Silence can mentor.
The wilderness is loud with it.
I’m working on another guest blog, wherein I’ll reveal ways blogging itself has helped me write. Last night, in bed early even for me after a day out and away, I pondered the teacherly ways of silence.
Three years ago I published my first posts to thrumming quiet. Many times I decided, because no one read my words, I should quit. But I continued. The amazing words of others inspired me. In a language-fed universe, I felt I belonged. And, some days, people mentioned they were reading my stuff. The silence fell away in those moments, and all felt golden, like the serenity at a trail’s end where a distant waterfall hugs the mountain’s knee.
I often still flounder about in a wilderness inside myself. But writers’ stories on my shelf this summer encourage me. One is by Frank McCourt, who died in July at 79. He saw his first book, Angela’s Ashes, published when he was 65. Before this, he taught in public high schools. I’m nearly done reading his third memoir, Teacher Man, in which McCourt describes flailing about inside fairly often. Yet his wilderness was leading him to give his best.
Yesterday reminded me there’s beauty amid toil, heat, buzzing flies, and mucky-bottomed lakes. In fact, the loveliness surmounts those annoyances with ease. It’s why, long as I can, I’ll return for more.
Tell me, if you’d like, about the amazing and beautiful spaces always calling, challenging you to give your best.
It would have been a shame if you’d stopped blogging. :( I’m glad you didn’t.
I’ve finally given in to my passion for old churches. Maybe I’ll even get a new camera. But…I think, at least one a month, perhaps two. There are a lot of beautiful churches all over this state, and reason to visit them all. :)
Hi, Deanna!
Ferns are my favorite plant… I don’t see any in the photos, but I imagine they might live in such forests?
I recently heard some brain guy on the radio talking about how when we imagine things, we just imagine the inessentials, we don’t waste brain energy imaging the details.
True enough in everyday imaging, but it struck me that one thing artists of all kinds do is exactly that: imagine the details. And then, hopefully, we help one another see them too, so life’s not just a blur out a train window.
For instance, in your flash fiction about the brother visiting the dying sister, I noticed that the bird that sings the hymn in the end is a sparrow. That struck me as metaphorically apt, but I wondered—do sparrows sing so sweetly?
Well, a few weeks later I was walking around the lake and heard the sweetest birdsong. I stopped to look, and sure enough, it was a sparrow. I connected the two (another thing the brain does) with a lot of pleasure, due to you!
As for places that inspire me, I really love alleys! Where I grew up, we didn’t have them, but I’ve spent most of my adulthood in Mpls where alleys split almost every block –like secret rivers. Sometimes I’m walking down one and am aware that if I didn’t know where I was, I’d be lost. If you know what I mean.
Write on!
Jodi, thanks. I attended, let’s see, five churches in Washington over the years – no, make that seven, because there were two my dad preached at after I was married, and I at least visited those. But I guess they’re both torn down now, anyway, so you can’t really photograph their doors…
Fresca, that’s a beautiful comment. I hadn’t thought too closely about sparrows, but they’re a bird I know that I see and hear. And perhaps I had in the back of my mind “His eye is on the sparrow…” I like alleys, too. My grandma introduced me to many in this town when I drove her places. She knew all the best shortcuts and sort of taught me to be where she was…
Oh, yeah, and ferns. Lots of ferns on this side of the mountains. We were closer to the higher and drier areas Sunday, so probably there weren’t many along that trail.