Two birds, one stone. Both dead.

On a lazy Sunday afternoon while one of my men played tennis and the other two worked to get some near-adults graduated from high school, I drove across town to explore the efficiencies of lounging lakeside.

I can do that: I can use the words lazy, lounging, lakeside and efficiencies all in the same sentence.

When I walk  while reading, listening to music, responding to an occasional email and chewing gum, my kids consider me to be the Ultimate Multi-Tasker. I think my multi-purpose afternoon listening to water lap at rocks should put a little more meat on my UMT creds.

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Hold your gasps until the end please, but I liked Julia Cameron this week. (I’ve been saying all along, there’s good, very good, stuff here. It’s just that it’s interspersed with an occasional little thing that makes my hair stand up.)

She scores extra points because she didn’t ask me to do anything awkward or encourage me to be more self-centered than I already am.

In this week’s reading of The Right to Write, she focused on two areas that seem really to go arm in arm. I had trouble fully distinguishing them, anyway.

In Body of Experience, she writes of the importance of using the body to work the mind. She explains,

We store memories in our bodies. We store passion and heartache. We store joy, moments of transcendent peace. If we are to access these, if we are to move into them and through them, we must enter our bodies to do so. When we encounter an emotional shock, the trauma of a lost beloved, the grief of separation, our bodies count the cost. Our minds may go numb, adroit at denial, but our bodies hold fast to the truth.  . . .

When I have a shock, I walk to metabolize it. Walking, seeking only to move and in moving “move” something through, I often come to an entirely unexpected idea. I happen upon it with the same delighted shock that I have when my woodland walking brings me unexpectedly up upon a deer. “Oh! Look at that!” I think, creeping closer to the thought to examine it. (pp. 58-59)

She also reminds us of The Well, suggesting that we each maintain an “inner pond, one that must be kept both stocked and freely flowing.” (p. 64)  Cameron explains that writing emerges from the “broth of our experience,” and at the point where we tap that dry and fail to replenish the pool, the writing will dry up as well. She goes on to say that

If we lead a rich and varied life, we will have a rich and varied stock of ingredients from which to draw on. If we lead a life that is too narrow, too focused, too oriented toward our goals, we will find our writing lacks flavor, is thin on the nutrients that make it both savory and sustaining. (p. 65)

To which I ask, what part of life is not like this? Which aspect of life is it that I can suck dry and never refresh, and expect it to flourish? Living, relating, working, experiencing, even on purpose, is crucial to keeping the well full.

She gives wise counsel. (Remember, hold your gasps please. Perhaps I’ll be cynical for you again next week.)

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The other night I curled up under a quilt on the sofa to wait for one of my sons to come home from filling his own well, rocking and rolling at a concert in North Dakota. As the wee-ness of the hour snuck up on me, my conspiracy theorist awoke. (You have a muse, I have a C.T.)

I flipped back the cover of the book in my hands to make sure I hadn’t accidentally picked up Cameron in the dark. No mistake, it really was Matt Woodley’s The Folly of Prayer. (Now, I’ll promise not to judge Cameron’s by the title and you promise not to judge Woodley’s. Deal?)

Woodley used words like “embodied” and told me to “go for a long walk in the woods.” He urged me to immerse myself in sacramental reality, saying that

. . . the very act of moving, walking, looking up into the stars, opens up my brain and body and soul to the presence of God. (p. 39)

He even quoted Neruda.

At that, I nervously began to scan the pages, looking to see if he used the word “metabolize.”

(He didn’t.)

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So Sunday afternoon, I bypassed the nap I’d earned the night before, and instead threw a guitar in the back seat and went off to kill two birds with one stone.

I took the time get all sacramental, get my fists around some outdoor, physical prayer, and fill a well or two.

All at the same time.

Meaning I got to do all that plus get extra credit for efficiency.

I breathed in the smell of lilacs and cut grass and a few dead fish on the rocks. I appreciated the contrasting sounds of gentle waves licking the rocks on my side of the lake and water rushing and crashing over the spillway beyond my sight line on the other. I stretched out with the sun baking my neck, welcoming summer even as wet, cold days sat just hours in the past.

As I tried to get what it is that takes me deep about the green-on-blue of a summer sky, I marveled that this is not as good as it gets.

Even that rich, upending color I see, it’s a glimmer, nothing more, of the splendor that is to come.

I sat in the grass and felt its poke, wondering at Lewis’ hollow people unable to bear diamond-like grass slicing their feet.

Toes stinging, I realize how not quite ready I am for what is really real.

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Our discussion of Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write continues at High Calling Blogs today. Stop over and read Laura’s post as well as the insights of other participants.

Try these for starters, or catch up with previous posts in this series:

L.L.’s Finding Your Words
nancy’s the right to write and buying work
Nancy’s Enter the Body
Monica’s Sketching
Melo’s Day 12-16: Slip, Slipping Away
Glynn’s An Artist Date
Cassandra’s Walking and Writing
Marilyn’s You Never Take Me Anywhere Anymore

Photos: Lakeside Efficiency (And yes, always wear socks. Even to the lake.)

Reference: The Right to Write by Julia Cameron; The Folly of Prayer: Practicing the Presence and Absence of God by Matt Woodley; The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis