Volume IX, Issue 25
June 17, 2020
Word of the Week: questions
Dear ,
Are you a question-asker?
According to Michael J. Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, one attribute that contributed mightily to da Vinci's greatness was his insatiable curiosity. He generated a seemingly endless stream of questions in his pursuit of truth, his constant
seeking of solutions to problems, and his drive to make real the inventions that he was so good at imagining. In fact, one of his biographers said of him that "he wouldn't take yes for an answer."
Gelb posits that we all start out curious, but that most of us have our curiosity driven out of us by the demands and expectations of life, other people and even ourselves. Ever since first reading How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci in 1998, I've done my best
to actively engage my curiosity and improve my ability to ask questions that can make a difference, for myself and for others. (My being such a big fan of e.e. cummings, who said “Always the more beautiful answer who asks the more beautiful question,” has no doubt played a part in this tendency of mine, too.)
I've been thinking about questions this week as I work on my cookbook memoir, How She Fed Us, and today I'm sharing a piece-in-progress with you that explores some of the questions I have that I'll never be able to know the answers
to—because the only person who would know, my mother, is not here to answer them.
My Mother and Dad in the apartment that was the last place
they ever lived together, circa 1999
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I've had to lean into Rainer Maria Rilke's words: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
What is your relationship to unanswerable questions? And the living into answers rather than being given them?
Love and light,
Maureen
I'm excited to be a part of Writing for Your Life Online Mega-Conference, bringing together many leading spiritual authors and industry experts for your virtual enjoyment! This online conference brings together what we had planned for two separate in-person conference to create 10 days – YES, 10 DAYS!! – of
outstanding content! There are a ton of things for you to enjoy:
- Keynote presentations from Barbara Brown Taylor
- Over 20 presentations from featured Christian authors
- Over 10 presentations from leading Christian publishing industry experts
- No overlapping presentations, so you can easily see all of the speakers
- Six emerging Christian writers
- Worship service
- Live Q&A sessions with all featured speakers (via Zoom)
- Live group discussions with each speaker (via Zoom) – an opportunity for you to ask the speaker questions
- Optional 1-on-1 private online meetings with selected speakers (separate registration required; limited availability)
- Writing and elevator pitch advice from Barbara Brown Taylor and Brian Allain (via Zoom)
- Book discussions with each author (via Zoom) – an opportunity for you to learn more about our speakers’ books, to learn how they talk about their own books, and to ask them questions
- Open mic (via Zoom)
- “Submit your pitch” program (by email)
- Exclusive early access to the Beta release of the new AuthorConnect online networking platform for spiritual writers (when available)
The conference will take place June 22-26 and June 29 – July 3, but don’t worry – attendees can enjoy recordings of all sessions for the following 3 months.
Tuition for the main conference is only $359 and includes all presentations, live Q&A, all group meetings with speakers, all book discussions, elevator pitches, worship services, Leighton Ford interview, and an open-mic session.
Find out more and register here:
https://writingforyourlife.com/writing-for-your-life-online-mega-conference-june-2020/
WordPlay Opportunities
How Do I Say
Goodbye? and Praying You Goodbye
These two books are for anyone who is grieving the loss of a loved one—whether the loss is
impending, recent, or in the past. (The holiday season, for all its overt merriment, is often a time we struggle the most with grief.)
The contemplative exercises within are a guide through the “many waters” of grief (from Madeleine L'Engle's A Two-Part Invention), including "treasuring" and "keeping" as well as regret and sadness.
What is grief, after all, but a sign of the depth of our love? On the far shore is always gratefulness, for, as the French proverb says, “Gratitude is the heart’s memory.” Those who enjoy writing will likely also find poems, essays, and/or stories emerging as they make their way through these
pages.
I created the process shared in these two books in June of 2002, shortly after my mother died, as a way to mindfully mourn this loss—and celebrate her life. I shared it with a beloved friend, the Reverend Rebecca Taylor, when she lost her father, and she encouraged me to make it available to others. Here it is, in two versions, both of which offer quotes, reflections, prompts, and space to write about your loved one, as well as beautiful photographs by Wendy H. Gill that enhance each part of the process. Either
version makes a thoughtful condolence gift for a friend or family member.
How Do I Say Goodbye? is for those of any faith, with quotes from many different sources to accompany the process. It can be purchased on Amazon here.
Praying You Goodbye is specifically for Christians, with accompanying quotes from Scripture chosen by Reverend Rebecca Taylor. It can be purchased on Amazon here.
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UNDER CONSTRUCTION: YOUR WRITING
(Fulfilling Writing Dreams & Goals;
Revising & Polishing Your Writing)
Special offering! If you'd like to try out a class like the one Featured Writer Kathy Brown speaks of below, there are a few spots available in WordPlay's short summer
sessions. I'd love to talk with you to discuss if the class is right for you. Email info@wordplaynow.com for more information.
This class is designed to fulfill your writing dreams and projects. You’ll set goals and support structures and watch your writing flow! You’ll also get feedback on your
work (any genre) and learn revision tools and methods. Through examples of accomplished writers, you’ll learn techniques to aid you right where you are in the process.
* For the benefit of participants, an audio recording of the class will be made each week so that participants are able to listen to classes they miss and/or review material
covered at any convenient time and place. These recordings are available throughout the class session, along with all handouts, in a shared Dropbox folder.
WHERE: ZOOM from your own
home
WHEN: Wednesday mornings from 10:00 a.m. – noon
(Other class time/day of week may be available. Email info@wordplaynow.com for more information.)
COST: $35 for one
session
TO REGISTER: Please email info@wordplaynow.com to start the registration process by filling out a short “Clarity Tool” to share your writing dreams and goals and where you are in the process. (Anywhere you are is a perfect place to begin.)
Featured Writing
Cinnamon Sugar
from the cookbook memoir-in-progress
How She Fed Us
Reflections on the Recipes of a Perfectly Imperfect Mother
by
Maureen Ryan Griffin
Like so many others of her generation, my mother, who was born in 1925, never bought anything pre-packaged if she could make it
herself. Naturally, this included cinnamon sugar, one of our household staples. Yes, Mother’s jam on toast was wonderful, but cinnamon sugar was a delicious alternative.
My father, ever the engineer and every bit as devoted to saving money, had created a humble but perfectly functional container for sprinkling this simple concoction onto one’s toast by tapping nail holes in the lid of a small glass coffee jar. That little jar with the nail-hole shaker top sat, always at
the ready, on the second shelf of the cupboard to the left of the sink in our house on East 42nd Street for over forty-five years.
When I moved 600 miles away at 21 to take a teaching job, I began mixing up my own cinnamon sugar, which I kept in a small glass coffee jar with nail holes I tapped in its lid myself.
My method of making cinnamon sugar has always been to dump in “some” of each ingredient and shake.
I might never have given any thought to how Mother made her cinnamon sugar if Lewy body dementia hadn’t ravaged her memory, as well as her body.
When she and my father moved to a place that offered the assisted living she would soon need (taking that little coffee jar filled with cinnamon sugar with them), I brought home the hundreds of recipes Mother kept in large, labeled manila envelopes in her deepest kitchen drawer. Sorting through them, I came across a Cinnamon
Sugar recipe, written in her own hard-to-read scrawl. It read:
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Stir or shake cinnamon and sugar together.
Sprinkle on buttered toast.
Makes ½ cup.
Is this an “official” recipe she copied from somewhere, I wondered, or is it her own? If so, did she use so little cinnamon because it was much more expensive than sugar or because she preferred it this way? Could you even taste the cinnamon if you followed this recipe?
The questions spooled on, took a wicked turn. Did my mother have any idea I was so slapdash, so slipshod, so positively wanton when making my own cinnamon sugar? Would the fact that I, like her, put it in a recycled jar, make this wantonness forgivable to her?
A new thought gave me pause—did she write this recipe after her mind started to slip? Her writing was wobbly, the directions thorough—so unlike my mother. Most of her handwritten recipes included nothing more than a list of ingredients and an oven temperature, if applicable. She’d prepared thousands of
recipes; the ingredients themselves contained the information she needed.
I expected, once I knew that Mother had dementia, to feel a great deal of sadness as she slipped ever further away from me. What I didn’t expect was that I’d keep discovering one unasked-question after another, or the depth of my regret that they would all go unanswered. I didn’t expect that so many of my
questions would count for so little in any measurable way—and yet matter so much to me.
Loss, I’m discovering, not only has its own history, but also its own algebra. If our constant is removed, if we will never again be able to solve for x, what then?
The final equation, it turns out, is up to us. Why not imagine my mother and I laughing over our oh-so-different approaches? Why not believe that what I know, and what I don’t, will forever be enough? For in the end, it is our choice how much spice we’ll mix into whatever we’re making.
~ Maureen Ryan Griffin
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 “questions.”
PROMPT: Set a timer for at least 30 minutes and generate questions you don't know the answers to. Remember the very helpful investigative reporter questions, Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Let your mind soar above and dive below the obvious. Consider, if it serves you, what questions you, or one of your characters, would like to ask someone who is no longer present to answer.
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.
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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