Dear ,
Do you have a place that is "heaven on earth" to you?
While I believe that we can carry this "heaven" inside of us and tap into it no matter where we are, I also know that many people, like me, have places they go back to again and again to experience their peace and beauty. Sunset Beach, where I'll be holding two writing retreats in early November, is one of mine.
Our heavenly places can provide the inspiration we need to move our writing projects forward. In fact, an essay I'd promised to write and had been completely stymied by came flowing out at one of these retreats -- it all came together as I walked behind the silhouetted figures in the right of this photo. (You can read the essay and about how it came to be written below.)
Meanwhile, this week's prompt will help you access a bit of the "heaven on earth" inside of you, whether or not you can make it to a coastal retreat this November. (Though it is a wonderful way to give yourself the time and space you need to renew your love of writing, as well as get whatever you need to move your writing dreams forward). Regardless, you so deserve a gift of time with your own spirit, and with "kindred spirits" -- so do find some way to give this to yourself soon!
Love and light from the heaven in me to the heaven in you,
Maureen
Upcoming WordPlay
For information about other offerings happening soon, visit www.wordplaynow.com/current.htm
FALL WRITING RETREAT
Renew and delight yourself. Let fall's abundant writing possibilities inspire you! If you've been wondering where your muse has been hiding, you'll find her at this retreat full of writing prompts and tools designed to jumpstart you and your writing. $97 includes lunch and supplies.
WHERE:
South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, October 27, 10 am - 5 pm
TO REGISTER: Click here
to download a printable registration form to mail in. OR register online: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=Z6QGPTW2QKLMC (Copy and paste into your browser if you have trouble clicking)
COASTAL WRITING RETREAT
Renew yourself, whether you are a practicing writer, closet writer, or as-yet-to-pick-up-the-pen writer! The techniques and prompts we'll use will spur your imagination, and can be used to create nonfiction, fiction, and/or poetry-the choice is yours. There'll be ample free time to savor your beautifully appointed private room with king-sized bed, private bath and balcony, the large porches with rocking chairs and swings, and the coastal setting.
WHERE: The Sunset Inn, 9 North Shore Dr., Sunset Beach, NC 28468
WHEN: Friday, November 2 - Sunday, November 4, 2012
OR
Friday, November 9 - Sunday, November 11, 2012
(Two separate retreats; choose the dates that work for you)
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.
$419 includes retreat sessions, two nights' lodging, two breakfasts and Saturday lunch (hotel tax and Saturday dinner at a local restaurant not included). Register soon - this is a popular event. There are only a few spaces available. The Inn will hold your reservation with a credit card.
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WordPlay Success Story "I had written off and on during my life (mostly off) and Maureen reawakened that love."
Meet Linda Matney
Linda is a founding member and retired General Partner of a Southeastern investment management firm, and achieved a lifelong goal by earning her bachelor's degree from Montreat College before her 50th birthday. As best stated by a pioneering friend, Linda "earned the degree for her obituary, not her resume!" She envisioned and spearheaded the building of the
Jack Matney Memorial Labyrinth in the center of Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, in collaboration with Presbyterian Hospice and Palliative Care, Presbyterian Hospital Foundation, and the generosity of loving friends. She also created the anthology, Imagining Heaven.
You can find out more about Imagining Heaven here. Every penny of every sale supports Presbyterian Hospice and Palliative Care.
What Linda says about WordPlay In Septem
ber of 2005, I enrolled in a class called "The Artist's Way" led by Maureen Ryan Griffin as a first step to inventing the rest of my life! To say that God sent her as a guide to my second adulthood is not an exaggeration.
At the time she was teaching this class, Maureen was also putting the finishing touches on her own book, Spinning Words into Gold (THE best guide to the craft of writing). One day about halfway through our weeks together, I came to class with the news that my beloved husband had been diagnosed with liver cancer. Five months
later Jack died. I felt called to Romans 8:28, "...all things work for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose." For me those words meant God could bring something good out of something immeasurably painful.
In one of my many subsequent classes with Maureen, I mentioned how much joy it gave me to imagine being in heaven with Jack and wondered if others might get the same sense of peace from their own imaginings.
One
thing led to another and before I knew it one of the "...(some)thing...good's" that came was the book Imagining Heaven -- midwifed by Maureen. Through Maureen's many teaching venues, lots of word-of-mouth, much prayer and many sleepless nights, 110 authors contributed pieces that have, so far, raised over $26,000 for Presbyterian Hospice & Palliative Care!
Maureen lives Julia Cameron's admonition that we are meant to "midwife dreams for one another." I had written off and on during my life (mostly off) and Maureen reawakened that love. She is an engaging teacher and an enduring friend, mentor, coach, editor, gift-in-my-life. Featured Writing
Linda is one of the most inspiring people I know -- as you can no doubt tell, she makes things happen! So when she asked me if I would write a piece for Imagining Heaven, how could I say no? It seemed so easy to write about my personal vision of heaven. And then...it wasn't. It took a good dose of my own medicine (in this case a coastal writing retreat at Sunset Beach) to fulfill my promise to Linda by writing this:
Heavenly Light
by Maureen Ryan Griffin
(from the anthology Imagining Heaven)
All week, she's been thinking about light. November light. Sugar maples that flame with an inner fire. Dinner candles that flicker now that Daylight Savings Time is done. Lamplight. Moonlight. The glorious sunrises and sunsets this particular weekend at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Walking westward on the beach Saturday evening-into the sun itself, it seems-she finds herself wondering, Is heaven's light really more beautiful than these? Not to mention fireflies. Shooting stars.
You have to understand how much she loves the light of this world, especially sunrises and sunsets, especially here. The way the warm coral, brilliant vermillion, delicate apricot, pale lavender, deep rose, rich purple of evening-each in turn-seeps from sky to ocean, dances on the thin skin of water at the tide line, a silvered glass reflecting all it's given. A holy host of gulls soars, light glimmering on wings. The way, at sunrise, the sun strews a golden path across the water straight to her-a path that looks so real, at times she's been tempted to take it. But how can she surrender the beauty of this world?
Oh, she's known love -- love lavished on her by friends and family, even total strangers; love that's welled in her heart, spilled over. She decided long ago there wasn't any purpose possible here other than learning how to let love in, out. She's lucky. She's known such love on earth she's sure of the love there'll be in heaven. It's the delights she worries about -- the music, the honeysuckle, the chocolate. All the good gifts around her, right here and now. She wants to believe she will like being dead as much as she likes being alive, but she's filled with doubt. All day, she's been listening to the lovely sound of pens moving across paper as she leads a weekend writing retreat. She's seen faces suffused with the joy of capturing experience, creating art. Truly, what could be better?
Then she recalls someone suggesting that the heaven we each get is the heaven we have imagined for ourselves. What an outlandish idea! And yet, this weekend itself is nothing if not a dream. She is living a future she envisioned for years, and it came to pass, she has to admit, much more from imagination than elbow grease. So maybe it's true. Maybe she can design her own heaven. Since she doesn't need any more love, any more beauty, she figures what will make her heaven heavenly will be what isn't. Disappointment, despair, dread. Hate, of course. Malice. Meanness in any form. Lack, loss. Obligation. She pictures shedding that To Do list -- better yet, shredding it. Because wouldn't it be great to do whatever she wants whenever she wants to?
Away with fear. No worry. No hurry, so that not only can she watch the sun go down every night, but she can also hang around for the afterglow without having to rush off somewhere. No illness, of course. No pain, no suffering. Which makes her think of her father, whose doctor told him five months ago he had six months left to live. She's asked him what he thinks heaven will be like, but he doesn't want to play that game, something she finds hard to understand. Instead, he quoted 1 Corinthians 2:9: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But much has entered her heart. She has heard and seen. What she needs to do is step, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, into a faith that claims "All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all that I have not seen." As the ocean sparkles and sings beside her, she thinks of how, the night her mother died, she dreamed of butterflies, a multitude aflutter, illuminated, shining. It's the only time she's ever dreamed of butterflies; she's always figured this was her mother's way of telling her there was a heaven, and she'd arrived safely.
Heaven isn't really a place though, is it, a particular intersection of latitude and longitude? Maybe heaven is right here, in all she loves most. Maybe Heaven is everywhere, is all the joy she's ever experienced, all at once, all the time. In order to hold all that beauty, all that love, she'd have to be bigger, grow beyond any limitation she's ever known. Maybe heaven is something we become, not somewhere we go. In her father's heaven, she decides, his heart and lungs will be strong and perfect. He'll take that trip to Tuscany with Janet. It won't be too late.
Yes, she loves the way, when the sun is angled low in the sky, the colors intensify. In this light, everyone -- the broad, the squat, the strong, the frail -- is beautiful. Her fellow beach walkers actually glow. She bows her head as, moments later, the hastening dusk transforms them into silhouettes, pilgrims strolling into perfect Light.
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 "heaven."
This is the exact formula I used to create the essay above. You can use it to create your own essay, or a any piece of nonfiction, fiction, or poetry.
1. Listen to two pieces from Beverly Rollwagen's book She Just Wants. (Click here to read and/or listen to Garrison Keillor of The Writer's Almanac read them.)
2. Write about what YOU want, but use the third person, "she" (or "he") instead of "I." Writing in the third person often allows us to access a deeper part of ourselves. Or, if your are writing fiction, write about one of your character's wants. Begin, as Rollwagen does, with "S/he just wants..." and "Sprint" (keep writing without stopping) for seven minutes. Then read your words out loud and really listen to them. (Note that I ended up writing my Imagining Heaven essay in the third person, and that many of my "wants" show up in it.)
3. Now, go for a long walk alone in a place that fills your spirit. Let your mind mull over what you've written as you take in the beauty of your particular "heaven on earth" through all your senses. Don't skimp on time; an hour or more will give your subconscious some time to marinate the words and ideas that came out in your Sprint. 4. Next, type up your Sprint, weaving in some images (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) that you noted as you walked. 5. Over the next few days, come back to your writing and reread it aloud. Add, take away, and move text as you desire.
Want to be featured in a future Word-zine?
Send in a piece of your writing that you think could inspire other WordPlayers to write. 500-word limit, please.) You can send something inspired by this writing, or anything else of your choosing. Email your words
to WordPlay here and your piece may be chosen for a future Word-zine.
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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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