Guided Writing Session Directory
Below, you will find recordings for each Guided Writing Session dating back to August 2021 when the sessions began.
Take a moment to review the Usage and Guidelines Folder below for information on how to post work and use the directory.
Use the Independent Entries Folder for submissions not specific to a monthly program or Guided Writing Session.
More About Guided Writing Sessions
Guided Writing Session: December 8
Thanks to all that joined the session.
Writing Prompt 1: Consider a current conflict through the perspective of wonder and awe. How does this change the conflict?
Writing Prompt 2: Are you aware of "blue flower moments" in your everyday life. If so, describe a recent example. If not, why might that be? Be specific.
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#2 Blue Flower Moment
Today, I sat in my windowed-chair, after morning meditation. I was blessed with a moment of benediction, One that reflects my understanding of a blue flower moment. A gift of grace. The sky was refreshingly more blue than mist, with clear shadows, outlined by sun. There was a crispness to the air that felt lively, rather than uncomfortable.
Like the clarity of those shadows, the moment contained a sense of a clear boundary, bridged yet not totally erased. An alternative to fusion, with its blurry/blended state. Equal, but separate, and yet connected.
In that moment, I was transformed through my memory to the cusp of age fifteen. I was sophomore, attending Catholic girl’s school, I was participating in my first weekend of silent retreat. I was at a church-owned estate, made of acres of cut-back flowers, with paths of use between. Dead flowers in the winter, framed by snow drifts. Their stems were rimmed by the shine of ice.
In the distance, the mystery of the woods beaconed. It was too cold outside to smell the pine that made it up. I’d checked earlier. That scent slumbered, awaiting a thaw deep enough to relax its roots. Tendrils that need release from clenching so their green odor can emerge. Much like my requirements for opening into fool.
I wasn’t cold, just tingled by the chilly air. I gazed out the sunroom windows. The room held the slightly bitter scent of dampened soil. The multi-windows were shelved with pots of ferns, amaryllis, and coleus, placed in line with the sun’s gazing eye. A cacophony of shape and color, pleasing in its way.
I liked how the retreat gave me an excuse for not talking. I sat in the sunshine with my knitting and my thoughts. My needles were metal, making tiny clicks when they came together, forming stitches. My soft yarn was a scream of red, winding across my lap as it shaped into scarf. I was new to knitting. It required attention and intention. It hadn’t yet become body-memory.
On a side-table sat my saucered cup of camomile tea. I recall its delicate interplay of sweet and pungent smells. It remained warm enough, its steam opened my nostrils. Breathing its odor in. I sighed, content, recalling camomile’s tiny flowers, doting the lawn that previous spring.
...The sky and air were like my current time, which I remain in, while experiencing this memory visit. I’m in two times at once. A sensation of being “now” tinges my descriptions, which speak of “then.” Yet I’m not confused, but interested...
I held a book I’d chosen, from the estate’s library, thick with books in its own version of forest. It was a marvel, that growth of knowing trees, transformed into inked, instructive paper. Monsignor Koenig had recommended the book’s author to me, Teilhard de Chardin. I’d liked Monsignor’s other recommendation, Gerard Manley Hopkins. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.” I’d memorized its glorious words. Words that linked me to the world, shining outside, both then and now.
Now I’d come upon these words by de Chardin: “Resonance to the All—the keynote of pure poetry and pure religion. Once again : what does this phenomenon, which is born with thought and grows with it, reveal if not a deep accord between two realities which seek each other ; the severed particle which trembles at the approach of ' the rest ' ?”
His writing resonated with me. It was the “all, “ made of the more-than-me, I responded to. It had a sense of “rest”, in both senses of the word. A resting and a remainder. Both verb and noun.
Sitting in the soft, pale-green velvet chair, with my legs curled under me, I felt held by the chair. As if it were a cosmic lap. I felt the aha! of a naming. Recognition.
It seemed to me that what de Chardin called the mystical body was another way to say “the hummy place”. The place I construed as constructed of all who’d ever been, or would be, in a whirl of being one, with no time breaks in-between. Massive yet not frightening.
“Hummy place” is my term for the sensation I’ve felt since I first looked inside, to memory. I was in the later stages of being three. It’s not only my first recollection, but also the state I pray will be my last. It feels so wonderful.
It’s a sense of being held as hum, both as “now” and something bigger. I didn’t know the words to speak of this experience as child. I liked to linger in its feeling. It was and is soothing.
The experience of reading “ The Phenomenon of Man” was a moment of true wonder. I felt a sense of company and of being understood. There were ways of speaking of this mystical way of being that others might understand. And there I was, reading words written by a man now dead. Yet they spoke to me as if he was now present. Another layer of amazement . I felt not-alone, even in my solitude.
The quietness of retreat silence, and its separation from my usually chattering peers, opened me into conversation with myself. Much like this other act of wonder, writing.
This memory is available to me, whenever I encounter sun-patches surrounded by a chill, or spot that shade of blue as sky. I can encounter it by accident. That used to be my only way into it.
This is because I’ve been caught in a cycle of my own reactivity. I’ve been unrooted in my intent, and unable to find my grounding . One thing that opening to wonder requires is that sense of connection to something larger, while also being anchored in awareness of me as self.
I can summon this blue flower moment at will if I pause and rest into the rest of me and everyone.
I offer it to you now as sharing. I hope it shimmers you.
Devon,
this writing is mystical. You sift through significant artifacts of your memory and they make up a whole memory triggered by the blue flower in the snow image. I sense a completeness, a wholeness, a holiness entering these thoughts. The sense of time is unbound allowing the reader to drift with you from sight and sound in specific moments. Thank you for taking the time to create and post this work for all to read.
Madeline Pinelli
Dear Devon,
What a beautiful piece of spiritual memoir, the discovery of Tielhard, the hummy place, watching the light come in the windows. I was there with you. THANK YOU. The writing is especially good ("the air that felt lively, rather than uncomfortable" "rimmed by the shine of ice"). Really good. : ) M
So beautiful, Devon. I love the term "hummy place."
Thank you for your supportive feedback. Writing this piece was its own reward- I got to revisit some meaningful memories. Thanks to Mark for such a wonderful prompt, and for giving us such a safe place to explore ourselves.