The past four hours weren’t just about book writing, but also about book making and book reading and book research. I showed up, kept my heart open, and trusted my innate wisdom about where to focus my attention, where to put my hands, where to place my heart.
I started with writing about simplicity and the tiny sacred moments of our lives, about fear and story, about making space for magic to unfold.
Then I read from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening and Brene’ Brown’s Daring Greatly, and I wrote some more. I poked around Austin Kleon’s website. I looked at Christina Rosalie’s A Field Guide to Now, flipping through the pages and looking at the artwork. This is the kind of research I do when I’m writing. I had a silent, one sided, but very real conversation with each author, asking questions and offering gratitude.
After that, I moved to book making, working on a belated birthday present for a friend who I’ll be meeting for lunch later. I scissored, printed, and glue sticked images and wrote lines of poetry, quotes, and writing prompts in a journal whose cover I had painted earlier this summer.
What the above picture can’t show are the tears, the big idea I got, the glue that’s dried on my fingers, the hunger in my belly, the sound of Greg Laswell singing in the background, and the tenderness, the surrender, the letting go.
1. We saved the Lyric! I absolutely love the design for the t-shirts they made for those who contributed. “Let There Be Light”? Perfect.
We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives in which we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness, but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace—anxiety, doubt, disappointment—these are definitely less. ~Dalai Lama
To celebrate, I am going to see a movie there this Thursday with some friends. From the trailer and a few reviews I’ve heard from people I trust, it is going to break my heart.
2. Oh, Mr. Brilliant by Patti Digh. I think I mentioned last week that I was super sad that Patti had just found out her husband had cancer. This post tells a little bit more of their story, ending with a way you can help them. This is further proof of how strange life is, beautiful and brutal.
3. A Weekend of Pies on Soule Mama. You don’t even have to read this post, just look at the pictures and be prepared to drool, (and yes, this list just moved directly from a post about cancer to one about pie, life is like that).
4. Aimee Mann is coming to Colorado! Okay, so maybe Eric is the only reader that really cares about that. We love her, (I have ever since her Til Tuesday days), see her every time she comes to Colorado, so I was really excited when she announced tour dates this morning and I was able to get tickets. Her new album is releasing September 18th, but you can preorder it now.
You want to be a focused, highly skilled, freak version of yourself.
You want to dig down deep to find that unique part, that weird and maybe slightly psychotic part, that beautiful raw fucked-up part, that you spent a lifetime learning to hide in the first place.
13. Piecing Together Connie’s Sky from Judy Clement Wall on her blog A Human Thing. Yes, I am slightly biased here: Judy talks about a post I wrote, and I adore her…but that doesn’t change the fact that this is real and true and important.
14. And to close, a picture of Blue, a most adorable puppy that’s up for adoption at Animal House. That face! *sigh* And I am a sucker for a dog named Blue.
The past four hours weren’t just about book writing, but also about book making and book reading and book research. I showed up, kept my heart open, and trusted my innate wisdom about where to focus my attention, where to put my hands, where to place my heart.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 