfortable with whatever did (or didn't) show up.
"Dare to not understand, to lose your grip on making sense of the words." Kim Rosen
It was during the earliest stages of this "I don't understand" I wrote this poem:
The Words Wait - Today's Poem
© 2006
Julie Jordan Scott
There is a place
Beyond the words
Where beauty is stored
Deep in the soul
Beyond language
There is a knowing
That transcends our minds
We may only feel it
With our hands
With our hearts
With our tears
Nestled in the ambiguity
The turbid smokiness
Of desire yet not wanting
The question too risky
The Invitation unasked
The words wait for
The understanding
To Catch up
Paradox has always been a powerful place for
me to hang out, to breathe, to connect to wholeness.
Paradox tells me "It is perfectly ok to not know, to
be uncomfortable, to be a beginner."
Paradox welcomes me when I feel wholly unwelcomed
by the status quo.
In "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci" by Michael Gelb
there is a chapter on Ambiguity – I relate that to the
"turbid smokiness" of Paradox.
And I realized this morning that writing couplets as I
have been doing as a writing practice is akin to
inviting paradox into the forefront of my consciousness
and then "letting `er rip". Giddily most of the time,
cautiously other times.
And paradox says it is ok, all the time.
I like that, a lot.
So - for you, today, a step into my most private, sacred
chambers - writing practice. And perhaps, the opportunity
to try this on for yourself, as well.
My offering today - I hear, I don't hear....
I hear windchimes when I sit on my porch, writing, and
the wind blows. I feel connected to divinity in that moment,
in those moments I know the truth that all is well, that
goodness and beauty and wholeness coarse through my veins.
I don't hear what I don't want to hear. That makes me
laugh, a nervous laugh? I am not sure. Selective hearing,
"I don't wanna!" hearing that puts a big slanted X over the
words that don't feel good, the voices that slice through
my heart with baggage and bruises and sometimes profund
truths if I would only hear without attachment.
I hear unseen bird calls.
I don't hear babies cry here, on this block, nor do I
hear slow moving barely mobile feet. We are youthful
middling in this neighborhood.
I hear a vacuum and I think or is it I see green/blue
shag that was "all that" in the 70's. Why we chose to
cover hard wood with that stuff I will never
quite comprehend.
I don't hear water or cows or chickens or horses
or sheep here.
I hear a gentle airplane whirrr. I hear a car in the
distance. I hear my breath in and out and when I get
really quiet I can hear my pen making a slight sound
dancing across the page, the whirr of my pulse as my
heart reaches out and into the Universe.
I hear.
Sometimes during those days my "hearing" was via my notebooks, which I called "Blue Lined Conversations." There were times those were my only conversations outside of my children.
From that same era, when I had an a-ha which came from this space of ambiguity:
I was writing in my blue-lined conversations
today about being needy.
I wrote:
"I am going to put in a load of laundry and clear
some space. I need (or rather, would like) a hug
from you, and some deep breathing. Just breathing,
together, with someone who knows how to breathe.
It isn't that rare. Why do I think it is? Why do
I make it so?
I don't want to appear needy - for you, of you, any
of that. My conflicting thought, immediately after
allowing those words onto the page is this....
'Why do I make it wrong to be needy?'
OK. Laundry. Now. And counter clearing."
In this present moment I am tired and drained. I am
tired of hearing myself say I am tired and drained.
I feel, somehow, responsible to inspire other people
into not being tired and drained so why the heck am
I tired and drained myself?
It could be so much worse.
It could be so much better.
I just made myself chortle. That is good.
Today I am going to see Mom who is walking around
with cancer inside of her. I need to drop all this
house stuff and Sam stuff and be with her, 100%.
Breathe with her. Give her jobs to do because she
loves to have jobs to do.
Let her take care of me. Ironic, when she is the
one who has cancer but her taking care of me
is one way I take care of her.
I remember when I was about to have Sam. I was so
uncomfortable and I was alone with my girls. Mom's
usual pattern was to come after the baby was born,
but she got that Mom call to be there for me, so she
drove from Flagstaff even without talking to me.
She left a message on my voice mail, which I was
avoiding. Like my pattern today, if I am feeling
low I don't want to talk to people so I don't
answer my phone, I let voice mail answer.
She came anyway.
She walked in the door and asked me what I wanted.
I took to the couch and said, "Rice with butter and
an egg salad sandwich."
For me, the ultimate comfort food.
I let her take care of me because that is what Mom's do.
That is what love personified does. When one of the people
we love is in a tough spot, we don't leap into finger
pointing or tsk tsk tsking... at least the heartful
ones among us don't.
We appear and take care of their needs, whatever they may be.
Egg salad sandwiches, breathing, sewing on a button, combing
out tangles, tying shoes, it doesn't matter.
Love personified appears.
Just shows up.
That's what takes the "could be worse" and makes it
into "could be better."
Sometimes we are the love personified that appears
and sometimes we are the love personified that calls
out for a snuggle, some steamed rice or a bargain
matinee, some baby sitting, some time in the
riverbed laughing and relating.
I just made a discovery.
The "need" I have is the need to surrender. To stop
putting my arms up, in front of my face and my body
and open them up so that other people, those people
who are love personified, can touch my hands, slide
into my arms and lift me up.
I do that a lot for others when they allow me to
be love personified.
It always makes me feel so good.
That's what I am choosing to remember today.
Surrender to love personified. Surrender to the call to write no matter how confusing life may seem.
Today's Writing Prompt: When life gets confusing, I will continue to write, anyway because....
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