Opening the God Door

My friend and beautiful, creative sister, Sitara Haye, said something last night that has stayed on my mind all day. 

We (the members of my wonderful writing group) were talking about all the ways we keep ourselves from realizing our creative dreams.  Sitara said (loosely quoted)...

Consider that what sets humans apart from other earthly beings is our ability to create, to do more than merely reproduce ourselves biologically, to create something beautiful, moving, or inexplicable from nothing but our own creative energy. Some say that creative energy is God within us, and  what that energy gives birth to is how God is made visible in the world. Consider then, that if you are filled with the fire, the desire to create, and you let fear or insecurity keep you from giving birth, God is left unborn, unknown. Someone will not see God because you didn't open that door.

Sitara made and demonstrated her point in one fell swoop. Through her ability to string words together, to paint with syllables and sounds a picture I had not previously recognized, she opened the God door for me. And God was there telling me to get off my scared, tentative, never-think-I'm-good-enough butt and use the fire in my gut and the dream in my heart.

What can say to that?

"Yes, Ma'am."

Rain on me! Surviving a Creative Drought

I am parched.

Cracked.

Dry as dust and windblown.

Not a drop of creative juice is flowing. It seems that all my energy of late has been expended on work and getting over a sinus infection, and there just isn't anything left over for this blog or any of my other writing endeavors.

I want a rain dance. Sweet, Blessed Lady, send me a gully washer!

While I await the gentle-to-pounding rain to come...what do you do when the river of words dries up?

I've always found inspiration in the world around me...in things people say and do and in the near constant stream of questions I ask the universe. When I'm so consumed with work and not feeling well to boot, even the questions dry up. I know they'll come back...they always do. In the meantime, I'll go to bed early and catch up on some much-needed sleep. When the dry bed is once again roaring with surging, juicy, creative goodness, I'll remind myself that sleep is overrated and make up for lost time.

I hope.

I Fought the Law and the Law Won

My recent brush with the law (more of a collision, really) has reinforced once again that crime doesn't pay. Apparently, neither does confident, joyous exhuberence...the kind you feel when you're out with two of your best friends and enjoying the conversation so much that you turn and walk backward on the sidewalk to keep talking and fail to see the big chunk missing which your foot finds nonetheless and you are no more able to stop yourself falling than you are able to stop this sentence from going on forever until...BOOM! BOUNCE! SLIDE! The law got me. Gravity is REAL!

So what's a right-handed writer with a broken right arm to do? So far, the only answer that has presented itself is to put my left hand to double-duty and do a lot of extra proofreading. I'm surprised at how quickly I can type with my oft-neglected left hand. Mr fear that my blog might languish unattended is rapidly disappearing.

Showering remains a concern, but I have my priorities. The blog is safe.

More to come. Time for pain meds.

Not a Poetry Lover...and Yet...

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

I am by no stretch of the imagination a student of poetry. A large portion of the poetry considered worthy of study in my school days was filled with obscure references and imagery I had no frame of reference for. Teachers weren’t satisfied with how the poem affected me or what I thought it meant. No, there was a right answer that most often lay somewhere just outside my vision and grasp. Having to work that hard just sucked all the life out of the art for me.

Ah, but there were a few, a rare collection of poets and poems that did touch me. Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg and, later, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Rabindranath Tagore, and Rumi, penned words that could have come from my own mouth, my own heart, or made real for me an experience I can never know first hand. They wrote poems that offered immediate recognition, like being reunited with old friends. My husband has that magic, too; several of his poems paint images more faithful to the truth than any camera can capture. And my Master List of Influential Poets wouldn’t be complete without the songwriters whose lyrics have been my constant companions for so many years…Lyle Lovett, John Prine, Paul Simon, John Mellencamp, Neil Diamond, Melissa Etheridge, J. D. Souther and other alchemists who made gold out of words and rhythm and fire.

The poems and songs that move me all begin in delight and end in wisdom. They delight with rhythm, a cadence and flow that lives and breathes with the words. The poems I love best can be read out loud, the meter echoing the heartbeat of the message. I delight in the sound and the words and the imagery all the way to the end and then there comes the wisdom…the resonance, the fire and passion and soul of the poet, the emotion, the experience. It’s like eating delicious oats, eggs, butter, sugar, walnuts, and raisins…and getting a warm cookie. What a gift it must be to have that magic!

Today, in honor of the many poets who have enriched my walk so far and the many more to come, I’m sharing one of my favorites with you. It’s hard to choose just one. I consoled myself with a reminder that I can always share more later. I invite you to share your own favorites, too, in comments. We’ll create our own mini-anthology.

From Gitanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore:

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked
in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life
and my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

In My Own Words, From Henry Miller's Mouth

How many times have you read something so profound, something that resonates with truth so deep and sure that you know you could have said it yourself if you could have found the words?

I ran across just such a quote today by author Henry Miller. Ironically (or maybe by Divine plan), the quote is about that very thing:

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he gets desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up to discover what is already there.

My wonderful 3AC Writer's Guild sisters and I were talking last night about the voices in us that still ask, Are you really a writer? What makes you think you have anything to say that anyone cares/needs to hear? Your work doesn't sound anything like his/hers/theirs. How can you be a writer? Those voices try so hard to drown out the one true voice inside, the one that knows, the one that aches to be heard.

Today I'll be brining a turkey, baking biscotti and shortbread, and making a last-minute grocery run for tomorrow's feast. I'm setting my intention right now to listen and observe and let my true voice speak without censorship or reservation. I think I'll carry the camera with me, along with a pen and notepad to record the dozens of things I see each day and want to write about. And in my kitchen, I'll light a candle for myself, my 3AC sisters, and everyone whose tender shoots have ever been stifled from lack of faith.

A View of the Mountain - Autumn in my Life

Looking out my kitchen window this afternoon, I caught the first glimpse of White Oak Mountain in the distance that I've seen since late March, maybe early April. In spring and summer, the trees completely block the mountain view, so much so that you wouldn't know the mountain was there if you didn't know the area.

Not exactly earth-shatterng news, is it? Trees shed their leaves every fall, graceful branches standing naked and unashamed, revealing sky and views hidden when they're all decked out in foliage. What struck me as I was looking out that window was how the trees and the mountain view were mirroring my own life right now.

I'm 52. My birth daughter is days away from 28, and my two step-daughters will soon be 20 and 18. The nature of my role as Mom has changed dramatically in the last few years. My baby girls are now beautiful young women, quite self-sufficient most of the time, and are actively pursuing their own interests. There are spaces in my life now that used to be crowded, spaces that reveal views I've missed for a long time.

I've reached the early autumn of my life and the leaves are falling. As those leaves drop away, the me that I used to know when I was a child is coming back into view.

I like her. She's creative, thoughtful, a writer and a photographer with an eye for beautiful things and a desire to share them with others. She's smart and she has a sense of humor She loves to cook and likes to eat, sometimes too much (some things never change). And she's learned a lot of things through her life's spring and summer, stories and lessons and memories that beg to be told, so she writes daily and loves it.

My friend and fellow writer Sitara says, “Give me an eight-spoked Wheel and I’ll show you the wisdom of the world.” She's so right. I can feel the Wheel turning, through the day, through the year, and throughout my life. The wisdom is found in paying attention, listening, and staying in synch with the Wheel.

I'm paying attention as the leaves fall and the views are revealed, some familiar, some new. Unlike the seasons, my own life is not infinite. My wheel will eventually stop turning. Time is short and I'm going to enjoy every vista along the way.

Can I just tell you...

...how cool it is that I just found something I wrote being used as an email signature?

Yeah...I know...intellectual property and all that...and yes, the person is using my words without attribution or permission...but...

How cool is that? I'm sitting at my desk typing but I'm doing a happy dance on the inside and grinning like a possum! (That's an old expression from here in the southeastern United States, though I've never actually seen a possum grinning.)

The specific words are those of a little chant/song I wrote a couple of years ago. I've sung it at a few campfires and shared it with just a few others (by request after having sung it around one of those campfires) via an email group, but it's otherwise quite unknown. I suspect that the person who is using it on email saw them through a Yahoo Group that I belong to.

How she found it is really unimportant. That she wanted to put it on her email is the important thing. My words...mine...meant enough to someone that she attaches them to her messages, right under her name, for all the world to see.

That makes me all kinds of inexplicably large amounts of happy!

Deep breath...

Ok...back to work for me...blog time over...but I'm still smiling.

I said I wanted to write...

...and along came a friend who wanted to start a writers' group. She brought a friend who wanted us to come up with three monthly goals for ourselves to further/better/support our writing.

Be careful what you ask for.

I'm excited and happy and scared to death. The scared part is rooted completely in the fear of failure, of not being good enough, not doing enough, letting someone down (myself or others), looking foolish, being foolish, sucking wind...you get the idea. And the weird part is that I know I can write...that I have something to say and can say it well...that there are people who will enjoy and benefit from reading what I have to say. And still I find myself wondering what authority I have to say anything of import...who am I to think I have anything anyone else needs...the same questions I've always asked.

Self-doubt sucks.

Arrogance sucks, too.

Where's the happy medium?

I'm looking for it...honest...and I think I've hooked up with the right group of writing friends to help me find it.

Yay, friends. Yay, me.

So here goes...my three monthly goals, subject to revision in future months...

• Write at least fifteen minutes every day.
• Start compiling writing samples from my current collection of work.
• Start a list of article, essay, and workshop topics; add to it as new thoughts come to mind.

Three goals...done.

Now comes the hard part.

Do you answer your cell phone in the bathroom?

...and other random thoughts.

I'm working from home today, taking a lunch break and enjoying the warm, gentle afternoon. I love my work-at-home days (usually two a week)... and the view is much better here than from my office. Because I cherish the privilege of working at home so much, I'm really careful to not do anything that might make folks at work think I'm slacking, so I carry my phone with me anytime I step away from my computer. This morning, I took it into the bathroom wtih me and then wondered what I would do if it rang? Would I answer it? Would you?

Before I started work this morning, I tripped out to the herb bed for some fresh basil (for my cottage-cheese-and-tomato breakfast). Mama had left some beautiful beadwork for us! Who knew squash plants could look so pretty!

Of course, my mind is running amok - as usual - with ideas and thoughts...things like, "Does anyone read this blog?" I tried to put a web statistics applet on here yesterday but haven't quite figured it out yet. If you're reading, leave a comment and let me know you're here! If you know how to install Google Analytics, better yet! And I'm still thinking about my writing career, the one that doesn't exist yet unless you count what I do at work, which is, in fact, mostly writing but not the kind I truly yearn to do.

Time is just so darned hard to come by! And it takes time to write. Ahhh...but therein lies the rub, does it not? We all have the same amount of time. Successful writers choose to devote a large portion of theirs to writing. I seem more inclined to devote mine to earning a living the less interesting but more immediately profitable way and helping take care of our home and land. Maybe what I need is a priority shift...or less sleep (though I can't really see that one...I don't sleep a lot as it is!)...or learn to not care so much about the other stuff.

A lot to worry about on a short lunch hour. My nose has been missed and must return to the grindstone immediately! Y'all stay tuned...more to come...and keep those cards and letters coming!