Writing your way Home-class 1

1.Welcome:introduce myself.We will be learning and teaching each other.



2.We are now going to write our memoirs...using 6 words...like haiku but not in that format....just 6 words...that tells who you are...share.


3.Encourage journalling.....journalling examples.



4..Wrie down this quote..."Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant,there is no such thing.Making your unknown known is the important thing."



Who would like to volunteer to find out something interesting about the person who said that and print one of their art pieces that speak to you? Bring next week.



3.Some of this and that.

No writing police

You can write fact or fiction.

Confidentiality

Pass rule...you can pass from sharing at anytime.

There is no grammar, spelling or punctuation police.We will not focus on grammar or spelling;just ideas and dreams.

There is no "wrong" because these are your stories.How can it not be glorious and courageous ?

Let it rip.Write for yourself and no one else.


Don't censor.



4.Feedback is always just the positive.Take notes.What did you like?

Any questions ?

5.2nd Quote:"The spirit of an object, if you sit long enough, will finally sneak through the back door and grab you."Andrew Wyeth.Who would like to volunteer to bring in a picture of a Wyeth painting and share with the class?



6.3rd quote"Any object, a table,  suitcase, statue can serve as the starting point, the seed of a story, just like the famous mustard seed of faith".Diane Schoemperlen."Our Lady of the Lost and Found"

7.Look at the objects before you.Take your time to pick one that has a story to tell through you.Then write that story.20-30 minutes.

Share with class.Class take notes if you wish and share any thoughts.

7.Homework: In detail, tell about one of the best days of your life.Bring to class next week and share.

Lorraine will facilitate next week's session.


















-

Anna....

Today's sermon was about the mustard seed and how a small bit of faith can grow into something beautiful; as a small seed can become a huge bush that shades birds from the sun..On this hot Georgia day, that resonated.

 But I see a bigger picture; that a small offering of love can bring bushels and cartons of the same.And how a small girl can grow into a lovely young woman.

It was over 12 years ago that I paid a visit to a person newly coming to the Catholic Church.She was a gentle, sweet grandma who seemed to relish every moment of class.She came in between chemotherapy sessions.Never complaining, she smiled and soon we became friends.Thus, the invitation to visit her at home. The day of that brief visit, I met her small granddaughter, Anna.She may have been 5 years old and although shy, she had an engaging smile just like her grandma.Brown hair and slight, we shared few words yet, I recall being so glad to meet her.

Her Grandmother, Linda, passed away a few months after she was baptized into the Lord.This is what I believe; she left me Anna as a gift. Each Sunday, I see Anna and her little sister, Emma, and they shower me with love.Anna is going off to college soon, and one day she will probably move on but for now, she shows me Christ.I receive Him in the Eucharist and then again from her.This is what I felt this morning.This is what Church means : this is the Body of Christ.This is the gift we were left.

so simple and imperfect...

What spirit painted this?The edges chewed, so imperfect.Yet, could anything be more perfect?The colors.

I carried a daisy bouquet on my wedding day.An orchid girl, I was not.The daisies were cousins of the ones growing wild in the valley near the West Kill, that stream I so loved in New York."He loves me, he loves me not."Daisy chains and a simple girl.

Growing up, I strove to be perfect, to not rock the already chaotic boat that we four sailed on.I still think there is some of that but today a friend came and the house was in a bit of disarry and that was O.K.My leaves have been chewed on.

Georgia O'Keefe, an artist whose mind took in the yellow hickory leaves with the daisy, couldn't say what she saw in any other way but with her hands.In the still desert air that called her West to New Mexico;in its bare simplicity, she bloomed with the hickory.

"This was a land of vast spaces and long silences, a desert land of red bluffs and brilliant flowering cactus.The hot sun poured down .This land belonged to the very old Gods.They came on summer evenings, unseen, to rest their eyes on the milky opal and smoky blue of the desert.For this was a land of enchantment where Gods walked in the cool of the evening."   Marian Russell, "Along the Santa Fe Trail."

I think someday, I'll hitch my paint horse to the front of a canvas wagon and plod along the old Santa Fre trail.I'll don some silver earrings and a buckskin skirt and settle among the rocks warmed by the setting sun.

what's in your bag?

The clouds that left devastation in Texas, have rolled into sweet Georgia and we lost power for three days straight.The air is cool, however, and no flooding here.

Monday is "run around chores" day and that included a trip to the library to pick up a book I put on hold days ago.The man at the desk retrieved my book and I drifted over to the sale desk to see if there was anything new.In the background, I heard a loud voice struggling to read and saw a young man with a volunteer.

From where I stood, I could see he was tall with sandy colored hair, stubble on his chin and an indentation on the side of his head.His reading skill evidenced a mental challenge.The woman volunteer across from him had such patience and her kind smile suggested she didn't mind the slowness with which he read.

I turned to look at the books and then I saw the man in front of me.He asked if I worked there and then turned to his helper and said:"I am just talking to this beautiful...(wait for it)...old lady."He should have stopped, but I had to laugh and I did.This is what I am, an old lady who is in her seventh decade.

How did this happen ?I can remember being 11, with skinny legs and protruding front teeth and wanting to be a teenager.Would that have cured what ailed?

The restaurant was upscale, on the Hudson River in Kingston, NY.White table cloths, flickering candles and subdued music.I was 14 years old and enjoying the treat when I noticed a table near-by.A composed young woman in her twenties with gorgeous auburn hair, a green suit and a bright white smile, sat among a group of men who were so important looking, in their dark business suits.They seem to hang on every word she spoke.I wanted to be her.She eventually saw me looking and, reading my mind, smiled as if to say:"It's not as wonderful as you think." I smiled back.

I look back now from my 70s perch and wouldn't change anything now or then.This old lady is content with what makes up her life.That brown bag of life's fabric is colored, bright and pastel, shiny, has streamers of gold and silver, sequins, smooth pink silk and all those pieces of rough, scratchy burlap.The secret, which took me a long time to know, is to be grateful for all of it.If God is in charge and He is, every second had and has eternal value.

And so today, I met a man that I will give a strong name;Mark. Mark shook my hand before I left the library and as I drove away I realized this:Mark has some lovely fabric in his bag:I see some solid blue denim, warm yellow wool and bright red ribbon.Honesty, friendliness and love.

the relationship still exists..

In the past week and a half, my husband and I have gone to four funerals and missed one sitting in an airport.April, what's going on ?All but one of the deceased were younger than me.All were loved and leave a big hole in family and church.But as with all things, there were blessings.

 The beautiful wife of my daughter's first boyfriend came to me at his Mother's funeral and quietly said, "You have no idea how my husband needed to be with your family during those high school years."She appreciated us providing some stability in that time for a lost teen.I never knew and was blessed by her tearful sharing.Connecting with him and other cross country friends from thirty years ago was a true gift and we are planning a reunion.

Today, the Mass was for a twenty-five year old who died in a construction accident.The pain in the church was palpable.At the end of the homily, the priest shared from a book on grief these thoughts:"the people you love are never cut off from you.You will always be connected and it is up to you to keep that connection."At the end the priest said, "You are still connected to your son.That will never be broken." What comfort to believe that. I hung on each word because I had never heard this spoken before although this has been my experience.

Several years ago, I was on a retreat when this assignment was given: name three things that keep you from being a completely open channel for God's love.Immediately, without thought, I wrote: "That I didn't love my family enough;didn't make their lives better, happier with my love."I was shocked at what I wrote and pondered it for a long time.It was true, but I only treated them the way I was treated and I never deliberately withheld love, just never thought much about it. This obviously was not good enough, I now knew.The challenge lay before me: what to do? Slowly, quietly and in my own time, I told each one of the three deceased members that I was sorry for the missed opportunity to make them happy with loving actions.

  I felt forgiven.

 Loved ones who have left this earth are still with us. How to connect? You can ask for help and then do it.

a wicker basket of blouses..

Memory is a large wicker basket, tan, shining in the sun, filled with clean startlingly white blouses scented by the wind.You pull one out ,shake it and hold it to your chest and remember.This happened today after a lovely cyber friend posted a picture of a group of women dancing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s.

One day settles on my mind as if I drove home yesterday from Jones Beach on Long Island.

It was early September in 1961and my high school friends and I all have scarves around our heads in this black and white picture of mine, so it must have been a blowy day.The beach was empty, so perhaps it was a during the week.I know that the sea ,the glorious Atlantic, felt warm on our legs after the months of summer sun.

Did we have a radio or did we just dance to tunes we sang out at the top of our lungs?How to describe the joy,the freedom we felt, the lifting laughter that seemed to have no end.These girls of sun and beach are lost to me now.One went into the convent, much to our dismay, and died young.Maureen, who was kind and true.Carol, dark hair and dark eyes, very smart, could not be found by the 50th reunion committee a few years ago although she is thought to live in Maryland.I had to try to find her as well.Oh, to hear that voice again.I think of her incredible humor:the lift of her eyebrow could send us into uncontrollable laughter. Blonde athletic Mary Lou passed away from breast cancer a few years back.She was so angry at that disease that as a radiologist she had found in so many scans.The last was my beautiful, blonde best friend Patti.She is alive, well and retired in Texas.We speak occasionally on the phone and always end the conversation in tears.I'm not sure why.

This memory has no end.Soon I will pass it on to a new friend who I have never met but who shared a picture that turned over the basket.She would have fit in nicely on that day, that beach.

the desert, and a fatal mistake

I can't get it out of my thoughts.It is the Grape Hill Trail that haunts me.One of the easiest paths in the park.That day, we walked on it for a mile up to the balancing rock.This was Big Bend National Park in Texas;it was winter and even then, the sunny part of the walk, which was most of it, was hot.

Texas is not Georgia.The sun is brilliant and in the park, the only shade available is in very early morning or late afternoon when the rocks block the sun.Mid-day is sun.Period.And sand.

I knew the story of the man from New York who had perished here in May of 2004 but to walk and see the exact spot where he made his fatal mistake was jarring.I was with my son who knows this park, my husband and plenty of water when we started out on this flat, interesting trail.Then we got to a place of narrow winding rocks going up and before long I was on my hands and knees.That's when I fore swore going any further and plopped down and waited for their return.Fear of heights is a burdensome thing but also perhaps a warning from my psyche that a fall from here at my age would be dreadful in many ways.

I was in the shade of the monumental rocks and not unhappy to wait and let the breeze blow on my cheeks and look at the magnificence all around.And, it is just that.Soon, they were back, and with helping hands, I got back to level ground.The sun was falling behind the rocks as we walked so there was more shade and that is when we came across what looked like another path.

On that May day,when the 42 year old lawyer from New York hiked solo up  the rocks, the temperature was over 100 degrees.A man who passed him coming down the trail said that he observed no water and a very red face as he said hello.The lawyer had reached the top and mentioned it was worth the climb.When the second man came back down, he observed only one other car in the small lot at the head of the trail and suspecting it belonged to that red faced man, wondered where he had gone.There was only one path to the cars.

I saw the spot where he kept going, down a small sandy wash, a dry stream bed, that looked just like the trail.He kept walking and, as this wash went down, he didn't see the cars above him to the left.His car, his escape.He kept on and rescuers found him the next day, two miles down the wash, face down, swollen.They have since put a small string of rocks to block that wash from being mistaken for the trail.

I stood for a minute at that small group of rocks thinking of the man who succumbed to the heat of the desert so rapidly that day.He was coherent when he passed the other walker and a mile later when he crossed a road which had not been on the path when he went in, he kept going which tells us that, by then, his thought process was impaired.His small journal, found at his side, hurt me when I read it:"9:40 started trail to balance rock.""think I'll be back by ten?""11:00 no car,go path, mtn nearby.""should be back by 11:45.no problem.""Call for help."" rest in shade".The last entry simply said:"12:40".

I loved Big Bend and the wide open spaces of Texas.The fact that this land is so wild and untamed and we don't "own" it.But, Douglas Pappas from New York haunts me.And teaches me.