| Integrating Past, Present
& Future Writing as a Spiritual Practice: Your Do-it-yourself Writing Workshop by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Second of a three-part series William Stafford, one of Kansas' most famous poets and the author of more than 50 books, once explained writing poetry as glimpsing something far off, "just a strip of the actual." He likened writing to seeing a strip of the universe "between the slats of a picket fence" and then realizing all the strips are connected. Writing for anyone can be a way of seeing what's real, what's actual, what's meaningful as well as the connections between the real. Writing can be, and certainly is for many, a spiritual practice: a way to practice waking up and perceiving the whole of life more fully. Last month, I wrote about getting started in a writing practice, including exercises for igniting words on paper (please see www.edgenews.com for that article), and next month, I'll be back to discuss sustaining the practice of writing. But this month, here's an article on writing as a form of spiritual unfolding to integrate past, present and future, and body, soul and mind. Practicing presence Emily Dickinson, at the conclusion of her poem "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain," writes (odd capitalization is Dickinson's): And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down -- And hit a World, at every plunge, and Finished knowing -- then -- Spiritual practices -- meditation, yoga, prayer and contemplation, or whatever we find as our practice -- can plunge us through the ordinary planks in our reason and to the end of what we know. These practices take us down the rabbit hole: beyond what we knew to make sense, and to the "then" followed by the dash that leads to something else. Through such practices, we can dwell in what poet John Keats called "negative capability," the space where we wander through doubt, confusion, not-knowingness to surrender to experience beyond our usual names for it. "If light hides the world, darkness reveals it," writes Kim Stafford. Writing is also such a practice: It helps us articulate the light in our lives and write our ways through and even into the darkness. Writing as a process instead of a means toward creating a product helps us extend the reach of our words and the turns of our phrases just enough to step out of limiting and limited ways of thinking and being in the world. By speaking of the shimmer of a bare tree against the sunset, or by contemplating the meaning of a friend's anger, our words can bring us to a wider way of knowing. Writing, by its very nature, is about paying attention to ourselves, the world around us, and the process of making things with verbs and nouns. Writing provides us with a means to listen to what life is telling us from another vantage point than our usual routines and routines of thoughts, worries, hopes. Writing is an important way of witnessing ourselves: what we care about, what hurts us, what calls to us, what gets in the way. When I first realized I wanted to be a writer, at age 14, I read somewhere that writers need to be very aware of everything all the time. So I started obsessively concentrating on becoming more aware -- staring at the windows in the school bus on the way home, and recording in words the details of a front yard or a mother pushing a stroller. I eventually found that while awareness feeds writing, writing enlarges our capacity to pay attention to other moments as well: the way the water glass feels in my hand as I wash it, the shine on the red stop sign up ahead that actually makes it iridescent for a second, the feel of my son's palm against your own. Moreover, this attention to what we have to say to ourselves, and how it needs to be said, is a kind of prayer -- questioning, praise, yearning, deep exploration -- to wake up and be where we are. Indeed, "Absolute attention is prayer," writes Simone Weil. Deepening the practice "The best way out is always through," writes Robert Frost, or as singer-songwriter Lui Collins sings, "The only way out is through." Whichever the case, writing is a way to both deepen our practice of being in the world. The following exercises are invitations to find out more about yourself and the way you see, feel, hear the world through shifting our perspective just enough to see what messages emerge in the writing. As always, please feel free to tinker with any instructions to make them work for you. Your writing is your own, and the more you write, the more deeply you'll understand that you write best when writing to reach out to yourself. One other caveat: Some of these exercises, while innocent-enough looking, may bring surprising feelings to the surface. Treat what comes with great respect and compassion. ´ Tell the story of your birth, play by play, as if, by some outrageous miracle, you had complete language at this moment and you were narrating the story into a tiny microphone as it was happening. Tell of how you felt in the womb, and then what happened to push you out (or how you pushed your way out). Detail what it felt like, looked like, sounded like in the moment you emerged, and then what happened. Whatever details you don't know, make up. Often you'll find that what you conjure up out of such writing turns out to be truer than you previously imagined. ´ Going to the other end of life, visit your inner-old-woman or inner-old-man. First relax deeply, breathing slowly for a while. If you meditate or do another kind of relaxation practice, feel free to do it first. If you don't, just sit in a comfortable chair, and breathe in and then out slowly. Pay attention to how your body feels in the chair -- where there's tension or calm in you. Observe what thoughts parade across your mind and then them keep on going. After relaxing for a while, imagine seeing a path into the woods or across a prairie or on a beach (your choice of whatever landscape comes to you). Follow it to a small dwelling -- a hut, a cottage, a cave, a yurt -- where your inner-old-person lives. Then go inside and meet yourself at your oldest and wisest. Have a talk with yourself, and stay as long as you wish. Before you leave, make sure you give your oldest self a gift of some kind. Then come back, open your eyes, pick up some paper, and write what happened. ´ All through a typical day, jot down a word or two that, for whatever reason appeals to you, every few hours. Or pick up a magazine, dictionary, beloved book and turn randomly to various pages, landing your finger somewhere on the page and picking a word from where you land. Aim for at least 20 words. Once you have your list of words, write them down together at the top of your page, and then start writing a story, letter, poem, journal entry or dialogue that uses each of the words at least once. ´ Write a vivid description of a room you loved to be in as a child -- a room in either your home or the home of a relative, or even a room you just visited rarely (or just once). Be lavish in describing each detail: the paintings on the wall, the furniture, the colors of objects, the windows, etc. Describe the room as if your pen were a camera scanning the whole space, and then focus in on you sitting in that room (at whatever age you wish). Write what happens. ´ Change your perspective drastically by describing your life as either a piece of furniture or a piece of clothing. If you're a blouse, tell where you've been, what you've witnessed, how it felt to go through the spin cycle of the washing machine, what it's like hanging out in the closet. If you're a bed, tell what dreams have been dreamt on you, and what live action you've witnessed, what you hide underneath yourself, how you've aged over time. Make sure you write from the perspective a real piece of furniture or clothing that you've known (and even loved!). ´ Write a letter to your future, telling your future all your dreams, concerns, fears, thrills now. Have your future write back to you. ´ Write a dialogue between yourself and yourself. Take any issue that you're of two minds about -- something you can't decide upon or see clearly -- and write from both perspectives (or more than two perspectives). Strive to be understood and strive to understand one another. If necessary, bring in a mediator to help you and you find common ground, clarity, love. And remember, as scientist and writer Alfred Korzybski says, "The map is not the territory." What you write is not what you write of; instead, your writing points to, illuminates, speaks of something beyond what you write: How to live right now in this world. Suggested readings for this month: Patrice Vecchione's Writing and the Spiritual Life; the poetry of William Stafford, Rainer Maria Rilke or Mary Oliver; Witnessing the Holy in the Physical World, edited by Scott Cairns and W. Scott Olsen; Annie Dilliard's The Writing Life, Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, edited by Jane Hirshfield; and The Enlightened Heart, edited by Stephen Mitchell. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D. has 30 years experience behind the pen as a poet and writer. She's a certified poetry therapist, and she directs the Transformative Language Arts program at Goddard College (www.goddard.edu). Her books include Lot's Wife (poetry), and the award-winning Write Where You Are: How to Use Writing to Make Sense of Your Life. She also facilitates writing workshops for people of many backgrounds, including upcoming workshops for people recovering from and living with cancer and chronic illness at Menorah Medical Center, and half-day retreats on writing as a spiritual practice, and much more. Please see her website at www.writewhereyouare.org for details, or contact her at carynken@mindspring.com or (785) 843-0253. Copyright © 2004 Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg |
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April 2004 |
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