Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Writing
“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’”
Maya Angelou
My muse is conspicuously absent this morning. I came across this quote on FaceBook and it caught my attention as I was scrolling through the posts. I’m not saying it was posted specifically for me because there are 357 “likes” on the page. Anything Maya Angelou has to say is of interest to me and thousands of others. I remember when she died, I cried. Jan and I watched her homegoing celebration on TV and even Minnie, the dog, was riveted to the screen. She sat in front of the TV and did not take her eyes off of it for the duration. It was a remarkable cross-species event.
Maya Angelou used words to teach her readers the breadth and depth of Black culture. She wrote books that were autobiographical, poems that came straight from her sense of what is right and just, plays, and screenplays for television. She was revered as a public speaker where, once again, she gave us her words beautifully organized into wisdom dreams. There are snippets of her writing on cards, and on framed pictures that grace peoples’ walls.
I am no Maya Angelou, but I’m learning the value of meditating and having a theme arise from somewhere within. Sometimes the theme comes quickly in the dark before dawn. Sometimes I get an idea the night before and can’t wait to sit down and write about it the next morning. There are days like today when I sit down and wait for an inspiration.
The act of writing is absolutely an exercise in being open to possibilities and having words emerge from fingers on a keyboard. Or from pen on to paper. I go to a wise woman for spiritual direction once a month. She has taught me about “automatic writing” as a therapeutic tool. It works like this: I have pen and paper in front of me and I just start writing whatever comes into my head. I write without stopping – when I can’t think of what to say next, I write that down until another thought kicks in. I don’t try to edit anything or make it prettier, I just put down the torrent of words that come to me. In doing this I have had insights that are very illuminating.
Sharing these “essays” with my spiritual director has led to many a productive discussion. I uncover things from deep within that would ordinarily remain closed off from my consciousness. There is something about allowing myself to be vulnerable enough to open thoughts and ideas that may have been hidden or simply unbeknownst to me. I highly recommend this tool for anyone who struggles with some kind of knot that needs to be unraveled. Writing as therapy started for me in 2010, when I was at a guided spiritual retreat in New Mexico. Being in Santa Fe opened some kind of channel for me. It is one of my holy places and I wrote every morning before dawn came to the high desert. Writing has become my best form of meditation, a time when I empty my mind of everything except what is produced on the page. I’m not sure if this meets the exact definition of meditation which says, “continued or extended thought, reflection; contemplation.” It feels to me like this is exactly what is happening