Of Falling into Wells
A write-in hero
I scratch his name
in Hebrews 11 margin
alongside the greats
Abraham, Joseph
and David
I remember
the sparkle and laughter
the power and strength
the life that poured
from coal-burned lips
as we rambled
desde un pueblo
al próximo
to set captives free
in places like
Empedrado
Barranqueras
and Resistencia
Get In, Get Done, Get Out
JP eased the door open and saw I was on the phone. He closed his eyes and shook his head at me without speaking, like a disappointed parent might do, and laid down on the bed behind me. My office, which I share with the guest room, is amply furnished.
I cringed just a little when I ended the call, knowing what was coming.
“It’s so bad, Mom.” He sat up on the bed and I turned my chair around. “What did you do this time? It smells horrible.”
:: (more…)
Best of 2010 at The High Calling
I’m rustling through the thesaurus trying to find a word for “speechless” that starts with an h.
There aren’t many.
But that’s how I have to do it sometimes, you know. I lean on a thesaurus and a dictionary like a crutch, the way some folks think we use our faith.
I found the h-word I was looking for.
I’m feeling humbled, and honored, and even a little hushed today.
Passing the Sinatra Test
As the chapter wore on, my confidence puffed that this would be an easy post to write. My biggest challenge would be to write it in a way that didn’t sound so smug and obvious.
If one way we derive credibility from the endorsement of an authority, how much further would we have to look than the Jordan River? As Jesus approached a crowd gathered around His cousin John at the water’s edge, John saw Him and called out, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)
And when John dipped Him under, He came glistening wet out of the water to have the Holy Spirit Himself take the form of a dove and land on Him. And if that weren’t enough, the voice of God floated out of the sky behind the dove announcing that You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased. (Luke 3:21-22)
Talk about your authority: A local celebrity and two-thirds of the Trinity.
A big moment on the credibility scale.
Hanging Towels on Hooks
Language is often abstract, but life is not abstract.1
Reflecting on the staying power of Aesop’s ideas, shared through short, pointed stories that have had universal application for a couple and a half millennia, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath observe that “what the world needs is a lot more fables.” (Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, p. 99)
Aesop’s secret to success was “encoding” his message with concrete images that would be widely understood and grasped. Except in Sweden, where they refer to the “rowanberries,” the meaning of “sour grapes” is known the world over because of the concrete images of a fox unable to jump quite high enough to reach ripening grapes.
But not to worry. The grapes were no good anyway.
Uncommon Sense
Though not at all a morning person, life necessitates that I’m an early riser. Often before the sun these days. But because the shrill of an alarm clock threatens to stop my heart and leaves me cranky and jittery all day long, I don’t use one.
I wake naturally, at the time I told myself I must before fading the night before.
I have a friend who also does not wake to the sound of an alarm, though two separate clocks shriek for her to notice them each morning. Sometimes for an hour. Much like folks who live next to the tracks, she doesn’t hear the train roaring through her bedroom every morning.
Under a Shared Umbrella (guest post by Jennifer Dukes Lee)
A few weeks ago I slid into the back pew of a little church in northwest Iowa and chuckled watching a crazy Jesus-loving pirate sing and shout in worship with the kids as the night’s VBS program came to a close. A leader came over to introduce herself and wondered what brought me there and how I knew Jennifer Lee.
I swallowed chalk, opened my mouth to answer, and closed it again when nothing came out.
Finally, I stammered, “She’s a blogging friend.”
Inside Out
I forget how many months ago a friend sent me an email, brief and to the point:
Been reading your stuff. What’s up?
This friend, she’s one of those rare finds who gets my heart. Back in another time, we often met over tea with lemon (once, I drank tea) at a restaurant I can’t remember or a dripping chocolate malt at Snuffy’s Malt Shop in St. Paul where we plunged the depths of Ezekiel and Hebrews and really, what’s the deal with Melchizedek?
She still gets my heart, even though we live across the country and I’m weeks behind on our email study of The Trivialization of God.
So when she notices things, I know enough to pay attention.
I asked her then what she meant. Her response was nearly as brief as her first observation:
I don’t know writing, I’m a scientist. But your heart’s not in it.
True enough.
She’d nailed it.
::
Sleeves, frankly, are too perilous a place to wear one’s heart, and I keep mine nicely guarded inside a warm fleece hoody. I like to think I posture and pose pretty well. And what better place but writing to do that? We measure our words, reveal only what we want to, hold tight what we want to keep.
And readers? They see the words. Not the heart.
They see what we want them to see.
As long as I’m careful, there’s no way to tell whether I’m laughing or crying when I put words to the page.
Right?
No, wrong.
My friend the scientist says wrong.
Julia Cameron says wrong.
Readers know these things.
::
As we wrap up the discussion of Julia Cameron’s Right to Write over at High Calling Blogs this week, I find her stretching me, pushing at me to raise the stakes. Keep my heart in the writing.
When people wonder what makes some writing readable and other writing less so, they are centering on the issues of stakes. Stakes are the answer to the question, “Why should I care?” The best answer to “Why should I care” is always “Because it matters very very much. (p. 215)
What the scientist noticed about my writing is that I had stepped out of it. I was trying some things, stupid things, things designed to run a little more traffic in the direction of my blog, but things that ultimately took my heart right off the page. (Which, if I stopped to think about it, would have the very opposite effect.)
Cameron observes that to expect you to be invested in what you’re reading, I had to invest in writing it.
“When a writer writes from the heart of what matters to him personally, the writing is often both personal and powerful. When a writer writes what he thinks the market needs — writes, in other words, without a personal investment — the standard of writing is often lowered along with the stakes.
Part of our duty as writers is to do the work of honestly determining what matters to us and to try to write about that. This may take a certain amount of courage. This may mean that we do not meet with immediate support from those who make decisions with an eye to the market. (p. 219)
Here in my smallish corner of the world, the market means little to me anymore. It did, briefly. And while it did, writing was work and got reactions like “What’s up?”
I’d be dishonest to say I don’t ever look at the numbers underneath. But the numbers don’t drive the writing; they’re just one way to help tell me if I’m getting the job done or not.
I’m afraid I still keep my heart safely tucked away most of the time, at least the larger part of it. Now and again if you’re paying attention you’ll see it slip out around a frayed cuff. But most of the time what I’m writing is at least coming from that part of me. It’s training my writing around what Cameron would call writing “from the inside out rather than the outside in.” (p. 220)
::
Perhaps a delight to many of you, we conclude the book discussion over at HCB this week. But you can still read up if you’d like. See Laura’s new post on Monday with links to the other participants.
As a reward for your patient indulgence throughout this diversion, I’ll be quiet most of the rest of this week. I’m putting the last touches on a three-part guest post from my granddad. At 102 years old, he nearly has a foot in three centuries. And he was telling stories long before Al Gore invented the Internet. I’m hoping to get one up for you shortly, so be sure to stop back for (until I’m proven otherwise) the only place on the web where you can read a guest post from a centenarian.
Photo: Inside Old House by Piotr Rudziewicz via Stock.xchng
Sound and Fury
Migraines are for sissies.
That’s what I like to say.
Sissies.
And I’m not one, so I’m not about to resign myself to having them. I just get some headachy sort of thing on occasion. It always goes away, even if it does take three days. Sure, it’s kind of pesky, the way my right eye is forced shut. And the occasional nausea can be a little annoying.
But I’d hardly call it debilitating.
And yes, I’ll say that with a straight face, even after my friend with the masterful therapist hands for three days in row labored to ferret out and subdue trigger point after trigger point while I drew up groaning into a tight ball on the floor trying to understand what she meant when she said, “Umm . . . do you think you could relax a little for me?”
It sure is a good thing I don’t have migraines.
Because if I did have migraines, and if I were entrenched in the midst of one last night, the last thing I’d want to do is load up the family and fireworks and join friends in the shadow of their barn to shoot off bottle rockets and Roman candles and some crazy-painful 200-shot missile thing that went on for almost an hour all by itself.
So I must not have migraines, because I went along.
And in light of the no-not-debilitating but just-partly-blinding headachy thing I had going on, tossing myself into the middle of flashing light and deafening report was, perhaps, the stupidest thing I’ve done in a long time.
Know this, though: the stupidity was largely offset by the laughter of my kids and the company of friends of whom I don’t get nearly enough anymore.
::
I had planned not to post this week in the continuing discussion at HCB on Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. Partly because I didn’t have a post to write. And partly because every time I do, a reader or two finds his or her way to the exit, punches out on the “Unsubscribe” button and doesn’t come back.
True story.
But here I am anyway, itching to live dangerously. I’m thinking this morning about noise, and reading back over the assignment for this week and realizing that in an entire chapter about sound, Cameron didn’t employ the word noise a single time.
She speaks of whispers, nods, and swishes. Her pages tell of grunts and rattles, bells and chimes. I read of roaring, of barking, of drumbeats and whirring. As I read, I can hear it all in the background.
Amidst all that racket, she never called it noise.
But it seems to me I hear a lot more noise than sound.
My world is noisy. I spend half my day translating in a call center surrounded by ringing phones, talking heads and venting customer service reps. I often wear an earplug in my open ear just so I can hear.
When we follow our kids, we can sit for hours listening to cheering crowds, complaining fans, the crack of the bat, the shrill whistle of a referee, shoes squeaking and balls pounding on hardwood, and the jarring end-of-game buzzer.
We live life at home to the accompaniment of windbaggy sportscasters, shrieking cartoon characters, buzzing or blaring cell phones (depends on whose is ringing), churning appliances, dribbling basketballs, conversation shouted from one room to the next, doors knocking, feet pounding up and down stairs while friends run in and out with my kids, a barking dog and a hissing cat.
Even when I settle in for some quiet time with my laptop, the fan that will not turn off since I spilled a steamy latte on the keyboard howls back at me.
::
When the house empties I take my turn-off tour around the house and power down televisions and video games and mp3 players, and I breathe out deep. I feel my heart rate drop with the noise level and consider how resistant I can be to stimulation sometimes.
But then I wonder, could I begin to hear the noise as sound?
I considered this last night. With my head wanting to detach from my body with each new screaming flame thrower that shot off into the night, I listened to the other sounds.
The sound of a miracle boy, experiencing light with tiny two-year-old hands and squealing to “Hold it! Hold it!” as his daddy lit another sparkler.
The sound of teenagers, still friends after years of families hanging out together, laughing as they raced through the dark to track down the parachuter ejected by an exploding bottle rocket.
The sound of grown men giddy as children oohing and aahing as the big lights blasted into the sky.
The sound of a mama snuggling a little one into the blanket with a puppy.
The sound of the Dakota Honkers package blazing off into the night, sick goose sounds accompanying the light show, only drowned out by uproarious laughter amongst us on the ground.
The sound of my phone buzzing, a text from a friend a chair away, I think fearful to ask out loud if I were going to live.
And the sound of my strong love as he sidled up close to an agitated me and, knowing I don’t have migraines, said, “I hope you’re going to be okay.”
Cameron notices that “the world is alive with song — the city’s cacophonous jazzed-up symphony and the variable pastoral of my country life.” (p. 184)
And I notice, if I stop listening to the noise long enough, that there is music, beautiful music, all around me.
::
What sounds do you hear today, especially amidst the noise?
Posted, despite the inherent risks, as part of the High Calling Blogs discussion of Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. To read more, join Laura over at HCB for “I Eat With My Eyes,” a look at how driving is a great way to devour images and refill the well. You can read the rest of my offending posts here or better yet, check out these other great posts from esteemed participants this week:
Erin’s Fighting the Writing Monsters
ELK’s Random Sight
Nancy’s Music Everywhere
Cassandra’s Sound
Marilyn’s The Real Reason for Highway Rest Stops
Glynn’s Writing, Music and Airplanes to San Fransisco
L.L.’s Dancing on Spec and Driving into Words
Photo: Dome Cathedral of Riga, Latvia, by Takis Kolokotronis via Stock.xchng
See the Sign on My Door?
I winced. And then I leaned over, listening for some sign that he was joking to come out of the space three cubicles away.
But his tongue was too busy lashing the employee at his desk to rest in his cheek.
He meant it.
A colleague had come to protest some perceived injustice, and my fellow manager reminded him of his rightful place:
Look at my door. See the sign? Now check the wall outside your workspace. Do you see a sign that says “supervisor”? I didn’t think so.
I drew back up to my own desk, and made a note. Don’t do that. Ever.
::
As a manager, I found myself in a ridiculously unfamiliar place. My background was varied — I’d worked in nonprofits, medicine, retail, IT, education and church ministry. But I’d never worked — or wanted to — in a large corporation.
I’d sold art, built frames, fixed computers, designed websites, managed a network, raised money, and counseled kids. But until a few months earlier, I’d never handled an automobile claim.
Yet there I sat, just a punk, promoted to manage a team of claim adjusters less than a year after I’d started my insurance career. And as though to turn the spotlight onto my lack of experience in the job, the industry and the corporate environment, I found myself responsible for a work group that handled all of the claims for the company’s high-profile global accounts — high-maintenance, demanding clients who were household names around the world and who paid my employer upwards of $15 million a year in premium (just for their auto insurance).
How did this happen? And what on earth was I going to do?
I had to learn fast. So I watched my peers closely, especially the veterans. I studied my own manager. I read a lot of books and articles on leadership and management. And I often reflected on the best and worst of how I’d been led in the past.
Thanks in no small part to the terrific group of folks assigned to me, I soon found myself surrounded by one of the highest performing and cohesive teams in the office. But I have to give credit as well to the managers I worked for and worked with for modeling — the good and the ugly — for me as I sought to find my own way.
I considered these examples (names may or may not have been changed):
Expectations
Karla followed the way of my parents: expect the best. And it worked. Karla always told us that we were the very best in the organization, and the very best in the industry. And while she gracefully worked with us through our mistakes, it was clear she did not expect us to make them. Karla got what she expected: We consistently performed as though we were the very best fundraising and PR staff out there. (I’m still pretty sure we were . . . )
Communication & Caring
Cathi and I were the sole occupants of our office in a small professional education school, my first job out of college. I worked the front desk and she ran the place. Which mostly meant coming in to work and talking to her friends on the phone all day. She did not speak to me most days yet stood in shock when I gave my notice after only two months. “I had no idea you weren’t happy here,” she complained, while I went to work for Karla.
Opportunity
I was underchallenged and Mary Ann knew it. Officially, I did a little data entry, bulk mailings, minute taking and lunch ordering. Mary Ann saw potential, and unofficially slipped me writing assignments, sent me out on photo shoots, set me up with the video producer and had a hand in landing me a gig directing an international tour. I’d have done anything this boss asked of me.
Dignity
My first day on the job, Eddie spelled out my primary duty. “Your job is to make me look good,” he said. I walked directly to my office to doublecheck the job description. Like my colleague who was in love with his title, I found his approach disrespectful and demotivating. I determined that if he looked good in the course of me doing my job well, it would be accidental.
Trust
Cheryl trusted me. She trusted me to do my job well and with integrity, and communicated as much not only through words but through increased opportunity and responsibility. She sent hard work my way, often reassigning problems from other employees to me to resolve. Her trust meant enough to me that I worked doubly hard not to violate it.
Servanthood
Dave taught me the opposite of Eddie. He recognized challenges he could send my way, and always made sure to provide me with opportunities and the resources to exceed expectations. He worked hard to give me every chance to succeed. And whenever possible, he told others about me and my performance. When I needed help, Dave always dug in with me and worked alongside me until we figured it out. Watching Dave I learned to get underneath my direct reports and make them successful — my job was to make them look good.
In my dual-employment life now, I don’t have much manager-employee relationship. In one role, while I do have a manager, I work independently with little direct involvement from her. In the other, I am my own boss.
I’m finding that managing oneself is far different than managing others or being managed.
And I rather miss my managers and my direct reports.
What do you think? What makes a great boss? A bad boss? Share a story?
::
This reflection is posted as part of High Calling Blog’s group writing project on Bosses, prompted by Bradley J. Moore of Shrinking the Camel. Check out the project over at HCB or Bradley’s place.
Photo: Sign Street by Sylvain Plante via Stock.xchng
A Little Help from Mr. Fusion
Before I even typed the word “before,” I knew that at some point after publishing this post, I’d crawl down below to take a peek at the underside and see how many people read it.
Because that’s part of writing, right? Having it read? We want it to speak to someone.
But there’s another side of it, the side where it speaks to me. It gives me a place to hammer hot steel, giving shape and form to the things I don’t always see so clearly. Julia Cameron tells us that
What writing brings to life is clarity and tenderness. Writing, we witness ourselves. We say, like our own village elders, “I knew you when you were knee high and you’ve certainly come a long way.” (p. 83)
There’s a place, at least for me, where writing goes everywhere and no where. It goes everywhere in that leads me as I wander through those places in my mind and heart that are often tough to navigate. And it goes no where in that those are often the pages and bytes that will not ever again see the light of day.
That kind of writing serves its purpose without another soul reading it.
It’s the process, the most highly dread P-word in our house, that is so important. No product, just process.
Writing, perhaps above much else, gives me an excuse to appreciate the process where in nearly every other aspect of life I might loathe it.
::
Discussion of Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write continues again over at High Calling Blogs. As part of one of this week’s tools, Cameron suggested “directly contacting what may feel to you like a mythological or archetypal character, Older Self,” writing a letter to my, umm, Present Self I guess you’d call me, about my life. (My, how easily I confuse.)
I was to cut my “older and wiser eighty-year-old” loose at the page to give me some perspective.
Perhaps in an effort to make amends for sending my Alien Tabloid Story straight to the shredder without letting you read (and to prove that I truly am playing along), I thought to share an excerpt of Old Self’s letter.
I won’t be rushing off to do it again tomorrow, but once Old Self and I got through the initial queasiness, I mean, quirkiness, it turned out to be a mildly enjoyable experience. (Though from the restraint I continue to use in my description, it’s clear I haven’t yet fully metabolized Old Self’s advice.)
Dear Me,
Okay, yeah. That felt a little silly.
Aside from a book telling you to reach out to me for some input on your life, I don’t know why you’ve attempted to contact me. Honestly, you think it’s awkward. It certainly feels contrived, from my end too. I mean, I don’t even exist yet. How am I to comment?
Hey, are you going to eat those fries? Because I’ll need a few more food scraps to feed Mr. Fusion if I’m going to get the DeLorean back to Doc Brown in time.
The exercise is awkward, yes. But maybe you’ll find it did help you in some way. Remember how Claudia used to call you a “stuffed shirt” in college? She was pretty right, you know. You really can be.
Lighten up. Take off your socks once in a while for crying out loud.
I think maybe I want to tell you you’re doing okay. We all know that. You’re doing okay. But maybe, just once in a while, remember not to make life harder than it needs to be.
Sometimes you think too hard. Give some room to the idea that some things just are what they are. Don’t be so cynical — it’s okay to take things at face value sometimes.
Can I tell you this? Take more chances with your kids. Trust them to get what you’re saying. Trust God’s Spirit to help them get it. He’s the One that does the heart thing anyway. Give Him something to work with.
And while we’re getting all spiritual, you should know this: Jesus has really liked you all along. I know you always think He just puts up with you because He has to, you know, that whole New Covenant He signed onto. But He doesn’t just love you because He has no choice. Seems like God used the word “delight” a lot. He meant in you.
So move on from that, okay? It’s time. Get very comfortable with the idea that His righteousness wraps you up.
He enjoys your company. Get used to it.
It seems to me that you like people more than you let on. You might think about spending more time with them. I know it wears you out. But you’ll recover. You know how.
You like using your hands. Why don’t you use them more? I know they’ll get dirty, even sticky sometimes. But touch stuff. Make stuff. Use them. They’ll wash.
One more thing: Don’t tell anyone we had this conversation. They’ll think you’re nuts.
::
I see in an upcoming chapter that Cameron will suggest that we also allow Younger Self to speak. It’s good to know that all these voices in my head finally have names.
The Right to Write party continues over at High Calling Blogs this week. Check out Laura’s post and links to other participants, like these:
Nancy’s Out of Sorts
Glynn’s The Writing Heart Is Not a Lonely Hunter
nancy’s love.letters
Melo’s day 21: right day, right time
Read previous posts in this series here.
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.
::
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.)
::
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.)
::
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.
::
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
A Spider in My Shower
Warning: Elizabeth should not read this post. (Here’s why.)
With all the ruckus last week over whether or not I should better tend to my writer, or even whether I should allow my writer to assert a personality of its own, I thought perhaps I’d give it a go.
I mean, I’m hardly giving a fair shake to the experience The Right to Write offers if I cherry-pick which activities I’ll try, right?
So, against my better judgment, I pulled up a second chair and invited my writer to join me at the desk.
No, I did not offer it a cup of tea. And if anybody is going to get a steamy triple-shot latte at my house, it’s me. I’m not wasting a whole cuppa Caribou on any creative phantom that distracts me with ridiculous mutterings in my ear.
Maybe it was my failure to share the coffee, I don’t know. But it wasn’t working out.
I pushed away from the desk and whipped a pencil, aiming between the eyes.
You stink!
Get out of my office!
Go hit the showers!
Solitude reclaimed, I settled back in to work. But not long afterwards, I looked up to see a dripping writer reaching out from the dim shadows of my workspace with a soggy and crumpled scrap of paper.
I sighed long and read through shower-smeared ink.
Try to remember, I scowled. This is not what we do here.
::
Belly bloats
and eight legs
dangle, jet eyes
peer hollow
as I step in
Unclad, unarmed
I can only
admire
the hammock
you knit
overnight
Plush, yet
you find no
rest in its
berth
You stretch out
lacy sheets
and await
innocence
to fall in
and die
::
With that, I sent my writer out on errands and drew up a long list of chores to keep it out of my hair if it ever gets back.
I trust we’ve put that nonsense to rest now.
:: ::: ::
If you stop by here just because you’re nice to me and like to read now and then, but really don’t give two hoots about all this “talk about the writing” business, I appreciate your patience while I participate in a book club discussion Mondays on The Right to Write over at High Calling Blogs.
To join in the discussion, you might read Laura’s latest post, check out the related posts from other participants, or see previous posts in this series.
For starters:
Glynn’s Writing and Reading as Private Acts
Melo’s Day Nine
Michelle’s The Writing Life
Marilyn’s Bad Day of Writing?
L.L.’s Writing for the Lint Pickers
Monica’s Details, Details
Nancy’s Open Your Eyes
nAncY’s just.write
Erin’s Cherish the Commonplace Holy Moments
Cassandra’s Where Words Meet Bone
Photo: Spider (now squished) in my shower last week
Getting My Foot in the Iron Door
This is probably the post where I get kicked out of the book club over at HCB.
I figured the trouble would come eventually.
I try to not to put too much stock in book titles; seems they fall into the same category as covers when it comes to judging. So I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that I’m reading a book about my right to do anything.
But with this week’s three chapters, it caught up with me.
::
Before I got all rankled over ruthless, enlightened self-interest and slamming of iron gates, my head was nodding along as Julia Cameron spoke of writing as “comparing notes” and a means for bringing images into focus — of bringing clarity and understanding to our lives.
I love staring into the distance. I love squinting at the image of things yet to come. I love the process of watching them come into focus. That focusing is writing. (p. 29)
This, I understand. Almost daily I see life brought into clearer focus as I beat out my confusion and anxieties with pen and paper.
I appreciate this imagery of lens and focus.
She goes on to explain that writing not only helps to clarify, but also helps to construct:
Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change. Because writing is a practice of observation as much as invention, we can become curious as much as frightened in the face of change. Writing about the change, we can help it along, lean into it, cooperate. Writing allows us to rewrite our lives. (p. 31)
The writing, in other words, doesn’t necessarily change the outside forces. But it does give me a place to change my point of view and my response. And in that way, I can rewrite life as it goes along.
I appreciate employing the writing process to take responsibility.
::
But Cameron giving me permission to do things that I already struggle not to do?
This I don’t appreciate.
I am already self-focused. I already live far too inside myself. I already look for an excuse to
“slam the iron door” when drama invades my life.
I don’t need to be urged to do this more.
Cameron encourages the writer to be undeterred by these outside forces in diligently taking to the page. She asks the question, “Will I keep the drama on the page . . . or will I engage in a drama that will keep me from the page?”
It’s a worthy question. To the extent that I allow life and its events and relationships to be an excuse not to get to the page, I think that’s a valid exhortation.
But then isn’t it easy to let the page be an excuse not to engage in life and its events and relationships?
There’s a really skinny little line to walk there.
She relates keeping at arm’s length a conflict between two close friends as she was writing. She brushed off their various phone calls, telling them “I can’t really get into this now. I’m sure you’ll work it out. I am due at the page.”
Her example of John Barrymore in Twentieth Century is telling.
Whenever he is crossed by someone whose will seeks to thwart his own, Barrymore hisses, “That rat . . . I slam the iron door.”
Once he has slammed the Iron Door, the person or problem no longer exists for Mr. Barrymore. What does exist is whatever theatrical problem he was wrestling with. In other words, his is a ruthless, enlightened self-interest.
. . .
With that, I head back to the blank sheet of paper. I slam the Iron Door. I refuse to engage in any drama except the drama that serves me and my purposes. I practice exactly what I preach: if you dump drama into my life, I will put it and you on the page. (p. 42)
That skinny little line? I don’t walk it that well.
I’m far too often reaching for that handle on the iron door, winding up for a good slam.
The last thing I need someone to tell me is to stay more detached, not to move toward people, to brush off people’s pain (or joy) while I pursue “me and my purposes.”
Remember that value of writing as a focusing tool? Here’s what’s come sharply into focus for me as I’ve written this morning: Maybe I’ll never grow up as a real writer this way, but I can’t make the page a bigger deal than the people in my life.
::
Posted as part of an ongoing discussion at High Calling Blogs on Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. Read Laura’s post today as well as other related posts to join in the discussion.
Laura’s Invite the Muse to Tea
L.L.’s Julia Cameron Meets ProBlogger
Glynn’s The Poetry that Surrounds Us
Cassandra’s Living With My Writer
nAncY’s Thoughts and Dreams
Nancy’s Mood Altering
Monica’s The Sincerity of Pretense
Photo: Old Doors 1, by Victor Iglesias
Stairs
How many more steps
past gaping
slats that hide
rangy arms and
scabbed feelers
they only lunge through
when lights go out
and little-girl legs
clamber
by ones and
twos and
threes
So I ask
why
did You split
dark
from light and
night
from day
You could just
leave
lights on
:: ::: ::
My only explanation, and defense, is L.L. Barkat’s poetry prompt at High Calling Blogs to write about or from the perspective of some kind of monster. The one that taught me to take the stairs two at a time still makes me pull my socks up to my knees. Check out HCB for Random Acts of Poetry to read some truly beautiful words about the monsters among us. Here’s a taste of what you’ll get over there:
Supermarket Zombie by Erica
Fear and Monster_us by Karen
The Beast Within by Nancy
A Good Year to Be a Zombie by Glynn
It’s a Long Time Between Gigs by Glynn
Monster by Monica
Zombie by Mike (in the comments)
A Monster’s Love by Maureen
My Monster by Heather
Monster Mash: The Creature by Laura
The Backwoods by Dave
A Poem from the Eater of Purple People by Dave
3 lines by nAncY (hidden in a comment)
monster by nAncY
cross over by Cheri
Frankenstein by L.L.
Loch Ness by L.L.
The Polite Gentlemen by Megan
Ex Ovo Omnia by Jennifer (from Broadsided)
Truth by Nichole
Telling Stories by Dave
Glow by Amy
4 bricks under a bed by Claire
Heart of the Mountain by Erin
In the Death Houses by Marcus
Photo: Black and white in color by hortongroup
Bad Writing and Croissants
Camilla’s pain rolled past me on the conveyor and I looked away. I felt uncomfortable, intruding as I was into the private lives of Liz and Sandra and Elizabeth.
My three items reached the cashier: the Globe, the Enquirer and a croissant from the bakery.
I included the croissant as my last hope to hold on to the hem of dignity as I suddenly recognized the true value of self-checkout and wished my small grocery store offered it.
Refusing to look up and mumbling “Really, they’re for an assignment” would not persuade the cashier on their own that I do, in fact, have a little class. In the end, a package of Hostess Ding Dongs would have gone just as well with my tabloids, though not with my coffee.
::
Julia Cameron observes in this week’s selection from The Right to Write that “writing doesn’t have to know where it’s going.” It seems that is no more true for me than this morning.
I just completed a piece of writing that knew exactly where it was going. It’s the kind of writing I get paid to do, and from an academic and professional standpoint, it did everything it needed to do. In five well-ordered pages I broke down the complexity of an insurance contract into layperson’s terms to explain why a claim must be denied.
The writing followed all the rules I know.
Grammar. Check.
Structure. Check.
Punctuation. Check.
Organization. Check.
Big words and circular legal-speak made simple. Check.
Nobody gets sued. Check.
That last one is always a big deal.
It was good writing, and approved by the client without so much as a comma moved.
I never smiled once.
::
But then I moved on to another project. I peeked again at the stories of Whitney and her addictions and Caylee’s mom and her I-don’t-know-what. I blushed again, and then finished the assignment I started in the bleachers during a long weekend of basketball.
Cameron suggests that to be a good writer one “must be willing to be a bad writer.” She goes on to say this:
I know a beautiful woman who always ruins a good outfit by adding some outlandish something — a veiled hat, a poinsettia for God’s sake tucked behind an ear, a giddy chiffon scarf. This is a woman that men adore. Even while her “sisters” sniff at her fashion errors, men trail after her with fascination. There’s something a little enchanting about the mix and match that doesn’t match.
Prose can benefit from a little lurid flippery. The understated, carefully modified, exclamation-points-only-with-papal-permission prose that we learn in school that actually bores a lot of us out of writing. “If you can’t say anything nice — or nicely — don’t say anything at all” we are taught, and we learn the lesson well. If only we could give ourselves permission to write “badly,” so many of us would write very well indeed. (p. 23)
So I pulled out my notebook and went back to work on that tabloid story I’d been writing. (Really, it was only for the assignment. Would you like another croissant?)
I had no idea where I was going. But as I filled pages with the secrets I’d unearthed about my family’s ancestral alien associations, I caught myself snickering from time to time. (I stopped as soon as I noticed. Here, have a croissant.)
I won’t say I found the project fully liberating. Though perhaps it did give me just enough leeway to give L.L. Barkat’s monstrous prompt a go.
But I surely did enjoy it while my thirty minutes of (sanctioned) bad writing lasted.
Now, I’m on my way to throw my magazines and a piece of bad writing away, and warm a croissant.
:: ::: ::
Discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write continues today at High Calling Blogs. Stop over to read Laura’s post Quiltwork. You can read other related posts and join in the discussion.
nancy’s hcb book club
Nancy’s Just a Minute
L.L.’s Writing Theft
Glynn’s The Right to Write: Laying Track
Monica’s Book Club Week 2
Marilyn’s If
Ann’s Imperfect Conditions
ELK’s flight
Cassandra’s Living With My Writer
Maureen’s Creative Rituals
Photo: tabloid magazines on my desktop, an odd match for the likes of Peterson, Roberts, DeKker, Miller and my Strong’s and Vine’s.
The Art of Taking Dictation
Come with a wandering mind. Come messy.
This simple remark by Paul Miller transformed prayer for me.
He went on to say in A Praying Life that “if you don’t begin with where you are, then where you are will sneak in the back door. Your mind will wander to where you are weary.”
I found myself stumbling as I worked to keep step with an awkward, forced rhythm of prayer that didn’t permit my heart to connect with His outside of a preset formula: pray for this, then that. More time on this, a little less on that. Don’t forget this place and these folks and that other thing.
My wandering mind would often keep me from completing the agenda, leaving me uninterested in trying again later.
Miller encouraged me to begin with where you are, talking to God even about the distractions that plague my disordered thoughts.
I’ve never desired prayer more in my life.
Because I can begin with where I am.
Funny. Before she finished the first page of The Right to Write, Julia Cameron said the same thing.
The first trick . . . is to just start where you are. It’s a luxury to be in the mood to write. It’s a blessing but it’s not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what. (p. 1)
Starting with where I am — even if that’s messy — allows me to set aside the pressure of not doing it right. Not following the formulas and rules and expectations of folks who know this craft far better than I ever will. It allows me to just write.
And if I can do that, maybe I can catch on to this other thing, this idea that writing is about getting something down, not about thinking something up. Cameron observes that writing is the art of taking dictation, not giving it. (p. 10)
Seems to me we could say that the writing is capturing, not conjuring. Starting where I am allows me to get out of the way and just capture what’s there, not fight that awkward rhythm of trying to make something happen that is not real.
I fight the same fight, it seems, whether in prayer or with the pen. It’s messy because I am. It’s distracted and disordered. But perhaps I could start there, and as Cameron suggests, transcribe the flow rather than force it.
:: ::: ::
We begin a new book discussion at High Calling Blogs today on Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. Join the discussion with Laura’s post today and links to others.
Photo: Where I am right now (The view from the deck where the sun is shining and the wind is not blowing. Well, it’s not blowing hard. It is still South Dakota.)
::
Loving Monday: Unqualified
I wonder what difference it would make if I quit striving to glorify God in my daily work.
What if I stopped using the Bible as the foundation of my business plan or the basis of how I carry out my duties to my employer?
What if I didn’t seek to minister in the midst of my business relationships?
Or stopped looking for avenues for Gospel proclamation while I work?
What if I gave up trying to integrate my faith and work altogether?
What if . . .
. . . What if I just seek first His Kingdom?
Period.
:: (more…)
Loving Monday: Why Family Matters
When mortality comes knocking, it seems always to spur just a little more woolgathering.
On an ordinary day, we might give a passing glance to our mist-like days, numbered few here on earth. But when ends come, even when they’re beginnings, the contemplation grows more into enveloping clouds.
Such have been my days this past week, most of which were spent in the warmth of a century-old farmhouse of a friend as family laid to rest father (and husband and brother and uncle and cousin and friend and neighbor and mentor and colleague and . . . ).
So it comes as no surprise to me that when John W. Beckett tackled the subjects of family, prayer, vision and values in his chapters of Loving Monday this week, the pages of my book flipped back to the chapter on family.
:: (more…)
Loving Monday: Risky Business
Seven minas remain unaccounted for.
That’s my conclusion when I read Jesus’ parable of the ten minas in Luke’s Gospel.
The man of noble birth, before embarking on his quest to be made king, called ten servants and gave them ten minas with instructions to “put the money to work.”
Never mind the part about how much his subjects hated him and trailed behind to subvert his plans. He became king anyway. Once crowned, he sent for the servants to make an accounting.
The first reported that his one mina earned another ten. The second showed how he took his one mina and netted five more.
A delighted king put these faithful servants who understood return on investment in charge of a number of cities commensurate with their earnings.
Another servant cowered in fear and unwrapped his one mina from a protective cloth. He returned it unharmed, but unimproved. The king, who did not want just his mina back but wanted back his mina plus, flipped a royal nutty and gave the man’s sparkling but solitary mina to the servant with the keener investment sense.
So we know that story. And we know Matthew’s version of it with the three servants and the talents of money apportioned to them based on their ability.
But what about the other seven in Luke’s record?
What did they do with their minas?
:: (more…)
Loving Monday: What Are We Doing Here?
“Do you ever look back on the day and wonder what we’re doing here?”
Debbie closed the case file we’d been brainstorming and set it on her lap. She leaned back in the side chair and took a deep breath, and then just looked at me in that way of hers. The one with the light smile, knowing eyes. The one that always told me that she knew my struggle.
It was hers too, though it was a fight she fought much better than I.
“You know what we’re doing,” she said.
“I don’t,” I replied. “Not really. Debbie, if I made two lists — one of all the things that make my heart beat and one of all the things I do here every day — and pinned them up side by side on my cubicle wall, it would be a perfect list of opposites.”
:: (more…)
Loving Monday: Just Another Piece of Pie
The crumpled chart probably still sits somewhere amongst my old school papers, sandwiched between an analysis of theories of nuclear deterrence and a report on Mesoamerican prehistory.
It’s how I was taught to order my life.
A five-piece pie, promising to bring balance and structure and make me a super saint.
Social.
Physical.
Intellectual.
Recreational.
Spiritual.
That’s all there was to life, and if I could just keep the pieces the right size, I’d coast along nicely.
It worked.
I got up at dawn, ran the dorm steps to the weight room, cleaned up, headed to the student center to meet friends for morning prayer, hit the cafeteria for breakfast, and ran to class. One hour physical, one hour spiritual, half hour social, two hours intellectual . . . And so would go most of my days. I even had the color coded daily schedule to prove out my balance at the end of the day.
I liked the order, the slots, the compartments.
And who doesn’t like pie?
:: (more…)
Loving Monday: I’ll Ask the Questions Here
“This is not a teaching moment. Don’t you dare use it as one.”
I forced a grin back into its straight place before I looked up. I knew who stood in front of my desk. She announced her arrival in my office 100 yards before she got there with quick stomps, rustling papers and the seesaw sounds of her indecision between gasps and sighs.
I always knew. Of all the folks I had the privilege to manage, she was my favorite.
As she threw herself backwards into the chair, the file ejected from her hands onto my desk. I grabbed the papers as they slid by.
“What are you working on?” I asked, peeking out from behind my manila shield.
“I’m buried,” she said.
Gasp.
“I just need to know if there’s coverage. Yes or no? That’s all, just the answer.”
Sigh.
“Don’t help me find it. Don’t ask any questions. Just tell me.”
A half-swallowed laugh stuck in my throat and interrupted her next gasp. I straightened in my chair and stared her down.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked.
:: (more…)
Loving Monday: The Optional Downgrade
When I shopped for a new business computer a few weeks ago, aside of the basics of RAM, hard drive and processor speed I had one other primary requirement. Without it, no matter the alluring price and mouth-watering features, I would reject it.
It must have an optional downgrade.
My business applications aren’t grown up enough to run on Windows 7 yet. I require old reliable, Windows XP.
As I worked with retailers over the phone in search of my downgraded machine, I could hear their eyes roll into their head when I said, “Okay, one more thing.”
The consistent response: “Sure, whatever you need. Just don’t ask me for XP.”
I asked anyway.
Eventually I found one. My shiny new Dell (still available with the downgrade, if anyone is looking) is on its way.
I will confess the “move backward to move forward” process left my straight line, orderly mind just over on the mushy side.
:: (more…)
The Conversation