“After all, conventional wisdom recommends the divided life as the safe and sane way to go: ‘Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.’ ‘Don’t make a federal case out of it.’ ‘Don’t show them the whites of your eyes.’ These are all clichéd ways we tell each other to keep personal truth apart from public life, lest we make ourselves vulnerable in the rough-and-tumble realm.” –Parker J Palmer, Let Your Life Speak Writing is a true vocation for me. A benefit of being a writer is that I find clues to my own true nature’s voice in my writing. My … Continue reading
Tag Archives: David Whyte
Everything Is Waiting For You
MY QUINTESSENTIAL LESSON FOR MY WRITING STUDENTS IS THIS: STAY IN THE CONVERSATION. FROM THIS ADAGE I OFFER ESSENTIAL WRITING PROMPTS AND EXPLORATIONS TO HELP WRITERS STAY IN THE CONVERSATION WITH THEIR SUBJECT AND THEME. Presently a subject I am writng about is spiritual teachers and the theme is around what makes a good teacher. I carried this question as I went on my morning walk. On several walks this summer I noticed how a Blue Bunting sat on the top branch of a dead tree. I recalled how a friend of mine mentioned how it seemed that birds liked to occupy dead trees. From here i got … Continue reading
Last Words: Last Writes
First, let me invite you to attend this year’s final (and free) Writers’ Retreat this coming Monday October 12th. As many of you know, I am addicted to quotes. So for today’s World Into Word blog, I share some with you . . . “I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want … Continue reading
What To Remember When Writing
What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening into the new day which closes the moment you begin your plans. What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to … Continue reading
Writer’s Bliss
“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. –Joseph Campbell It takes discipline to follow our bliss. Bliss is a result of having taken some heart-directed action. Bliss is not something some are born with and others are not. Following your bliss gives lasting results of fulfillment, connection and … Continue reading
How My Blind Dog Sees
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. –Marcel Proust Recently I had a conversation with a mentor of mine; we discussed the possibility of working together on a project. I took this to be a great compliment and, after the conversation, I was flooded with a sense of gratitude that was so strong, it brought tears to my eyes. Had his generosity elicited this response? Or was it because I knew that collaboration with him could open myriad of inner and outer doors for me? I wasn’t sure. The next day … Continue reading
How to Be Who You Already Are
Life is a journey of discovery and belonging. It is about making meaning from our experiences for ourselves while allowing the meaning we have made to change. The active life is about being able to create and discover meaning in an ongoing way and not hold on to one meaning or we may miss an opportunity at hand. As Joseph Campbell put it, “If we are hanging on to the form now, we are not going to have the form next.” When we review our life and recall times that we experienced an awakening or an epiphany (either through someone else’s teachings … Continue reading