Volume V, Issue 27 July 4, 2016 Word of the Week: favorable Dear ,
I hope you've had a
fabulous Fourth of July! I am still basking in the joy of sharing my beloved Chautauqua with my dear friends Dede Mitchell and Vivé Griffith last week.
This
beautiful place filled with music, educational opportunities, conversations of the highest order, beauty, and camaraderie is, to quote Vivé, "made for people like us." In one short week, we heard Geraldine Brooks, Ann Patchett, Alan and Arlene Alda, Bishop Spong, Roger Rosenblatt speak, took in the ballet (Charlotte's own ballet company, which
summers here), the symphony, and several sunsets over the lake. But the best of the best was hearing Father Gregory Boyle speak each day at "Morning Worship."
You'll meet "G-dog," as his "homies" call him, below. One of the many things he told us is that he sees his job as "comforting the afflicted and
afflicting the comfortable." I believe we are all both, by the way. And to help us all to see that we are wholly favorable and loved just as we are. He brought most of us listening to tears, and to great bouts of laughter each day.
Upcoming WordPlay DELICIOUS MEMORIES
FREE! Food not only nurtures and sustains us, it’s a rich source of metaphor and memory! We’ll explore our connections with food as we write of when, where, what, with whom, how — and even why — we ate! You can use your food writings to create a family cookbook, individual essays, stories, or poems, scenes in fiction or memoir, a food blog, etc. —
or just for your own pleasure.
WHERE: Main Library. 310 North Tryon St. Charlotte, NC 28202
WHEN: July 19th, 2015, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
* A light dinner will be provided from 5:30 – 6:00 pm for anyone
registered for this program.
COST: Free!
TO REGISTER: To register online, please click here.
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WRITING CLASSES AT CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
Reap the benefits writing can provide—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—in this class in which
you'll learn and practice whole brain methods for using writing as a transformative process as well as a creative one. These tools can be used to create essays, poems, memoir, fiction and/or nonfiction. For beginners and seasoned writers.
Course No: | 1705 |
| When: | Tuesday, July 5th – Friday, July 8th, 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. |
| Location: | Turner, 104, Chautauqua Institution |
| Cost: | $80.00 plus $22 for optional textbook (payable to instructor) |
Ever wondered what makes a poem a poem? Or wished your writing had more finesse? This class that explores "poetic ingredients" in the areas of content, sound, and form will increase your expertise—in poetry and prose. Learn how to identify and use these ingredients, as well as how poems you love can inspire and instruct you. All levels
welcome.
Course No: | 1706 |
| When: | Monday, July 11th – Thursday, July 14th, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. |
| Where: | Hultquist, 201A, Chautauqua Institution |
| Cost: | $80.00 plus $22 for optional textbook (payable to instructor) |
Buying Passes Your class registration will admit you to our grounds for the duration of your class. You do not need an additional gate pass unless you
plan to come early or stay late. There is a charge for parking.
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SUMMER WRITING RETREAT
(Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing / Tools for a Writing Life)
Renew and delight yourself. The Summer Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you’ll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home
new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities. $97 includes lunch and supplies.
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, August 6th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. TO REGISTER: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. To pay online, please click this link to check out using
PayPal.
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(Expanding Our Creativity; Learning New Tools for Our Writing and Our Lives; Creating New Writing)
Discover your own genius as you learn to apply seven fascinating approaches of Leonardo da Vinci to your writing. These techniques enliven non-fiction, poetry and fiction. Expect fun, inspiration and writing galore in your preferred genre, with opportunities to share your work.
$630 for one week-long session (lodging and meals are additional – options can be found on the Folk School website). WHERE: John Campbell Folk School, 1 Folk School Road, Brasstown, NC 28902
WHEN: Sunday, August 7 – Saturday August 13, 2016.
TO REGISTER: To register, please click this John Campbell Folk School link to register directly from them.
More WordPlay opportunities here. Featured Writer
Father Gregory Boyle The Rev. Gregory J. Boyle, S.J., is the founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to over 10,000 men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.
Father Boyle
is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, which was named one of the Best Books of 2010 by Publishers Weekly and received the PEN Center USA 2011 Creative Nonfiction Award.
Father Boyle is the subject of Academy Award winner Freida Lee Mock’s 2012 documentary, G-Dog. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In
2014, the White House named him a Champion of Change. He was named 2016 Humanitarian of the Year award by the James Beard Foundation, the national culinary-arts organization.
Featured Writing
An Excerpt from
by
Father Gregory Boyle
I hate the Fourth of July. In my barrio, it lasts two whole months.
All of June and all of July. The place is Beirut for sixty days—fireworks, firecrackers, sticks of dynamite. Endless and annoying. On one Tuesday morning, during this season, I’m in my office, and suddenly there is the rat-a-tat-tat of successive firecrackers whose source seems to be the bathroom off the kitchen area. The din is astounding, and, of course, I’m madder’n hell. By the time I get there, a homegirl, Candy, is a banshee, screaming in the máscara of the alleged culprit,
Danny.
“How dare you disrespect G’s office like that?”
“Who are you to tell me something?” he roars back. At nineteen years old, he’s
a runt half Candy’s size, but he’s certainly not going to “let himself.” I can smell the sulfur of the firecrackers wafting out of the bathroom as I peel these two apart and lead Danny out to the parking lot.
Normally, I’d want to throttle this kid and give him, as they say, “What for.” I manage something I rarely
can. I morph into Mother Teresa and Gandhi.
“How ya doin?” I gently speak to Danny, on the hot asphalt of the parking lot.
“I
DIDN’T DID IT!” Danny gives me both barrels, in perfect homie grammar. “I DIDN’T . . . DID IT!”
“I know,” I say, in full agere contra mode, going against every grain in my being. “I know, I know. But I’m worried about ya,” I say, as quiet as I can be. “How ya doin?”
“Okay.”
“Did you eat anything today?”
“No.”
I give him five dollars.
“Why don’t you go across the street to Jim’s and get something to eat.”
Danny starts to walk away and mumbles loud enough to be heard, “Even though you don’t believe me.” I call him back.
“Danny, if you tell me you didn’t do it, mijo, then . . . that’s all I need.”
Danny stands in the hot July sun and begins to weep. Cornered by shame and disgrace, he acquiesces to
a vastness not mine.
Author and psychiatrist James Gilligan writes that the self cannot survive without love, and the self, starved of love, dies. The absence of self-love is shame, “just as cold as the absence of warmth.” Disgrace obscuring the sun.
Guilt, of course, is feeling bad about one’s actions, but shame is feeling bad about oneself. Failure, embarrassment, weakness, overwhelming worthlessness, and feeling disgracefully “less than”—all permeating the marrow of the soul.
Mother Teresa told a
roomful of lepers once how love by God they were and a “gift to the rest of us.” Interrupting her, an old leper raises his hand, and she calls on him. “Could you please repeat that again? It did me good. So, would you mind . . . just saying it again.”
Franciscan Richard Rohr writes that “the Lord comes to us
disguised as ourselves.”
We’ve come to believe that we grow into this. The only thing we know about Jesus growing up is that he “grew in age, wisdom and favor with God.” But do we really grow in favor with God? Did Jesus become increasingly more favorable to God, or did he just discover, over time, that he was
wholly favorable?
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and
potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "favorable."
PROMPT:
Write about an encounter between two people in which at least one of them experienced being "wholly favorable" and fully loved.
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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