“Don’t go wild with the water,” I told them through the kitchen window, “Dinner’s almost ready and we don’t need any more messes to clean up.” Sure enough, they squeaked the faucet on, filled up every bowl and bucket and drenched the decking and themselves. Continue reading
Welcome to those of you visiting from the (in)couragers community page! After reading below about the heart behind circling up, you’ll find an introduction to The Story Circle, our (in)couragers writing group that runs from now through April. (Update 2/16/13: Our group is now full!)
I’d love to have you join in the community here at Message in a Mason Jar as well. To get posts in your email box or blog reader, enter your email address on the homepage sidebar or enter http://messageinamasonjar.com/feed/ in your reader. You’re also invited to link-up with today’s Take Heart companion post, The Land of Raw Milk & Honey.
I laid out a picnic blanket over amber lengths of grass left too long in fall. Now they greened early from mild winter air. The bugs had hardly had to hibernate; the pansies had bloomed all the way through. There, in late winter in my yard-turned-meadow, something whispered in my ear, the soft buzz of a honeybee circling my head and whispering secrets.
My little boy held his breath at the sight of the stinger inches from my skin. But the bee had better things to do. The little sunflower with wings, she was a seeker, smelling sweetness on wind, sensing the position of the sun through clouds. She wandered, zig-zagging through the tall blades of dry grass, but she wasn’t directionless.
My son and I watched the bee fly off until she was just a speck and then invisible, our own minds buzzing with curiosity about what was next on her agenda. As always, nature was the place where our imaginations opened to the wider world, where wonder blossomed. In Creation, we became more creative.
“Every really good creative person…whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics,” said James Webb Young, “First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested…. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information.”
The honeybee had us fascinated, asking questions. And we went browsing.
Our eyes widened at the diagrams of how the honeybees encourage one another back at the hive, how these sisters come from all places to tell each other where to find what they’re looking for.
They memorize the angle of the sun and make adjustments for the time that lapses between their discovery and their meet up. At the hive, they dance in circles and map out the surroundings in their movements. In their shimmies and shakes, they spell out direction and distance, leading each other to fields full of pollen and nectar, each giving the other a leg up on fulfilling her calling.
In the same spirit of circling up and sharing from unique angles of wisdom, gifting, and expertise, I’m privileged to be heading up a community group with (in)couragers this session! If you are a writer who has been looking for a community to spur you on in following your creative call, I hope you’ll join us in The Story Circle, our (in)couragers writing group. We’ll be interacting together in a private Facebook group from February 12 through the end of April.
Proverbs 16:24 tells us that “Kind words are like honey— sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” I believe so much in the power of words that I majored in writing in college. I married a fellow word lover and now I get to watch the writing and publishing process over and over again as my husband runs his literary agency. Aside from writing here at Message in a Mason Jar (have you checked out this month’s Take Heart series?), I have written Bible studies and camp curriculum for a large not-for-profit, plus I dabble in fiction writing and hope to complete a novel and/or a work of creative non-fiction at some point.
If you want to get even more of a feel for my love of writing and writers (and to work on your own writing), be sure to check out my 31-day series, Preserve Your Story. Altogether, I believe we write our best when we’re connected in community, pairing our own insights with those of other writers coming from all different angles.
I am beyond blessed to have two lovely friends, each with their unique giftedness in writing, leading The Story Circle with me:
Sheila, a former librarian and bookseller, writes about all things literary at The Deliberate Reader. She began reading at age three, and now working as a stay-at-home mother of two, she does all she can to instill a love of reading in her children. As an avid reader who finished an astonishing 160 books last year, she is especially in tune with the ingredients of good writing and will provide thoughtful insights throughout our session. She herself dreams of writing children’s or young adult historical fiction and/or fantasy. She’d love to connect and chat about anything related to books, reading, or writing. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads. Click here to read her Story Circle welcome post.
Adrienne, a homeschooling mother of three, writes about whole foods, homesteading and slow living at A Suburban Menagerie. She is active in caring for the poor in her community and just recently began a blog series called Stage Your Own Mutiny, based on the book 7, by Jen Hatmaker. In her spare time, she practices fiction writing and even took part in the NaNoWriMo challenge this past fall. You can find her Story Circle welcome post here.
We will all be teaming up to bring you fresh writing prompts, creative exercises and inspirational thoughts from successful authors. We’ll facilitate the chance to do peer review and workshopping whatever you’re writing, be it fiction or non-fiction. We’ll provide opportunities for group members to get to know one another and cheer each other on in our writing efforts. And most importantly, we’ll point each other to the original Word as our inspiration.
We’d love to have you in on it all this session. Circle up with us by clicking the link and requesting membership in our Facebook group: The Story Circle ~ (in)couragers writing group. We’re so excited to meet you! (Update 2/16/13: Our group is now full!)
(This post contains an affiliate link. When you purchase anything through the link, you encourage continued creative community here at Message in a Mason Jar with no extra charge to you.)
All around is green pasture coaxed out of dry rock and sand with the water from pretend rivers, drink corralled down from the Colorado. The sculpted form of a camel lays down in the middle of it, water stored in the bump on his back, chin on the ground, legs tucked under…humble, at ease.
My suitor didn’t know me well enough to keep me off that camel’s back. The heart of me may crave adventure, but my limbs and lungs don’t always agree. He had scaled the mountain four times before, a cinch for a golden boy. Then there was me.
Past the railroad tie steps, he rambled up the slippery rock face while I used the railing. That was the last of the shade. Sun-soaked rock bounced back heat beyond 112 degrees. I guzzled my one bottle of water and then his, and caught my breath while watching him leap onto boulders bigger than us.
Lunge. Breathe. Lunge. Breathe. I dreamed of the rescue copter, took a swig of a stranger’s water and eased around the prickle of the cactus. My hiking partner pointed up a stack of rocks, said the summit was just ahead, but in a crevice of shade too small for my frame, the bee sank its stinger into pink skin. Prick me with a fork- I was done.
Another season, another year, the path called us back. He was more than a hiking partner by now. We wore wedding rings and backpacks full of water bottles. I promised to follow him to the top, even if I lumbered while he leaped.
Muscles quivered at the summit. Wind dried dusty sweat on cheeks. He spun me in circles to take it all in then we settled on a rock to rest. But as I looked again to the west, I bolted to my feet. The sun was setting. And we hadn’t packed a flashlight.
The way down is hardest to begin with, full weight on weary bones, feet skidding over sandy boulders, momentum pulling fast. In the dark, I didn’t see how it could be done at all. My mind went back to that rescue copter. Then I looked at my husband gleaming confident.
I followed behind, naysaying all the way. We’d done only a quarter of the path by the time the sky shifted from gold to dusky red to dark. The rising moon wasn’t the spotlight I had hoped.
I looked down at the boulder under my feet and the faint sketching of the next, not sure how to move. But with every step, his voice came through shadows telling me whether to tread deep or shallow, and whether to veer right or left.
Lamp unto my feet. Light unto my path.
With every solid landing, I found myself walking more confidently in my husband’s guidance and seeing more clearly that the “S” word, submission, doesn’t mean letting your husband walk all over you…it means letting him walk you through difficulty, it means giving him the honor of taking care of you.
Take heart when the path is dark. Trust. Let him walk ahead, guiding, protecting. Just see how it goes. Let go, duck low through the narrow gate, a camel through the eye of the needle…and look to find the kingdom of God, even here on earth.
Thanks for visiting Message in a Mason Jar where we’re finding the loveliest things in the most ordinary containers. To get posts delivered to your email box or blog reader, enter your email address on the homepage sidebar or enter http://messageinamasonjar.com/feed/ in your reader.
This post is part of our Take Heart series. This week we’re talking about romance and we’d love to hear about how God has helped you take heart in the midst of your own struggles in singleness, married life or abandonment. Start writing today and share your post in our link-up tomorrow. And our winner of last week’s giveaway from Scarves with Heart is…Ashly Stage! Each scarf sold provides funds for short term trips benefitting HIV/AIDs orphans in South Africa.
Also linking up with this week’s “Concrete Words: The Path,” hosted by Amber Haines at The Run a Muck.
More than half of the trees have lost their leaves. My green pepper plants have shriveled up and fallen over. The newest tomatoes have suffered frost bite. The veggies have grown through drought and flood in this hearty stew of compost and peat and vermiculite, but now it’s time to clear out the garden and put away the shovels and shears.
But even as the plants give way to the season, there is potential in the slow and still. The garden extras, the piles of crunchy leaves, the scraps from the kitchen, if I allow them the space, they’ll come together and create a whole new substance.
While your notebook is tucked in a drawer and you are resting from your work, something is happening in that stillness. When you pick up someone else’s book, when you sit face to face with the good people in your life, when you venture out of your writing world into fresh contexts, borrowed thoughts mingle with the ones already written.
Onto the heap of our drafted ideas, we throw new clippings and scraps. Sometimes inspiration will come from talking directly about your idea (though I wouldn’t do too much of that or you may lose some of your steam!), but most often it will come in surprising forms, the cast offs from listening to a stirring sermon or someone’s take on a current events issue or a family struggle.
All these apple peels, blades of grass, egg shells, used tea leaves, pine needles, these textures and flavors of all sorts come together and sit a while. Then ideas turn over one another and heat up like compost in the bin.
Maybe your essay or blog post or short story feels stuck. You shove it in the drawer and wonder if it should stay. But bring yourself into a new context and see what happens.
Maybe you’ll be like the man in the 1960s who left a failure of a project at work over the weekend. He turned out the light and locked the lab door on this new formula for glue, one so weak that the pages barely stuck together.
But in the choir loft on Sunday, amid the reverb of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, he looked down at the hymnal with his makeshift bookmarks, torn pieces of paper falling all around like confetti. He scrambled that morning to reopen the page for the choir number, but he’d never have to do that again.
Weak glue? Paper that barely sticks? A hymnal sprawled open letting plain paper fly? All these problems came together to give him the perfect idea for a hymnal marker, one that would stick but wouldn’t tear the page when removed.
In this moment of synergy, in this completely different context, a place of rejuvenation, the man’s subconscious did the work for him and the idea for the Post-It Note was born.
We refine our writing when we enter new contexts, engage in conversation, or soak in the words of a treasured author, even with our own story put away out of sight.
I had written a draft for my Gift from the Sea series detailing my night swim in the luminescent waters off of the islands of Thailand when I set my own writing aside to do some reading. As I came across the words of a fellow blogger through a link-up, I read some punch in the chest quotes from Surprised by Joy, a book I’d been wanting to read for quite awhile. I grinned when I came upon the shelf at the bookstore. The spine of Lewis’ memoir stretched tall, just four books down from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s classic written in the same year, these two works sitting together in a picture of synergy. Joy sneaks up on us, they both said in their own way. And my story agreed.
On the small scale of a blog post, the ideas compost in a matter of hours or days. When it comes to larger stories in creative non-fiction and novel writing, we can expect a much longer process. I mulled over the theme of Dress of Many Colors for more than five years before I felt the story was ready for dedicated writing. And even now as I’ve taken a break from it, the ideas continue to react to my everyday experience.
Whatever the nature of our work, when we venture out of its bounds, we let ideas commingle, we stir them up and let them sit again. We put the happy process on repeat and soon the pile turns dark and earthy, each ingredient becoming part of the whole until we can’t tell one idea from another, all of them blending into one rich compost, the boost our story needs to flourish.
{Are you getting out enough? Are you listening enough in conversation? Are you reading enough? How have you experienced the synergy of ideas in a current or past project?}
This is Day 18 of my series 31 Days ~ Preserve Your Story, linking up with The Nester’s annual 31 Days of Change.
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They come there empty. The construction worker in his rusty pick-up, he comes with a used Gatorade bottle. The business woman on her lunch break brings a 5-gallon jug for the water cooler. The little ones and I watch from a picnic table made out of recycled milk jugs, same containers a white-haired couple have looped on their fingers.
It happened a hundred years ago, the discovery of our little artesian well. The locals poked around in the soil looking for fuel and up came this water spout.
When you’ve been found, you burst up from the ground. You’re a rock that gives water, a hidden aquifer bubbling good stuff into open air. The unseen becomes seen.
It’s slower now than it once was, gone from sixty gallons per minute to fifteen over the course of a century. The kids and I come near and splash our hands under cool water and pat our faces.
I start to do the math on when it will run down to a trickle. Come a line of people on lunch break, it flows. Come dark of night, when the city folk are on to dinner and bedtime, it flows.
When we follow dragonflies to the dirt path along the creek, I take another look behind. If only there were a knob we could spin to to stop the water while its not in demand, some way to save it.
But around the corner, I see where my thoughts are taking me. There lies the quietest pond. Lily pads are glued in place. Only insects crowd around. When you stop the flow and hoard the drink for another day, it goes stagnant.
We writers have to be the flowing well, to have a heart of readiness to share the good stuff hidden deep under the surface, to keep it flowing even when the rate slows, even when the crowds aren’t coming.
And if you give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
And the Lord will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.
When we think we are wordless, when we are thirsty for our craft, when we have the dreaded writer’s block, still we write.
We have to be like the widow of Zarapheth who gave up the crumbs from her cabinet and then found her jars overflowing, to be like the nursing mother who finds that the more she gives, the more she produces.
When we write we flow fresh even when we’re not in demand…and when the time comes and the people gather, we can trust they’ll come away refreshed and so will we.
{What has been your experience with writing through the silence or writer’s block? How do you feel about pouring out words as a remedy for wordlessness?}
I so much enjoyed my time away at the amazing Influence Conference this weekend where I had the chance to meet and learn alongside so many lovely writers. But I’m happy to be back at my keyboard carrying on with Day 7 of my series 31 Days ~ Preserve Your Story, linking up with The Nester’s annual 31 Days of Change.
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