Coming up: "Writing as a Spiritual Practice"

Well, yikes. A couple of days ago I grabbed one of the last available spots for a weekend workshop March 2-4 at the Iowa Writers' House in Iowa City, "Writing as a Spiritual Practice." I'd been seeing ads and felt drawn towards it but had thought I might be traveling somewhere; I haven't made plans to do so, though, and when I saw the announcement that there were a couple of spots left I decided to leap.

The description of the workshop attracts me:  

Writing is inherently lonely, as anyone who’s sat staring at a page (or a computer screen) waiting for inspiration can corroborate. But that solitude also has great spiritual potential. In this course, we’ll explore ways to stay spiritually centered as a writer, regardless of your subject matter. You’ll be asked to share a piece of writing that’s on a spiritual topic or relates in some way to your spiritual path. During the weekend we’ll try out some mindfulness techniques that can prepare us for writing and share stories about how the creative process is intertwined with questions of meaning and purpose. You don’t have to be a member of a faith community to participate—all seekers are welcome.

I'm pretty nervous about a full weekend surrounded by people I will think of as "real writers." And I am not without ambivalence about spiritual practice and talking about writing publicly in those terms, since I am not "practicing" anything outwardly in recent years, although I certainly don't resist diving deep into my psyche and profound questions of meaning. I'm worried I will feel like a faker in multiple different ways. But I do regard my project as deeply spiritual, both in terms of its obvious historical subject matter, its engagement with my own history of religious involvement and how that influenced what I chose to study, and how it records my attempt to grapple with the deepest truths in my own life. I find I am often thinking about and sometimes mentioning "the sacred" in what I am writing, though I don't mean it in a theistic or doctrinaire sense, and I'm not always sure I can define how I mean it. Deep down I do think I belong in whatever will happen in that workshop. I am writing about conversion, and courage, and martyrdom, and devotion, and loss, and female life journeys, and the whole question of what one chooses to live for and to love in extreme situations. And I am a published writer, right? Even if only an academic one.

And yes, when I am engaged in working on this project, it does feel like spiritual practice of some kind -- to write creatively/personally is a spiritual reclamation. I was trying to draft something while I was in Mexico about how I silence myself and listen to the language coming through me in order to write, and how this feels like it has a connection to silent worship and the flow of language in 17th-century Quaker ministry and discourse. All writing feels that way to me to some degree, when it feels authentic at all. There is a rhythm I hear that is both lyrical and a kind of prophetic chant. But clearly I am choosing to write in a way that unleashes this flow in a freedom is directly spiritual for me, rather than constraining that dimension within writing that is "appropriate" and "professional."

No, I don't know much about the leader, beyond what I've read on her website. That she's a woman makes me more interested in going. Female mentors are such a prominent theme in my own life as sacred story.

So we'll see what happens. So grateful that a greyhound friend in Coralville is willing to dog-sit for me during the sessions, and then I'll take Cocoa to a dog-friendly motel for the overnights (not optimal for socializing with workshop participants if that happens, and I do wonder eagerly about the "kindred spirits" I might be able to meet, but you do what you have to, especially with short notice).

I am waiting for more information about the workshop and how to prepare for it, but the description says we will be asked to share a piece of writing. So of course I am thinking about what to share out of the mass of roughly-drafted material I am accumulating. My thought so far is that I will share this piece from the first section, as I think it pulls together various dimensions in an inception moment that won't require too much advance explaining -- I think I can establish the essential context in a sentence or two.  It talks about the moment when Mary Dyer followed Anne Hutchinson out of the church upon Anne's excommunication, which is when attention was drawn to Mary being "the woman who had the monster." This is also the moment which, when it first registered on me in the 1990s, began my particular interest in Mary Dyer.  So it is kind of a balance point between the "other" and "self" material in the project.

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As I realize more about what it is doing, I am getting quite excited about the Iowa Writers' House as a resource. It was only founded in 2014, out of the recognition that for all Iowa City's prominence as a place for creative writing, there really weren't many opportunities for people not connected with the official MFA Writers' Workshop. So the founder took it upon herself to create a center for writing community.

It makes me think more about Iowa City as I place I might want to move if I change my life from what it has been -- I am drawn towards places with landscapes that are more exciting to me, like South Dakota, but then I reflect on my friends in and around eastern Iowa, my deep love for old houses which are plentiful there, the existence of a queer community, access to greyhound people and events, and then the idea that if I want to become more of a writer there might be opportunities there that otherwise would be mostly limited to larger cities (and I don't want to live in a big city, I'm pretty sure, even if it would increase my social opportunities). No answers yet, but I do think about this place issue almost daily.

Well, even while I am here in Waterloo, I'm still excited that this new resource exists and glad I'm diving in quickly to experience something there. Of all their winter and spring workshops I have been reading notices for, this feels like the one most suited to me at this stage. I have already dipped a toe into the Writers' Rooms, subcommunities that the Writer's House set up, and hope to explore further.

My second week in Mexico

My second week in Ajijic went well on the whole, although the weather was not great and I got a cold myself the last couple of days. I moved to a new place, a guesthouse/AirBnB called Casa Aurora, and I loved the view from my bedroom and the central garden (although it was too cold to sit out there much, and there was no indoors shared space at all).

View of the mountain from Casa Aurora

Garden/courtyard of Casa Aurora. Steps to a communal kitchen are off to the right.

I did a reasonable amount of writing -- maybe not as much as I hoped. During this trip I've definitely written myself down a few rabbit holes into things that aren't going to work, but I guess that's part of the process -- that not everything I write with the intention of it being in the book will end up there. This whole process is so exploratory, figuring out what I want to say and how to say it. I am beginning to realize that some parts (especially memoir ones) need to be fleshed out more than I had planned, and some other parts (especially more abstract ones) end up sounding heavy and pretentious and probably need to be left out or scaled back. I never felt able to focus on research-y, historical material during my trip, but I'm giving myself a pass on that.

I had been very solitary the first week, and seemed to want it that way. I went into a very deep and rather painful emotional place, but I began to emerge in the second week -- not that I felt I left what I had been brooding on behind, but rather that I had gone as far as I could in my grasp of it for the time and could now (mostly) let it rest for the moment. I met up with two women who live there this week and enjoyed getting to know them. And I participated in two writers' groups, which was exciting not only as something to do in Mexico, but these were the first such groups I've been in for a long time. So it was the experience of feeling like I was publicly identifying as a "writer" and being accepted in that identity. 

I really enjoyed participating in the Lake Chapala Society's "write from a prompt" group (I wish I could have gone to it both weeks, but I was sick on the day it met first). This group follows what is apparently the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. A prompt is given, everyone writes in silence for 45 minutes, and then everyone in turn reads their piece and people comment supportively but do not critique. The prompt led me to write a piece about coming to Iowa after the trauma I went through in my first job in New Jersey, which might in fact go in the book. People seemed to like it, which was encouraging. I had coffee with some of the members afterwards, and found myself describing the whole project -- that people seemed truly taken with the few things I told them about Mary Dyer was also heartening to me. Then the next day, I attended the Lake Chapala Writer's Group (this might not be the precise name) which meets the first and third Fridays of the month in the beautiful garden of La Nueva Posada, where I had previously eaten twice. For this, people sign up to read in advance and then are critiqued by the audience. I was struck that people offered real critique, although I thought it was hard to do so after just hearing a piece and not reading it. Here I am sitting with some of the people I had gotten to know the day before.

Showing only part of the large gathering of folks for the twice-monthly writers' group

The weather was quite cold for most of the week, so I felt chilly all the time. It got nicer the last couple of days and I was able to get some great scenes. The first is from when I climbed partway up the mountain behind Ajijic -- not the smartest thing to do alone as the paths are tricky, but I wanted a chance to see the view.

View of part of Ajijic Village and the lake

On the last evening I watched the sunset with Susa Silvermarie (whom I had learned about through finding her blog posts on the wall mural I did my previous post on, and emailed), and we celebrated Imbolc/Candlemas, a holiday I had not been familiar with but found resonant with the stage I am in and what I was experiencing throughout the trip. On the last afternoon, sitting on the malecon by the lake, I started journaling which led into writing a poem which touched Lake Michigan (intense past memories), Lake Chapala (what I was looking at in the present), and the intersection of all these themes that had characterized my stay. Okay, I don't think it's a good poem, but given that I've barely written any poetry in years, it was exciting to be moved in that direction. And I'm not completely sure if my standards for a "good poem," left over from graduate school, might not be too limiting and academic. Something to explore more in the future....

Sunset over Lake Chapala

Ajijic was so fully of amazing colors and art everywhere you look. It was quite a shock to come back to Iowa and to a snowstorm. Now I look outside and everything is white and some tone of brown or the dullest dark green. Still sorting out what I feel. While I was in Ajijic, I felt clearly that my present life in Iowa is not enough for me, not adequate emotional sustenance, and that I am allowed to want more in my life. But being home again, I appreciate the familiarity of culture and place, and even the emptiness. Is it the beauty of a different environment I want, or is more connection and community what is more important? And where would I best find those things? A lot to think about in the months and years ahead.

Random wall art, near the malecon