oh, i can't help it...
I have been watching my peony stalks raise their red heads out of the warming early spring earth. They can't help it, that reaching for sun, any more than my bluebirds can help their nesting, the moon can help its phases, the dog help his barking when he hears a leaf drop. It is what they do.
At our retreat two weekends ago, we were asked to create a "takeaway" filled with quotes and images that captured our time, to take away with us and keep handy, to use for inspiration. Two of my cards speak to a similar thing: trust what you are led to do — and its flip side: what do I know is mine to do?
What.
Today, I was reading a very cool blog, and came across a quote by poet David Whyte: “We are the only species on earth capable of preventing our own flowering.”
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I wrote to my friend today who created our takeaway craft — and who has just begun in the past two weeks to CREATE art, something she can't help, but has somehow kept herself from doing for a lot of years.
The quote: How beautifully said and exactly right, I wrote to her. “Sounds better than 'we are our own worst enemies,' ” (which I tend to say a LOT.)
I look out at my peony stalks, now already close to 10 inches tall, find the nest already constructed in the bluebird box, and know what's coming. They can’t help the doing because they know nothing else.
The blogger said: imagine the energy it would take for a flower to try to keep itself from doing what it was created to do.
Yes, imagine. That's a whole lot of energy, and I have sometimes felt spent out just fighting myself from the same thing.
Imagine. That my Alexander Fleming peony (I think that's what she is), which always blooms much earlier than any others in my yard, imagine if she fought with herself each day she was growing into something incredibly beautiful, saying: no! I can't help it, but I can't. I shouldn't brag. Or throw my scent around. And besides, I'm just not pretty enough and my stems are going to break under the weight of all that flowering and a late frost will probably get my blooms anyway, so I should just stop where I am and be done with it. That kind of thing. You've probably never thought those things yourself, but she has. And then all the other peonies will stand around laughing and blooming, saying why in the world won't she do what she is meant to do? It would be so much easier on her, on us. Us! And just think of how much happier the bees would be if she would just be herself.
How hard that is, sometimes. But what if we all looked at our creative souls and said: I love what I am created to do and be and I can’t help it!... instead of: I'm sorry, but.. I can’t help it, I just don't have it in me — when we fail to create as we should? What if?
That is how I feel about writing sometimes, that I can’t help how the words tumble out no more than I can help my need to write — and when I don’t try to self-edit, they end up being pretty good words at that. Sometimes. But more often I say the opposite: I would love to, but I can't help it that this or that gets in the way of my writing at all, or writing what I really want to.
::
When I was in college, my friends and I loved a singer called Janice, flocking to see her whenever she was in town. One of the songs she sang had these lyrics: Oh, I can't help it, I just wake up smiling...
That's what I need to do. Wake up smiling, saying oh, I can't help it, I wake up smiling, just thinking of what I was meant to do. Can't help but trust the fact that I have been created to blossom — somewhere, in some way — if I would just look up at the warmth of the sun and say: help me grow.
sbr
view from the pew
i'm not a front pew sitter. left side, five pews from the back, right on the aisle is where you will find me on Sunday. But this weekend, at least for a little while, my view was from the front pew.
my friend melanie had the vision, and i joined her with a dozen other women to make it happen. We planned for almost a year, to gather women in our church and their friends to celebrate story, the story found in each of us, as a way to connect to our God-created creative center.
and it finally happened. and for two days we talked. shared. wrote. drew. listened. celebrated. sang. ate. wept. laughed.
patti digh, our keynote speaker, gave us challenges. one was to turn around to the person behind you and ask: what do you love to do? the young woman behind me looked lost when i asked her, had no clue how to answer this question. i'll tell you what i love to do, i said. make yeast rolls. get my hands in the dough. turns out she loved to dig in the dirt, and though the rabbits were eating everything she put out, we shared a love for peonies.
another exercise: look into the face of the person on the pew behind us. for two minutes. the woman behind me was elderly, my mother's age. as i stared into her green eyes, watched her eyebrows lift into sly smile, dip into frown, i pondered the story in her wrinkled skin.
then, patti said, said, close your eyes, think of your favorite childhood game, your first love, a place where you feel safe. open your eyes. see the woman before you. she has the same remarkable story as you. introduce yourself.
i asked carmen, my new friend, about herself. she is the wife of a retired priest, was there with her daughter, and when i heard of her husband's occupation, looked at her name again, something struck. could she have spent time my hometown, been friends with my mother? yes, in fact, she did. was.
and there were other stories. a young woman with colored dreadlocks came from south carolina to meet patti digh. when she left, she left behind beautiful drawings to remind us of her presence. mothers who came with grown daughters. cancer survivors hoping for a fresh start. mothers caring for young children. others caring for aging parents. all eager to renew purpose in their lives. to learn how to live their lives as art.
jill staton bullard, was one of our breakout speakers. she started a movement when she watched a fast -food company throw out good food because the day shifted from breakfast to lunch. Jill asked this question of her group: tell each other about someone who has changed your life. the room soon filled with babble. next question will be harder, jill said: now tell each other about people whose lives you have changed. we don't own that one, she says. other speakers talked of the angels in their lives, how God works in the garden (i hoped my gardening friend was in that one), feeling God's presence in art, in the pew, in the world around you.
the weekend ended with a eucharist, a celebration of all things woman, with kites and candles, hymns and wine, bread and prayer.
as i sang, i looked around, at my friends mel and barbara and martha on the pew beside me, lee and linda and sandy and charlotte in pews or standing all around, nell and patti, a generation apart, singing in unison from their own pew. somewhere behind me i knew were grace and diana and katherine, dawn and lynn and sally, frances and diane, marty and laurie and countless other women who are important to my life, and i could not keep from weeping.
it was the kites i noticed then. two young women, sisters — twins — flailing dove and spiral above as all our heads lifted, watching them soar.
+++\
please check back tomorrow, as I will post more pictures.
my friend melanie had the vision, and i joined her with a dozen other women to make it happen. We planned for almost a year, to gather women in our church and their friends to celebrate story, the story found in each of us, as a way to connect to our God-created creative center.
and it finally happened. and for two days we talked. shared. wrote. drew. listened. celebrated. sang. ate. wept. laughed.
patti digh, our keynote speaker, gave us challenges. one was to turn around to the person behind you and ask: what do you love to do? the young woman behind me looked lost when i asked her, had no clue how to answer this question. i'll tell you what i love to do, i said. make yeast rolls. get my hands in the dough. turns out she loved to dig in the dirt, and though the rabbits were eating everything she put out, we shared a love for peonies.
another exercise: look into the face of the person on the pew behind us. for two minutes. the woman behind me was elderly, my mother's age. as i stared into her green eyes, watched her eyebrows lift into sly smile, dip into frown, i pondered the story in her wrinkled skin.
then, patti said, said, close your eyes, think of your favorite childhood game, your first love, a place where you feel safe. open your eyes. see the woman before you. she has the same remarkable story as you. introduce yourself.
i asked carmen, my new friend, about herself. she is the wife of a retired priest, was there with her daughter, and when i heard of her husband's occupation, looked at her name again, something struck. could she have spent time my hometown, been friends with my mother? yes, in fact, she did. was.
and there were other stories. a young woman with colored dreadlocks came from south carolina to meet patti digh. when she left, she left behind beautiful drawings to remind us of her presence. mothers who came with grown daughters. cancer survivors hoping for a fresh start. mothers caring for young children. others caring for aging parents. all eager to renew purpose in their lives. to learn how to live their lives as art.
jill staton bullard, was one of our breakout speakers. she started a movement when she watched a fast -food company throw out good food because the day shifted from breakfast to lunch. Jill asked this question of her group: tell each other about someone who has changed your life. the room soon filled with babble. next question will be harder, jill said: now tell each other about people whose lives you have changed. we don't own that one, she says. other speakers talked of the angels in their lives, how God works in the garden (i hoped my gardening friend was in that one), feeling God's presence in art, in the pew, in the world around you.
the weekend ended with a eucharist, a celebration of all things woman, with kites and candles, hymns and wine, bread and prayer.
as i sang, i looked around, at my friends mel and barbara and martha on the pew beside me, lee and linda and sandy and charlotte in pews or standing all around, nell and patti, a generation apart, singing in unison from their own pew. somewhere behind me i knew were grace and diana and katherine, dawn and lynn and sally, frances and diane, marty and laurie and countless other women who are important to my life, and i could not keep from weeping.
it was the kites i noticed then. two young women, sisters — twins — flailing dove and spiral above as all our heads lifted, watching them soar.
+++\
please check back tomorrow, as I will post more pictures.
What Must I Do?
Lately I have been doing a lot of prep work for The Gathering, which I have written about in this space before. On Monday, I met with a group of women to pitch the event, hoping more than a few of them would sign up to attend. I talked about how we found Patti Digh, our keynote speaker, and the other women we have invited to lead breakout groups designed to spark creativity within us — in work, in community, in faith and daily life. Being part of the planning for an event we hope will help reshape the lives of many has been daunting, and so rewarding to me.
One of the many questions Patti asks in her book, Creative Is A Verb, is this: What is the one thing you MUST do?
We all have our daily "musts". Today, for instance, I must work, set up a new computer, create and distribute a weekly e-newsletter. I must have my Diet Coke, must finish this post, must check to see if I have enough money in the bank, must make the bed, clean out the coffee pot, walk the dog, write my Christmas thank you notes, plan supper. A long list.
But if I didn't do one of those things — or all of those things — the world wouldn't shake on its axis, and few, if any, would care at all. (Well, the dog would care, my mother would care about the notes, and my husband might not care about supper, too much.)
But this kind of must is different from the daily must do, something so imbedded in our souls that if we don't do it, we somehow feel a lost.
So I asked the women, most of whom I know fairly well, to take three minutes and think about it. Write it down. What must they do, or they would not feel whole? Just one thing.
Here's what they said:
Knit. Talk. Exercise. Organize. Connect. Be part of a church community. As they shared, I got a better sense of their inner lives, of what makes them who they are. And how their "must" connects them to those around them. Each of them, unknowingly, is creating art in her daily life, just by living within that must. The knitter showed her scarf. The talker talked of losing her singing voice to surgery, but of gaining her willingness to speak up. The organizer shared this: that hidden in that need to organize was her real need to connect people with each other, to find places where their talents can be shared.
As I listened, I thought: now this is one thing I "must" do. Pull the story out, particularly from those who think they don't have one. It gives me such joy to hear someone say: I never thought about it just that way before, when I ask a question and a story tumbles out of them that surprises. It's usually something they do think about but regard as so small, it is not worth sharing.
But of course it is the tiniest of things that can mean the biggest of things, when considered a new way. And what I must do, is capture those moments that bring meaning to the musts.
sbr
Let Me Be Clear
I'm team-teaching a class on Sundays in January on the books of Asheville writer Patti Digh, in preparation for The Gathering, a women's retreat I'm involved in next month, with Patti as keynote speaker. To prepare for the class, and for the retreat, I am opening Creative Is A Verb randomly each day, reading the story and working through the creative challenges Patti provides. Today's impromptu opening revealed page 180, Embrace your Clearness Committee. (more on that later)
I haven't known Patti long, but on a frustrating day last spring, as we were struggling to find a keynote speaker for our event, I stumbled onto her blog. I liked what I saw — a fellow writer musing about intention. And creativity. And story. About living life as art, even if we have never felt like artists before.
As much as I would like an entire weekend to be about ME and all my needs, I had to step back a bit and be (somewhat) unselfish. (Let's face it. All writers want ATTENTION.) Still, Patti's blog practically shouted at me to ask myself some questions. What was I doing in my life that was intentional, creative? Had I forgotten my own story? Might there be other people out there who could hear the shouting, too?
As I clicked further into her blog, I found the very language that we had been trying to define for our event:
I haven't known Patti long, but on a frustrating day last spring, as we were struggling to find a keynote speaker for our event, I stumbled onto her blog. I liked what I saw — a fellow writer musing about intention. And creativity. And story. About living life as art, even if we have never felt like artists before.
As much as I would like an entire weekend to be about ME and all my needs, I had to step back a bit and be (somewhat) unselfish. (Let's face it. All writers want ATTENTION.) Still, Patti's blog practically shouted at me to ask myself some questions. What was I doing in my life that was intentional, creative? Had I forgotten my own story? Might there be other people out there who could hear the shouting, too?
As I clicked further into her blog, I found the very language that we had been trying to define for our event:
- What learning and significances are right in front of us, in the stories of our days?
- How can we move beyond the limits of who we think we are into what we were meant to be?
- In what ways can we relinquish our “role” in order to discover who we might be beneath the mask?
- How can we live more mindful, intentional lives by saying yes, being generous, speaking up, trusting ourselves, loving more, and slowing down?
I told my friend Mel, The Gathering organizer, about her. She read the blog and liked Patti immediately. Send her an e-mail, Mel said. And write your heart out. And so I did, telling Patti of our a shared passion for "Julie, Julie Julie do you love me?" (ok, we were 13, so give us some slack...) And our small town N.C. roots. Not to mention that in one of her photos she is wearing a sailor collar dress like I used to have in first grade. I told her that I connected to the fact that she has sailed around the world because my husband has a sailboat, though we have as yet only sailed around Kerr Lake. I titled my e-mail: I have been looking for you all day. Which was true, since I had spent the whole day in a maze of Google searches that seemed to have no end, until I found her blog.
I said a little prayer. And then I hit SEND.
In 14 minutes, an e-mail from this woman who travels around the world and has written boocoos of books and speaks all over everywhere, showed up in my box:
My dear Susan -
Imagine my wonderment and delight to be sitting here at my computer and see your message come up. Anyone who shares my fondness for Bobby Sherman... and little did you know that my daughter will start NC State University in the fall, so Raleigh is very much on my radar and I am looking for excuses to come there.
I would be delighted to come. Let's find a way to make this work.
love, patti
What I learned later is that Patti gets hundreds of requests in a month's time, and she never responds quickly, much less in 14 minutes. A quick response she reserves for her daughters, husband and maybe dear Bobby, should he ever figure out who has been Googling him. And maybe a certain actor with a penchant for pirate movies. My e-mail clicked, and well, whodaever?
In the months since, Patti and I have had several conversations about The Gathering, and a few weeks ago, I attended one of her readings locally, wanting to meet this woman who is so honest about herself that she has started a new blog this week about wrestling with weight, trying to be a more bendable in body. She strikes me as being particularly bendable in spirit. She is soft-spoken and Southern and funky and funny and just like the self she projects onto the page. When she joins us in February, she'll talk about her path in hopes that we all might draw something from her life that will fit in our own.
It's Patti's fault, really, that I subjected y'all to this blog during December. She challenged her Facebook followers to join her in Reverb10, and I just said why not? The fact that I haven't posted anything in several days tells you that I need the challenge ever-present in my in-box, and though keeping the blog going is part of my 2011 self-improvement plan, apparently I don't hold much clout with myself, at least just yet. But this is a start.
So back to the Clearness Committee. It's a group of people gathered together to support us, whose job is not to have the right answers, as Patti says, but to craft respectful and supportive questions. Do we each have a such a group we can convene at the important moments in life, she asks? If not, we should find them, surround ourselves with such people, and at least a couple of them should have different perspectives on life from our own.
My answer would be yes, I do have a CC. And it's not just the people who say: you're terrific, though I do love those people. (Please keep it coming!) My CC is made up of those supporters, and those who aren't afraid to help me figure out when I have screwed up, have hurt someone, have fallen short of my potential. Those good folks who point out my typos, both literal and figurative. If I would only ask.
But am I open to the truth of me, and the truth as someone else sees me? My family (and a couple of people on my CC) would probably say no, I am not.
And, this: Am I on anyone else's CC? Have I shown my friends that I am the kind of person who can listen, who can ask respectful and supportive questions, who can give, as Patti says, "unconditional love with hopeful expectancy?" I hope so, but I wonder sometimes if I just take take take and don't give as good as I get. Yet another thing to work on.
So as I count down the weeks to The Gathering, I plan to gather my CC for the weekend, too. And together I hope we will craft respectful and supportive questions for each other, and in doing so, retell our stories, challenge our creativity, and maybe even admit we all loved Bobby Sherman, once upon a time.
My dear Susan -
Imagine my wonderment and delight to be sitting here at my computer and see your message come up. Anyone who shares my fondness for Bobby Sherman... and little did you know that my daughter will start NC State University in the fall, so Raleigh is very much on my radar and I am looking for excuses to come there.
I would be delighted to come. Let's find a way to make this work.
love, patti
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| Captain Who? |
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| Funny, funky Patti Digh |
It's Patti's fault, really, that I subjected y'all to this blog during December. She challenged her Facebook followers to join her in Reverb10, and I just said why not? The fact that I haven't posted anything in several days tells you that I need the challenge ever-present in my in-box, and though keeping the blog going is part of my 2011 self-improvement plan, apparently I don't hold much clout with myself, at least just yet. But this is a start.
So back to the Clearness Committee. It's a group of people gathered together to support us, whose job is not to have the right answers, as Patti says, but to craft respectful and supportive questions. Do we each have a such a group we can convene at the important moments in life, she asks? If not, we should find them, surround ourselves with such people, and at least a couple of them should have different perspectives on life from our own.
My answer would be yes, I do have a CC. And it's not just the people who say: you're terrific, though I do love those people. (Please keep it coming!) My CC is made up of those supporters, and those who aren't afraid to help me figure out when I have screwed up, have hurt someone, have fallen short of my potential. Those good folks who point out my typos, both literal and figurative. If I would only ask.
But am I open to the truth of me, and the truth as someone else sees me? My family (and a couple of people on my CC) would probably say no, I am not.
And, this: Am I on anyone else's CC? Have I shown my friends that I am the kind of person who can listen, who can ask respectful and supportive questions, who can give, as Patti says, "unconditional love with hopeful expectancy?" I hope so, but I wonder sometimes if I just take take take and don't give as good as I get. Yet another thing to work on.
So as I count down the weeks to The Gathering, I plan to gather my CC for the weekend, too. And together I hope we will craft respectful and supportive questions for each other, and in doing so, retell our stories, challenge our creativity, and maybe even admit we all loved Bobby Sherman, once upon a time.