Writing is something I live, I breathe, I need to do daily in order to feel satisfied. I have been teaching writing for ten years and I write each month with a group of women, month in and month out, we meet, we move our pencils, we write.
We take turns facilitating.
All of these women started out as students of mine, some of whom have evolved out of my classes, others who still come to write and learn alongside me.
The pure joy comes for me when we create, side by side.
Today it was my friend Jodi who facilitated our session. Last Summer, Jodi and I salivated outside John Muir’s writing office together, awed at the reality that he had sat right at that desk – right there – and created his books.
Right there! And there we were, together, after nearly five or more years writing together on the telephone. Our meeting face-to-face has deepened our friendship and our ability to creatively collaborate.
This photo is us, standing in the Belfry at John Muir's home.
Her prompts started tugging at my heart immediately, but what came out in the final two writings inspired what I created and called “it” within the Art Every Day context.
Prompt #3
I make a difference by granting others permission to just show up, to be less than perfect or perfectly perfect in supposed imperfection.
I make a difference by asking a question and living it before strategizing the course, knowing the way back is always revealed in the just-right time if knowing the way back is something I need to know, if I need it, it is there.
I make a difference by smiling into people’s eyes.
I make a difference by Being Intensity.
I make a difference by pointing out the what’s working.
I make a difference when I allow the hunger to sit at the table with me rather than frantically fill it, noticing the flotsam, picking it up, prodding it, folding it into a yellow envelope or fashioning it into a ball.
Up and down I toss it, back and forth, over and under I juggle it, this “flotsam” word Martin Luther King spoke and I found and now keeps surfacing.
“Collective unconscious” he says, from Jung.
I put my finger in the hole in the wall which is leaking water.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Is the water making a difference? Is the wall me making a difference? Is the hole making a difference? Is the whole me making a difference? Is my finger me making a difference?”
The differences are all right and are all me, making differences when I show up.
I show up, I make a difference.
Prompt #4 Spurred a Poem which became an Anthem of SHOWING UP. Show up!
The simple concept of "Show Up!" has played out over and over and over in my mind and heart these last few months, years and forever if I think about it.
Today's prompt and Jodi's guidance reminded me.
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