Volume IIII, Issue 43 October 26, 2015 Dear ,
Yes, you read that right, Happy Hallow-ing, NOT Halloween. Why? Stay with me here, and I'll explain.
Historians tell us Halloween originated with an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which
marked the transition from summer to winter and was celebrated with bonfires and costumes to keep ghosts at bay.
And the leap from Samhain to Halloween? That began in the 8th Century, when Pope Gregory III designated November 1st as All Hallows' Day, a day of honoring saints and martyrs (also
known as All Saints' Day and Hallowmas) that incorporated a number of Samein's traditions. The next day, November 2nd, became known as All Souls' Day, and the evening before All Hallows' Day became known as All Hallows' Eve—until, that is, the Scots turned it into Hallow-e'en.
Most of us have heard of Mexico's related celebration of the Day of the Dead on November 1st and 2nd. And we all know how Halloween is celebrated today.But, much as I love pumpkins and Trick-or-treaters, I'm most taken with hallow itself, a Saxon word that means "to make holy." Did you know that, if you follow the word back a bit, hallow also shares the same root as the word health (from the Proto-Indo-European *kailo: "whole, uninjured, of good omen")?
Doesn't it follow, then, that Halloween—and All Hallows' Day—are opportunities for us to ponder the holy wholeness that imbues our nights and days, whole holiness that we are so often unaware of?
I've always felt there was something hallowed about this time of year, when the growing hours of darkness direct us inward and the leaves on the trees blaze a final glory before the bare skeletons of branches are revealed beneath.
And
hallowed days are to be savored, as several of my "Soul Sister" book club members and I did this past weekend at Roan Mountain.
And yet I had, if anything, more sticky notes marking pages than anyone else. (I am growing to love being wrong.) On the trail, in the cabin, on the porch, one or another of us would bring up an idea or a phrase, or grab our copy with one "You just have to hear this part" after
another.
I think this happened because O'Reilley's book is one that truly hallows our lives here and all they hold—animals, people, and objects alike. "The spiritual life—or the writing life—depends above all on fidelity to objects....," she writes in "Fidelity to Objects." How so? you may wonder. Well, check out the
full essay below.
It was very fitting that, this morning, Elizabeth sent us all an email with "one more note from the Barn" about O'Reilley's lovely "As If" which, as Elizabeth says, "ranges from the liminal and brushing against a parallel universe, to Galway Kinnell, to memoir, to two hundred sheep as spiritual directors. Then there is the deep peace in a barn full of
animals. Finally (p. 17), there is the sentence that reminds me of all of us: 'And to be whole, as many religious traditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world.'"
Hallow-ed be our growing into wholeness. And yours.
Love and light,
Maureen Upcoming WordPlay
COASTAL WRITING
RETREAT
NEXT WEEKEND, NOVEMBER 6TH - 8TH
one spot has opened up! (Writing—and more—as Renewal and Inspiration)
Sadly, a participant has had to cancel due to a family health emergency. If you would love to come away to the beach to write (and commune with other writers), this is your chance. You'll find
a description of the retreat here.
$418 (plus tax) includes
retreat, lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch. Details:
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, November 6 – Sunday, November 8, 2015* TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888.575.1001
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PROJECT BOOK: GET YOUR BOOK OUT OF YOU AND INTO THE WORLD
(Writing/Publishing Your Book-length Writing Project) A hands-on workshop for any writer who would like to write and/or publish a book and
1) doesn’t know how
2) doesn’t get around to it
3) feels
a) intimidated
b) confused
c) overwhelmed
d) uninspired
e) all of the above
You’ll gain clarity, confidence, direction, momentum, and working knowledge of the steps you need to take and the
procedures and pieces that are necessary (overview, synopsis, outline, and all that jazz), as well as an introduction to today’s publishing world (major publishers, university presses, small presses, self-publishing, e-publishing, and print-on-demand). We'll talk about marketing, too, whether you're an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert. $418 (plus tax) includes retreat, lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch.
WHERE: The
Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, November 13 – Sunday, November 15, 2015* TO REGISTER: Contact the Sunset Inn at 888.575.1001 or 910.575.1000 (if you would like to handpick your room, view your choices here first, then call). Because the Inn is holding rooms for you, our participants, they are blocked off as unavailable online.
Find out more here.
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(Writing as Renewal/Creating New Writing/
Tools for a Writing Life)
Renew and delight yourself. The Winter 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, December 19th, 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 with your credit card or PayPal, click here.
More WordPlay opportunities here. WordPlay Featured Writing
An excerpt from
The spiritual life—or the writing life—depends above all on fidelity to
objects.
I wrote that sentence and looked out the window. It has rained for three days and in today's sun the late roses strain, soggy as wet tissue, toward light coming just in time. Fidelity, as I was saying, to objects...
Whatever you eye falls on—for it
will fall on what you love—will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.
It doesn't matter how unprepossessing the world we look at, though it may seem to the lust of the eye that blue sky and late roses
are more amusing to look at than dead winter growth. This mistake I make over and over.
On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of
delusion, first ice. It made me remember skates and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it—one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze.
A flock of sparrows reels through the
air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that?
Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This
solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly—or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind.
In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and
recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas—saints—who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one—who annoys you
so—pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday.
Imagine a hectic procession of revelers—the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old friends of my
soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us.
It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the
path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral.
All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being. 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 "hallow."
PROMPT:
Write about a person, place, or thing that you or a character have "hallowed" because of your love of it—anything from a single encounter with an individual to many years in relationship with someone dear, a
single object in one's bedroom to a whole region of a country.
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 two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. 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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