Category: General Learning

Last week I joined in the first of three online sessions about poetry and writing. The guide is Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, who I found delightful and centered. Her exercises were playfully meaningful. Her wisdom was offered with effusive joy.

Rosemerry is known for a few things. One of those is writing a poem a day for twenty years. I’ve been getting her daily poems for the last month or so. I like her prosy form — sometimes just three or four lines for the day.

It’s good to marvel at this discipline — a poem a day. Yes, indeed. I’ve found in my own writing that it becomes less about making a poem. I just think. And write. And poetic form arises. As they say, “we become what we practice.” We find our harvest format for all of that life flowing.

Rosemerry offered a few points of setup in this class. She offered principles that had me clicking my heels in delight, and I suppose some relief too. She was talking about a few guidelines that help her with her poem a day practice.

1. Promise Myself I Will Write — even if just a bit. It’s a commitment to an identity of writer. And, it’s fulfilling when that identity is honored. Heck, cherished even. Prioritized. Regular play date.
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2. It Doesn’t Have To Be Good; Just True — thank you, thank you. Rosemerry’s line was, “is there juice in it for you?” So good. Sometimes a good poem is the result. Often the energy of writing and exploring is the real fulfillment and gain.
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3. Write For You, Not For Others — heel click again. Yes, of course, we write for others. But to return to what you can’t not write for you — this has a way of bringing gifts to the world. And creating a lot of inner health too.
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4. You Can’t Know The Ending — sweet, right. It means just start writing. Sit before the paper. Or the journal. Or the computer screen. Start somewhere. Follow it with playfulness. Or angst. Or worry. Or delight. Let it arise. Dare to give it expression. Doesn’t have to be your best or only work.

Rosemerry writes and shares a poem a day. Sign on to her stuff. I’m enjoying her offerings.

And write, if that be your calling. Poem a day. Or per week. Or to start the day, and then end the day (thx Saoirse). Start. Commit. Let joy lead you. And your heart. Trust. Maybe it’s not a poem for you. It often is for me. Watch the way that this commitment sweeps you to the middle of the room, dancing in wonder and words.

The primary premise of B & B’s This Is Now, is to develop skill, practice, and community of deeper listening. It’s not willing a plan into place. Nor an exercise. It’s not more efforting from a paradigm of tenacity or force or imposition. Rather, it’s being moved by what is arising. Giving ourselves to that. Amplifying that. Which means some real commitment to presence. Some ease with waiting. Some playfulness to link intuition with impression. Some baseline orientation to wholeness.

Yesterday’ session was delightful. One person talked about “useful” in her check-out. “Nowful” too. Kind of fun to replace the former with the latter, attributing inherent value — it was very nowful. And if it’s nowful, it’s useful.

I picked up a bunch of other phrases that help lift this energy.

• “Let’s now” — it’s great to be in company that can making nowing a verb.
• “This moment matters” and “this moment is” (thx Elif).
• “By the grave of God, it all runs together” (thx Wendy).
• “We already know” — it’s great to affirm our spiritually and alchemically indigenous knowing.
• “Be nowed” — be moved; be inspired in the way you might at the ocean’s edge by the vista of now.
• “Everything we need is now” — there is much that is life-giving in the present moment. This is what many wisdom leaders have taught throughout time.
• “We belong to each other, no exception” — (thx Saoirse quoting Father Gregory Boyle).
• “Nowing is a self-organizing pattern” — takes me back to my early days with Meg. When we now, we connect, we learn, we move with life.

Nowing is at some level, an exercise. Sure.
But moreso, it’s a way of being, or orienting — that challenges paradigms of time, of preparation, etc.

Nowing brings us to relationship with what is, now alive, now moving, now weaving inner and outer, now inviting.

An epistemology? Yes.
A truth-telling of what is possible and inherently already in us? I think so.

On it flows.
Thx for reading.
Let’s Now.

Dana and I walked last night. High above, two crows huddled. Or maybe one pair. I loved the silhouette feel against the late sky blue.

Recently I was in conversation with a fellow Wanderer. We were exploring what is common across the Becoming & Belonging Sessions. We were finding clarity together, about the intent to connect more of the inner with the outer. And about seeing in wholes (one pair, not two birds…).

I named these three commonalities or B & B process:

1. We Pay Attention — this is the most consistent of invocations among consciousness traditions, isn’t it. Mary Oliver starts with “Pay attention” in her Instructions For Living A Life. Pay attention to what is nudging for your attention. Create an attentive field in yourself, and with others. Create attentive relationships that are known for their attentive ways. Perhaps there is more than randomness to such attentive practice that has a way of organizing us.
2. We Notice — to notice is really an invitation to explore, to be curious. To dwell in the attentive state. Not working too hard with meaning making. Not forcing. Rather, letting it come as if a stream, readily continuous, refreshing your feet on a hot day.
3. We Connect Inner + Outer — this is so much the work. It matters less where we begin, whether inner or outer. Both will point to each other. And it matters less that we get it all. Rather, it matters that we start somewhere, that we develop the habit of legitimizing this connection. Alan Watts wrote, “we recognize the illusion of distinct selves.” One pair. This is the direction that attentiveness can move us, perhaps wants to move us.

My fellow Wanderer and I continued, arriving at an alchemical understanding.

Processes like these — to pay attention, to notice, to connect inner and outer — well this changes the being of who we are. Individually. And together. The outcome of the moment may matter to some degree, but this change in our being and in our seeing and in our perceiving (one pair, not two birds) — well this is what I so wish for as a human navigating the many stories of purpose.

On it goes. I like the work of alchemy in me and with others.

Good one. Michael Meade (thx Rebecca Holt for sharing).

To come into that kind of flow, clarified by source — yup, that’s the big stuff.