Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's Blog, page 11

Finding Acceptance in Surprising Places

I read this story recently in Poets & Writers. It may be a parable about stick-to-it-iveness, or perhaps it’s an invitation to apply the vision of hindsight to our current ambitions. Bear with me.

Daniel Wallace, the author of six novels including a New York Times bestseller, has tried for more than thirty years to publish in The New Yorker. When he first began submitting work there in 1984, The New Yorker defined literary success for him. His stories landed on the desk of the fiction editor, Daniel Menacer, who eventually began jotting “a little something” on the rejected pages. “I had no idea who this person was,” Wallace writes, “and it didn’t really matter because at that time in my life, editors were all-powerful demigods whose approval would allow me entry into the world I hungrily watched from afar.” Over the first six years, Menaker’s rejections grew personal and encouraging. One story he even called “very good…as far as it goes.” He actually invited Wallace to continue submitting. Writers call such comments “good rejections.”

Eventually Menaker left The New Yorker to become executive editor (and later editor-in-chief) at Random House; he now writes novels and teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook. Over that time Wallace continued submitting stories, over fifty of them, and receiving rejections. Then, on a recent whim, Wallace looked Menaker up. Menaker remembered him and agreed to meet over a meal, which turned out to be ordinary, connective, and lovely. They’ve been in touch ever since.

“Do you see what just happened?” Wallace asks us readers. “After a lifetime of rejection, I had been accepted. I had made a friend.”

I’m not entirely sure what moral Wallace wants us to take away from his story, but it makes me think about how readily we writers—and humans in general—allow ambition to limit our imagination. We dream of success (and what could be more successful for a writer than being published in The New Yorker?), but when we don’t attain it, or even when we do, we’re blinded to other possibilities of what might be created–what might come alive.

What if the new life we look for (in publication, in success) might also be found elsewhere? I don’t want to discourage writers from publishing so much as encourage all of us to experiment with not being enslaved to our ambition. What freedom is then possible?  What else that’s truly new might happen?  It’s worth a try.   –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Upcoming events:

Second Friday spiritual memoir drop-in series at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality:

3/9: Writing as Exercising Forgiveness


4/13: Characters: Real People in Two Dimensions (This session is facilitated by Carolyn Holbrook)


5/11: Dialogue


6/8: Adding by Subtraction

Living A Legacy: Passing On Faith by Writing Your Faith Story


Tuesday, April 17, 1:30-3 p.m at Easter Lutheran Church.

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Tunneling Through Anxiety

Anxiety is my familiar and unwelcome friend. In my early twenties when I was teaching seventh grade, I’d stand in the shower first thing trying to breathe in the warmth, the heat, the calm, while my heart pounding uncontrollably in terror at the day ahead. Before book releases, twice I’ve landed in the doctor’s office, hooked up to an EKG. The second time, my doctor asked, “Have you tried breathing deeply?” I hadn’t. When my mother died my foundation crumbled; I struggled with high blood pressure for months; I’d wake up in the night, unreasonably panicked and sweaty.

Our house was burglarized recently and all the jewelry I’d inherited from my mother was stolen. It was awful for the expected reasons, but also because it triggered that old anxiety: A smoke alarm chirps in the night and I’m awake, drenched, heart racing. This, I know, is anxiety in small proportion. In larger doses it’s debilitating and even life-threatening. Today anxiety is an epidemic among teens, a health crisis of daunting proportion, even a cultural norm. These are difficult times.

So I was intrigued when Brother David Steindl-Rast in a recent On Being interview with Krista Tippett embraced anxiety. Acknowledge it, he suggested; affirm it.

“Anxiety—” he said, “this word comes from a root that means ‘narrowness’ and ‘choking.’ The original anxiety is our birth anxiety. We all come into this world through this very uncomfortable process of being born, unless you happen to be a cesarean baby. It’s really a life-and-death struggle for both the mother and the child. And that is the original, the prototype, of anxiety. At that time, we do it fearlessly, because fear is the resistance against this anxiety. If you go with it, it brings you into birth. If you resist it, you die in the womb, or your mother dies.

“Anxiety is not optional… We come into life through anxiety. And we look at it and remember it and say to ourselves: We made it. We got through it. We made it. In fact, the worst anxieties and the worst tight spots in our life, often, years later, when you look back at them, reveal themselves as the beginning of something completely new, a completely new life.

“And that can teach us, and that can give us courage, also, now that we think about it, in looking forward and saying: Yes, this is a tight spot. It’s about as tight spot as the world has ever been in, or at least humankind. But if we go with it — and that will be grateful living — if we go with it, it will be a new birth. And that is trust in life.”

Fear is our resistance to anxiety; fear is life-destroying; fear, Steindl-Rast implies, is optional. But anxiety is simply what it feels like to move through the birth canal, and awful as it is, it brings us to birth. So now, when I’m awake at night, I try to welcome the anxiety, I trace its wild course through my blood stream, and I imagine welcoming it for our whole country so we can pass through these narrow choking times into something new. Welcome anxiety, welcome anxiety.

–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Spring offerings:

Second Friday spiritual memoir drop-in series at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality

3/9: Writing as Exercising Forgiveness


4/13: Characters: Real People in Two Dimensions (This session is facilitated by Carolyn Holbrook)


5/11: Dialogue


6/8: Adding by Subtraction

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The Small, Accessible World of Publishing

A few months ago I led a workshop at a church; only five people showed up so we sat around and swapped writing stories. One an older member shared has stuck with me.

Every Sunday morning while she curls her hair, she composes a haiku. Then she goes to her desk and fills out her offering check. She places it in an envelope, seals it, and writes her haiku on the outside.

In the past she’d been on the committee which tallied money after church. “It’s boring,” she told us. “I want to make those volunteers’ day a little brighter. They love it. They always let me know how much it means to them.”

I respect how this woman’s writing practice is dynamic, holistic. She writes out of delight; she gives her poem as an offering; in the midst of the volunteers’ drudgery they receive a splash of joy; and the writer receives enough evidence of her work’s value to keep her writing. The place we’re called, Frederick Buechner says, is “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This writer found the sweet spot.

The offering envelope might be a humble platform, but it’s arguably more successful (and certainly more sustainable) than most writers’ experiences with publishing. I’ve been thinking about it because it seems to me that when we writers consider our options at the end of a project, we aren’t very creative. And as catchy as Buechner’s words sound, finding our deep gladness or the world’s deep hunger—or, for that matter, the place where they meet—is immensely challenging.

Perhaps the key is starting small. Twenty-three years ago, I moved away from my home church for a spell and decided to write a column for the newsletter as a way to stay in touch. Unlike the book I was working on, which took me ten years to write and publish, I received immediate responses to my column—notes of appreciation, rebuttals, stories told in sympathy. That column closed a loop in my writing life I hadn’t known existed, and it sustained me for the long haul of writing the memoir. It still sustains me; this blog is an evolution of that old column. It’s become a central practice in my writing life.

Not all writers need an audience and not all writing needs publication, but writers who long to communicate need readers, and readers have particular needs that writers can fill. The small ways we find to close this circle are beautiful works of art in their own right.   –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Living Revision is now available everywhere! Hooray! Please support your local bookstore.

If you’ve read it, consider posting a review on Goodreads, Amazon, Facebook, or your blog. Thanks!

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES:

February 9, 9 a.m.-12:  Writing the Sacred Journey, an introduction to writing spiritual memoir, at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality.

Second Friday spiritual memoir drop-in series:

2/ 9: Dreams, Our Most Intimate Scripture


3/9: Writing as Exercising Forgiveness


4/13: Characters: Real People in Two Dimensions (This session is facilitated by Carolyn Holbrook)


5/11: Dialogue


6/8: Adding by Subtraction

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Yours, for Keeps

After Emily and I got an estimate to have a professional paint our stairwell ($10,000?!), we asked our neighbor Kurt who makes his living hanging wallpaper for his advice. Could we paint it ourselves? You bet. Kurt set us up with scaffolding. He even jumped on it, thereby proving it was trustworthy. He also examined the ceiling with its strangely peeling paint, the rim of painted-over wallpaper along the top edge, and the long horizontal crack running the length of our hallway wall. For ten grand the pros would have fixed these. Kurt waved them off. He ran his hand along the jagged split in the plaster. “Nope,” he said. “That’s your crack. It’s for keeps.”

Our house is eighty years old; of course it has settled, shifted, and cracked. For an exceptional amount of money we (hypothetically) could have repaired the glitches in our hallway, but that was a degree of perfectionism that neither Emily nor I could stomach. Between caring deeply for a house and an extreme focus on aesthetics lies a fine line. Besides, the affection in Kurt’s voice was infectious: “Your crack.” We’ve patched a little now and painted, and our crack is still there. It’s for keeps.

Leonard Cohen sings, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” A crack in the wall that lets in light is worth money and effort to fix, but metaphorically you get what Cohen means. Smile wrinkles give a face real beauty. Our beloved’s flaws might drive us crazy, but they’re also endearing and a source of true love. Only the destruction of a wild fire will break open the jack pine cone and release its seeds. Unfathomable as it may seem, our very human brokenness is the entrance for transcendence and transformation.

Spending outrageous resources to cover up or even try to fix our brokenness is pointless; I’d even go so far as to say it’s a form of denial. We mess up. We make mistakes. We have bad moods and cultivate hidden prejudices and are mean to people we love. Certainly we’re called to do our best—to be kind, to act justly and love mercy and walk humbly. It’s important to care for the house. But perfectionism isn’t the goal. Wholeness is. Our cracks are for keeps, and the spirit of a loving life flourishes when we accept this, put up a fresh coat of paint, and move on.    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Happy new year’s greetings on this cold January day!

Living Revision is now available at some independent bookstores (you can get it at Powell’s at least) and on amazon.com.  If you can, please support your local bookstore!

Have you read Living Revision?  Consider writing a quick online review–on Facebook, Amazon, Goodreads, your blog… I appreciate your help in spreading the word.

Interested in writing spiritual memoir?  I’m teaching an introduction called Writing the Sacred Journey at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality on February 9, 9 a.m.-noon.  You’re also welcome to drop into the ongoing second Friday series:

2/ 9: Dreams, Our Most Intimate Scripture


3/9: Writing as Exercising Forgiveness


4/13: Characters: Real People in Two Dimensions (This session is facilitated by Carolyn Holbrook)


5/11: Dialogue


6/8: Adding by Subtraction

Hope to see you there!

Elizabeth

 

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Big Love

I’m haunted by a memory: Emily is enduring her second bout with cancer, this time preparing for extensive surgery involving her neck, chest, and leg. Like any cancer surgery, it might or might not be successful. The surgeons have warned her that, regardless of the outcome, she’ll likely lose the use of her right arm.

What haunts me isn’t the enormous stress of that time (Gwyn was six months old, still nursing; I drove my baldies back and forth to the Mayo Clinic all summer) but rather the tangle in my heart. With every cell of my being, I wanted Emily to be well. I prayed for this—make her well make her well make her well—all the while guarding myself against a bad outcome. The doctors were decidedly cautious, even pessimistic. I prayed for a miracle. I prayed that all five surgeons would be on their game. I bargained with God (“Okay, we can deal losing use of her arm so long as she can be cancer-free”). I tried praying “Thy will, not mine, be done,” but couldn’t.

And here is the crux, the bit that won’t let me go. I didn’t trust God. I knew only too well that illness and death are part of creation, and that God doesn’t swoop in deus ex machina to fix things. More than any miracle, I trusted the Mayo Clinic surgeons to give a realistic picture of what was possible. If the statistical likelihood of Emily having a good arm, even keeping her life, was slim, my own desperate prayer that she be well was futile. God’s will felt to me like fate. I didn’t want “God’s will” to be done because I didn’t want the likely outcomes.

Emily’s surgery was successful. I felt immensely relieved—and ashamed. I had spent so much energy preparing for loss, I’d not fully allowed room in my heart for the possibility of health. I’d limited my hopes; our world is so full of hurt, I’d prepared myself for more of it. Emily’s full restoration to health has been humbling. My prayer is inadequate. My sense of what’s possible is too small.

Since then I’ve lost many loved ones prematurely. Our world is full of unnecessary suffering, terrific injustices, and genuine evil. Through it all, I’m slowly emerging into a sense of the confounded, backward way that love works. Dame Julian wasn’t Pollyanna when she said “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” During a tax upheaval deeply burdensome to poor people, under an unjust leader, in an inhospitable town, on a dark night, divinity became human. What plays out in our small lives pales in comparison to the big love at work in and through them.

But, honestly, we don’t need to worry about any of that. We don’t need to believe or not believe. All we have to do is practice opening our hearts, staying open to possibility, always working within and without, always welcoming, because that’s how big love enters.    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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On this darkest day I wish you much light and love!

Elizabeth

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In Our Holographic World

In my dream, I’m late for a radio interview. I’ve prepared but when I arrive at the studio I no longer have my book and notes, and instead am carrying a cast iron pan with a slice of bacon. This makes me panic. At the back of the waiting room, a lanky teenager guards the entrance to a hall which leads to the broadcasting room—soundproofed, protected—at the rear of the building.

What’s up with the bacon? Beats me, but the radio studio feels surprisingly accurate. All of us have this safe, padded space within. It’s a bit of a hassle to get there, especially since we never feel prepared or worthy. We have to get past the ego to enter. Beyond is the inner sanctum, the core, our essence, and it’s from this place our voices get broadcasted most effectively.

For years I’ve loved a line from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, where the narrator says of her character, Janie, “She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.” When memoir writers are crippled with doubt about their stories’ value, I remind them that we each contain the world and heavens boiled down to a drop, and our job as writers is to first believe in and then find the holographic nature of our stories. When writers realize that the universal resides in the particular, they gain confidence and competence. Details speak truths, more loudly even than truisms. “To turn from everything to one face,” writes Elizabeth Bowen, “is to find oneself face to face with everything.”

When the Turkish author Ohan Pamuk received the Nobel Prize in 2006, he described the writer as someone who “retires into himself”; he escapes “crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life” to shut himself up in a room. “If he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity… All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other.” The craft of writing can transform what might otherwise be naval gazing or isolationism into a contemplative practice, one that embraces both the full range of our diversity as well as our singular unity. With fear and trembling (and a pan of bacon?), we have to navigate our way past the waiting room of our usual attachments, past our self-consciousness, back to that soundproofed space where we can tell our stories with greatest integrity. We must turn our backs on the world only to face it more completely, and from that place send out our radio waves of hope.

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The last drop-in spiritual memoir session at Wisdom Ways is next Friday, December 8, at 1:30.  We’ll explore this topic of the universal in the particular with memories from childhood and meditations on ordinary objects.  Hope to see you there!

 

Living Revision:  A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice is now available through InSpirit Bookstore.  Enjoy!

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Holy First Person Singular, Batman!

Call me a spiritually obsessed literary geek, but the little spiritual wisdom I can claim I’ve gleaned from grammar. For example, take the memoirist’s point of view, first person singular. This is the “I” voice, the one every journal-keeper cherishes, as in “I do love grammar!” After memoirists’ initial honeymoon with the first person singular, during which the “I” is a magnificent, unfolding mystery, they go through a predictable period of discomfort. Alice McDermott described it this way: “The sight of too many first-person pronouns dribbling down the page tends to affect my reading mind in much the same way as too many ice cubes dropped down my back affect my spine.” “I” seems self-referential, self-obsessed. Innumerable memoirists try to eliminate the word “I” from there stories for fear of calling attention to themselves.

This discomfort isn’t limited to writers. Anyone who values (or has been taught to value) humility knows it. Women are the worst (or best?) offenders. We don’t like taking up space. Minnesotans, strongly influenced by Scandinavian cultures, are also notorious for self-deprecation. Self-assertion is suspect. You’d think egotism was a crime—or, more likely, a sin. Perhaps Christian roots are to blame, because Christianity’s strong (and worthy) moral teachings about caring for others and long (but terribly misunderstood) spiritual tradition of surrendering the will both lead us to treat the self with suspicion.

Here’s where grammar comes to the rescue. In the sentence, “I love grammar,” “I” is the subject, “love” is the verb, and “grammar” is the object. When writers choose “I” as their subject, they are creating a two-dimensional character to be the actor in their story. The “I” is a lens; it’s a uniquely curved piece of glass through which the author (and, later, the reader) looks at the world. In this sentence, the object of this lens’s attention is “grammar.” A reader looks lovingly through the I toward grammar.

In other words, a well-written first-person sentence, as with a well-written memoir, isn’t about the “I” at all. The “I” is simply a lens on life. Any attempt to erase the “I” is misguided, false humility. It’s an ego attached to not being egotistical. Henry David Thoreau knew this when he wrote Walden: “In most books the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.”

Thoreau’s acceptance of the “I” is representative of the new sense of self committed memoirists must embrace: The “I” is inescapable; it’s enough; it’s what we have to work with. Surprisingly, this consenting to the I’s unique graces and limitations frees us. Our willingness to look through that lens with love is, I believe, what the Christian mystics mean by surrender. Lest you think I’m off my rocker, today’s reflections are inspired by Jacob Boehme, German mystic and author of The Way to Christ: “You eagerly wish to completely break the ‘I’ and it wishes to become for you a completely divine ground.” The way is through the “I” and beyond!     –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate the launch of Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice.  If you’d like a copy, it’s available through inSpirit Books until March, when it will be more widely available.

One last spiritual memoir class this season!  Look for a new line-up of second Friday drop-in sessions come January.  December 8, 1:30-3:30 p.m.:  The World Boiled Down to a Drop, Spiritual Memoir drop-in sessions at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality.

 

 

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Repaint! Repent! Revise!

Years ago, when flakes of old paint began falling on choir members’ heads, the trustees of my small United Methodist Church spearheaded a fund-raising campaign by parading around the pews carrying signs saying, “Repaint! The time is at hand!” I’m happy to say that moment was the closest to a call for repentance I’ve ever experienced in church.

The trustees’ joke returned to me recently because Emily and I took five days off of work to repaint our stairwell. The previous owner of our house was an antiques dealer who loved the “distressed” look. For thirteen years her paint job had successfully distressed us, and finally the time was at hand to do something about it. Days of effort and domestic chaos later, the walls are clean. A minor but ongoing irritation has been cleared from our home.

Turns out that the word “repent,” which we usually use to mean “turn away from sin toward the amendment of our lives,” can also mean, simply, “to change one’s mind.” We’d changed our minds about that awful paint job before we’d even bought the house, but now have actually changed the paint. Theologian James Hughes Reho’s definition of repent, “to undergo a deconstruction-reconstruction process,” makes the trustees’ playful application to building maintenance right on. You’ve got to deconstruct the old to make room for the new, whether it’s a hallway or a soul. Or, in the case of writers, a rough draft. Or, in the case of climate change, old energy dependencies. Or, in the case of a broken democracy, old complacencies.

Do you see where I’m going? We do have the capacity to change, but it takes some deconstruction first, which requires investment, some tolerance of chaos and not knowing, and a willingness to let go of what you’ve lived with. Including old notions of repentance. Repaint-ance, repentance, revision—they all ask something big of us. “Yearning for a new way will not produce it,” Neale Donald Walsch writes. “You cannot hold onto the old, all the while declaring that you want something new. The old will defy the new; the old will deny the new; the old will decry the new. There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.”

There’s so much we’d like to see changed. And any of us, all of us, can be change-makers. Deep down in the substrata of our agency is this tiny muscle called “release.” Or, if you’re Buddhist, it’s called “letting go.” Or, if you’re Christian, it’s called “surrender.” Or, if you’re a writer, it’s called “killing your darlings.” Regardless, exercising that muscle is good for us. It’s spiritual fitness, well worth doing daily. The time is at hand! Practice releasing the old in some small way today, because we sure as heck need something new. –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Revision can change your life!  Well, if you’re a writer it can.  Come to The Revision Revival at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality on November 17, 2017, where these fantastic people will make you love revision by sharing their stories:  P.S. Duffy, Kyoko Katayama, Susan Power, Vanessa Ramos, Jim Robinson, Roseanne Pereira, and Sieglinda Gassman.

 

 

 

 

We’ll also celebrate the publication of Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, which is now available for preorder!

Other upcoming events:

Second Fridays, 1:30-3:30 p.m.: Spiritual Memoir drop-in sessions at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality.

November 10: Holy Sexuality 


December 8: The World Boiled Down to a Drop 

September 24-28, 2018:  Alone Together: Living Revision at Madeline Island School of the Arts.

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The Beauty of Embracing Opposites

A friend of mine died recently. Jeanne Audrey Powers was one of the first women ordained in the United Methodist Church. She worked for the General Conference in Manhattan and traveled the globe, hobnobbing with top religious leaders of every stripe. Just before she retired, she came out lesbian at an international conference, sending waves of dismay throughout the global church in hopes of leveraging transformation. She kept an apartment in Minneapolis and attended my church, which was how I came to work for a brief spell as her personal secretary.

Working for Jeanne Audrey meant handling mundane tasks like sorting mail, paying bills, and balancing her checkbook. This giant of a woman was paralyzed by a stack of unopened mail. I’ll always remember one evening when I helped her host a women’s gathering at her high-rise apartment. I carried a bag of vegetables into her kitchen, pulled a built-in cutting board out from under the counter, and began chopping. Jeanne Audrey entered—and nearly fell over. “What’s that?” she asked of the cutting board; “Where did that come from?!” Jeanne Audrey had lived twenty years in her apartment and had never once sliced a carrot there.

Jeanne Audrey, unlike me, thrived on conflict. I remember her at the Re-Imagining Conferences in the mid-nineties, the gatherings by which feminism hit the mainline denominations like a train wreck; Jeanne Audrey sniffed out the conservative infiltrators and press reps, brought them coffee, and engaged them in lengthy, honest, and disconcertingly intimate conversations. By the end of the day they were exchanging phone numbers. Jeanne Audrey was fearsome in her ability to transform enemies into friends.

What a bundle of contradictions! I love how Jeanne Audrey refused to be boxed in by others’ expectations. Years ago, on the Sunday I had determined to come out at church—during Joys and Concerns, when the community shares its prayers—Jeanne Audrey had just endured a bout with breast cancer and had had a mastectomy. We both raised our hands for the mic. I shook with nerves about calling myself bisexual in front of God and these people, so I was relieved when the usher handed the mic first to Jeanne Audrey. She stood, affectionately stroked her chest, and thanked God for her new body, clearly missing a breast. Moments before I came out in church, Jeanne Audrey as a form of prayer publicly fondled herself.

It was as though the universe had conspired to say to me, “See? Your inner contradictions are nothing compared with what’s possible.”

At eighty-five Jeanne Audrey was afflicted with aphasia and blindness; she had no living relatives and was steadily losing her ability to read, write, speak, and think. Her letter arrived last week: “I have had such a full and meaningful life,” she wrote. “It’s important that you understand that this was not a ‘suicide’ as commonly understood, but it was very much a death with dignity.” I hold the page in my hands. Her spirit is alive and kicking there, ardent, strong, and I laugh out loud because with her final act Jeanne Audrey managed to befriend even death.   –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Revision can change your life!  If you don’t believe me, come to The Revision Revival at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality on November 17, 2017.  These fantastic people will make you love revision by sharing their stories:  P.S. Duffy, Kyoko Katayama, Susan Power, Vanessa Ramos, Jim Robinson, Roseanne Pereira, and Sieglinda Gassman.

 

 

 

 

We’ll also celebrate the publication of Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, which is now available for preorder!

Other upcoming events:

Second Fridays, 1:30-3:30 p.m.: Spiritual Memoir drop-in sessions at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality.

November 10: Holy Sexuality 


December 8: The World Boiled Down to a Drop 

October 25, 2017, 6:30pm:  An evening exploring spiritual memoir at The Retreat with Women In Recovery.

October 27, 2017: Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice workshop at the Loft Literary Center.

September 24-28, 2018:  Alone Together: Living Revision at Madeline Island School of the Arts.

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The Gifts of Being Curious

Isn’t curiosity marvelous? Something sparks your interest, and you’re off—questioning, learning, exploring, pondering. Say you meet someone new, share a bit about yourself, and they’re genuinely curious; suddenly you’re deep in conversation, sharing details about yourself or your work that you rarely otherwise disclose, and you begin to wonder whether this person might become a friend. Or say you receive a new artistic medium, a set of oil pastels; you’re eager to feel one in your hand, run it across a blank page, be surprised by the streak of color. Or say you’re a writer with one idea that leads to another, that leads to a few weeks buried in the library stacks and then a few years pursuing a project; you’re absorbed, you’re riding the rails of your heart without a clue where the train is going.

It’s exhilarating.

The gift of curiosity is this: We lose ourselves. Curiosity makes this seemingly awful phenomenon, the loss of self, pleasurable. We can practice this same loss through some forms of meditation, releasing the small sense of self (the mental ego) for the sake of a bigger, truer Self, but this is a via negativa, a way of emptying, and while it’s deeply transformative it’s a challenging path. Curiosity, on the other hand, draws us into self-forgetting through delight. Somehow our exuberant love opens us to the bigger, truer Self without us ever noticing.

Kids are pros at this, probably because their egos are yet unformed. My daughter heard the music from Hamilton and entered a six-month craze about the Revolutionary War. She’s also had a life-long (well, since she was old enough to draw) interest in all things fashion. The other day I organized her collection of handmade paper dolls, and, I kid you not, she has over a thousand outfits. I believe we’re all born with the capacity for such pure, generative curiosity. Our heart’s delight is a window onto our essential Self, the part of us connected to the fabric of the universe.

As a writing coach, I’ve noticed that the central, selfless, sustained path of curiosity in a project is the work’s life force. It’s the golden thread that binds writer to reader to Source. And this makes me think we all have this thread, writers and nonwriters alike, connecting us to one another and to the universe as a whole. We just need to follow it, fearlessly.    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Lots of good stuff coming up!  Please join me and MPR’s Steve Staruch at Normandale Lutheran Church on October 8, 2017, 1:00 p.m. for a conversation on Seeking the Spiritual in Prose and Poetry.

And mark your calendars for The Revision Revival: A celebration of transformation in writing and book launch for Living Revision at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality on November 17, 2017.  I know, I know; most people don’t think revision=good time, but what if this event convinces you otherwise?!

And Living Revision is now available for preorder!

 

Other upcoming events:

Second Fridays, 1:30-3:30 p.m.: Spiritual Memoir drop-in sessions at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality.

October 13: Mysticism


November 10: Holy Sexuality 


December 8: The World Boiled Down to a Drop 

October 25, 2017, 6:30pm:  An evening exploring spiritual memoir at The Retreat with Women In Recovery.

October 27, 2017: Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice workshop at the Loft Literary Center.

September 24-28, 2018:  Alone Together: Living Revision at Madeline Island School of the Arts.

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