Today's prompt: "Today I choose joy, I choose to be open, I choose to write. Today I choose ___________"
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Listen and write along with today's audio here:
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.
Last night I decided to chase the sunset. It is one of my favorite dusk activities: when I see the light start its descent, I gather up my camera, my notebook and I head outside to one of the places close to my house yet have a wilderness feel to them. Last night I chose a spot called San Miguel Commemorative Grove, a wild urban spot I have used many times on sunset photo taking expeditions.
There is a definite underbelly feeling to this place, like you may find yourself in a scenario out of the opening of a "Law and Order" episode or maybe in a horror flick. I have had some unusual conversations there with vagrants and men who are more than likely cruising. I have had conversations with drug addicts before and after getting high.
I mostly interact with nature there, though. I interact with the space itself and with Divinity.
Last night I had a strong compulsion to head to the river. I wanted to sit by the water and write and shoot and shoot and write.
When I got to my favorite spot I hardly recognized it.
Wild urban spaces change in three years, just like people change in three years.
As soon as I got out of my car in the parking lot, a part of me felt like I had tumbled into the familiar-yet-always-changing. Its scent combines hay: wet hay with soggy, decomposing leaves. Katherine has said it smells like a gerbil cage that needs cleaning. I have said it smells like life returning to life. Last night it was especially pungent because we had just had rain. My favorite smell is when the sun is drying all the "stuff" that has fallen onto the ground after a rain. It is indescribably delectable in its visceral memory in those moments. Life returning to life, warmth speeding the process.
Three years ago I would come here with Samuel and he would play in his "island" room, which was like a sunken peninsula reaching into the river. I would sit on a higher level with large boulders, encouraging his safe exploration. He would throw rocks, the ultimate boyhood experience, and I would throw words into my notebook or images into my camera. Sometimes we would shoot video. One of my favorite photos of all time was taken there with Sam on his island.
Now the river is overgrown with plants I don't recognize. The water has been carved into paths. The island has disappeared. The majestic trees have had branches fall. The soft, ethereal playground has turned into sour brush. The river is choked. Under the bridge where I used to shoot cloud reflections so beautiful you couldn't tell where the water ended and the sky began is now dense with green and nothing has space to reflect.
I stopped for a minute to just look, to just listen, to just be present in this space as it is rather than concern myself with what was once, when I first came to play and create here.
Unfortunately there are times when we buy into concepts like "being blocked" or "stuck". This runs the risk of seeing an occasional "slow-down" time within our creative processes as being something wrong.
This is simply not so. Having quiet times – days when substantive words elude us, days when we can't seem to string a subject and verb together to make any sense at all – is a normal, natural part of the process.
The best way to remain focused even within those moments is to choose to see and experience joy even within what we used to label as strife.
In those moments of sitting completely still, a bunny came out of hiding to nibble a grassy dinner. Another bunny joined her, and then still another. I watched them, smiling. My notebook and my camera stayed in place, stayed silent. If I were to move, it might frighten them. They would leave. I chose not to disturb their meal.
As the sun dropped below the horizon. the birds started to connect with each other through their bird song. I closed my eyes to listen and wished I knew more of them by name, these music makers. I heard the staccato clicking of rodents chatting with other rodents. A man with a walking stick came off one path, a path where I once communed with an egret. "Are you drawing?" he asks me. "No, I am writing." He turns and I ask him, "Do you draw?" He doesn't.
I find myself not wanting to leave the bunnies and the birds. I want to stay.
I look back at what is left of the water. I could see this as an invasion, these water sucking plants. I could look at them as interlopers in my sacred space.
I could complain that they have taken away the movement, taken away the current, blocked the flow and the ripples.
I was reminded of visiting old pieces of writing, like my long ago words of "Maintain an open heart and mind, continue your path, love your life. Love those around you. Be open, be caring, be radiant."
I have no recollection of writing those words. One day I did, though, as I was exercising both my mind and my pen. Over the past few years, my writing has become more than an occasional activity. It has become like breath is to my life.On those days when coherent articles don't flow, I sit down and write whatever flows out of my fingers. That day, those words blossomed.
Revisiting my words reminds me of the feeling of falling in love, just as I found myself falling in love with the moment last night.
I took the time to become intimate with the new version of this space I loved.
It was different than it once was. It was less visually appealing. It still bears touches of what my soul needs. Wildness, life, visceral scents that grab me in my belly and move my pencil.
The simple fact that I sat down and wrote brings me happiness, brings me joy.
The simple fact I wrote those words long ago and saved them manages to bring me incredible happiness now, years later. In the moment that I wrote them it was a tiny action. It seemed to be insignificant at the time.
Once again, the tiniest actions have monumental impact.
In Junior High Math class the question is posed: what is the difference between a penny being doubled every other day for sixty days or a penny doubled twice a week for sixty days?
In this example, doubling every other day, at the end of sixty days you would have $10,737,418.24 On the other hand, if you doubled every two weeks you would have .16. Thats right. 16 cents.
The difference of consistent compounding nets a difference of nearly eleven million dollars.
Do you see what is being said here?
It is the initial small building blocks which birth the abundance. One penny at a time, one muscle at a time, one conversation at a time, one step at a time, one smile at a time, one word at a time.
The amount of increase is not very noticeable until rather deep into the process. Many people have given up by then - or stop right before they cross over to their own success.
If one chooses to cast widely towards a negative effect, the same exponential experience occurs.
In making our daily decision to write, we can pave the pathway not only for our own growth, we can also pave the pathway for positive futures for others. As Marian Wright Edelman said, "We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
Apparent "obstacles" are simply evidence of something that we are to learn from and then continue our journey.
Your writing output always grows exponentially when you continue consistently and take action deliberately. This is what you have been doing through this program.
The river may look like it is being choked by the plants. I am guessing there is something that needed to happen in this particular plot of land, perhaps to feed the bunnies or provide an ecosystem I don't know or understand. My job is to write and appreciate and enjoy what is present.
Dag Hammerskjold is said "We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours." Our attitude, our willingness, our movement is truly up to us."
Long ago I wrote: "Life is richer when we choose joy, when we maintain an open heart and mind and simply continue our path consistently. These simple actions keep our lives and our writing open,
radiant, compassionate and increasingly filled with gratitude."
Today's prompt: "Today I choose joy, I choose to be open, I choose to write. Today I choose ___________"
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