Dear ,

I loved Mary Ellen Lough the moment I met her at the John Campbell Folk School, and, as I do with so many of my WordPlayers, I occasionally check out one of her Facebook posts when it shows up in my feed. (Mary Ellen is the dark-haired, sassy-looking writer to my right.)

When I came across this week's featured writing on Mary Ellen's page, I immediately messaged her to ask if I could share it with you. 

When you read it, you'll see why. I am such a sucker for synchronicity stories! And such a believer in the "leap and the net will appear" approach. (Well, actually, the “take ‘turtle steps’ and the net will appear” approach. I'm a bit terrified of heights.) 

courtesy of https://twitter.com/marthabeck

Over and over, when I, and many, many others I've discussed this with, have truly committed to achieving a dream, we've experienced some kind of aid ("material assistance"), often from an unforeseen source. As mountaineer William Hutchison Murray puts it in his book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, written in 1951:

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

And we've also experienced confirmation that we're on the right path, in surprising, sometimes humorous, occasionally stunning ways that seem nothing short of miraculous. I find Mary Ellen's story below a jaw-dropper, and I bet you will, too. 

The trick is, you have to be "moving" so that "Providence moves too" AND you have to be paying attention. I do my best to write down—and share—my synchronicities and confirmations, no matter how small they are, because that helps me to notice them. (For example, how cool is it that when I went looking for a way to let you know that I learned the term "turtle steps" from Life Coach Martha Beck, her VERY LATEST Twitter post popped up in my search?) For some reason, acknowledging these confirmations seems to make them multiply. 

May you and your dreams be confirmed abundantly this week, this month, this year, and always, !

Love and light,

Maureen

Upcoming WordPlay

WordPlay Success Story

​​​​​​ 

Meet Mary Ellen Lough

What Mary Ellen says about WordPlay

When I showed up at Maureen’s week-long class at the John C. Campbell Folk School, I was at a crossroads in my life. I had been teaching poetry therapy to veterans with PTSD off and on for a few years after going back to school for poetry as a single mother of five. But I didn’t have the faith that I could support myself off of it, and so I had been working in local food policy as well. I was exhausted and pulled in two directions. I had all but given up on poetry as a livelihood. I had spent the month before the class working on a memoir that I had hoped would give me some foothold back into writing, and it had renewed my sense of myself as a writer, but not the clarity I needed moving forward. And the manuscript itself seemed to quarantine me more deeply into a place of not-knowing.

Maureen encouraged me to take bold steps in the direction of my identity and calling as a writer. To believe in it as if it were true, and to make a plan and take solid steps in that direction. I felt like Maureen saw me deeply and offered witness to my dreams. When she said, “We are here to midwife each other’s dreams,” I felt a renewed courage to answer the call of my life as a writer and teacher, even if I couldn’t see how it would work out.

The actual day when Maureen gave us the prompt to write strong intentions for our lives as writers, and I wrote that "I am fully supported financially, emotionally, and spiritually to write my book," I received a phone call that I had been chosen as a Woman Leader of Resilience and was being sent a check for $1,000. Those kind of miracles and confirmations have been the path and road I have walked on ever since.

I made the leap of faith to give up my work in Food Policy, and began devoting myself to building my poetry career, and within 8 months was supporting myself solely off of poetry and teaching. I have truly felt the road rising to meet me, and my calling to bring poetry as healing work to the world, and feel supported in all I do. I am thankful to Maureen as a mentor and teacher, and feel her presence with me as part of my “host of saints and angels” as I continue forward in faith and creating a frontier creative life and identity.

​​​​​​​

Featured Writing

A story about miracles

(my favorite kind of story)

​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​by

Mary Ellen Lough

​​​​​​​

Last night. I was sitting in an empty converted Super 8 motel room that opens out in to a courtyard. 250 veterans experiencing homelessness live there and I was getting ready to teach my first poetry class at a large conference table in the room. I had spread out my poems. I was nervous, though I had been there a few times before and arrived early this week to have dinner with the men and begin building relationships. The last time I was there I met a young rapper who was very enthused about my class. He works in a sorting facility for secondhand goods.

Last night, he was maybe the fourth person to come in and I was distracted as I talking to someone. When I looked down, there was a huge blue book in front of my seat. It said World of Poetry Anthology on the cover, but it looked more like an encyclopedia. "I saw this and thought of you," the young veteran said. I was touched, and told him so. I assumed he found it while sorting, and was happy that poetry was on his mind enough for him to pull it out of the bins. I opened the book and recognized it as an outdated type of scam poetry publication book, where you can send in $25 and if your poem is chosen it becomes "published"—when in reality everyone who sends in the money gets published. Then you can pay more for a copy of the book.

As I opened the book, a long forgotten memory drifted back that when I was 12 years old, I had sent in a poem I had written about the Berlin Wall to just such a "contest." (My poem had won an essay contest on the Berlin Wall. I had read on the radio and been given a bona fide piece of the Berlin Wall wrapped in plastic like a fortune cookie. I felt kind of famous.) When the book had come, and I realized it was kind of a sham, I was disappointed, and forgot about it entirely. And maybe forgot about my dreams of a poetry career as well at that point.

Flash back to last night. A few more veterans had wandered in to the room. A thought occurred to me and I flipped to the back of the book, dated 1991, and went through the many names in alphabetical order. And there it was. Mary Ellen Lough. I opened the book to "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" - in one of the most obscure books EVER, which was just placed in front of me with no foreknowledge by a young veteran with whom I'd had a five-minute conversation in a converted Super-8 lobby for the homeless two weeks prior. My astonishment never left me, well after I read them the poem aloud to their cheering.

Boons? Omens? That the world knows me. That it has put me on this path? It wants me to be right here doing this work. During the class, the young man went between silence and abruptly getting up to pace the room. When I would check in with him, the other veterans would say, "He's just being quiet, and he is NEVER quiet—so you should be thankful and amazed that the poetry is working."

Before he left, he asked me, "Is this going to heal me? Can poetry heal me? Because I go to church and pray and pray and pray but nothing ever helps." I told him I didn't know the answer to his question, but I had been in a similar place, and at some point I switched my prayer from "help me help me help me" to "show me the way." And I come back to that over and over. It begins to create a space for possibility with our words. And that's also what poetry does. In reading and writing, sometimes we see or feel a way open that we didn't know was there before.

Towards the end of this past spring, when I was working three jobs, completely exhausted, and trying to get this poetry thing all the way up on its feet but too scared to quit one of my jobs—I came in to my waitressing job one morning and began taking the chairs down from the tables before the restaurant opened. On the first table, as I lifted a chair down, there was a small olive green plastic soldier figurine in a yoga pose—tree pose. AH. I said. Well played, clever world. And the small plastic meditating soldier now sits on my desk.

Note from Maureen: Mary Ellen ends this powerful story of being confirmed with these words: "So, I'm just going to leave this poem here. Because Bukowski knew" followed by the text of Charles Bukowski's poem "The Laughing Heart," which you can read here. I highly recommend it, as both poetry and an avenue of healing.

Again, you can sign up for Mary Ellen's online course, A Year of Poetry and Healing, is open for registration through September: 

https://poetryandhealing.pathwright.com/library/a-year-of-poetry-and-healing/72859/about/