We've had a week of sun and each morning when I'm finished work, I head out to the deck with a pot of Chiai tea and a copy of "Writing asa Sacred Path" by Jill Jepson.While the sparrows eat the aphids on the golden hops vine and cardinals dart through the willows, I turn the pages and wonder over the gift of being able to tell stories.I don't why I'm a writer, but I'm pretty sure the obsession to put words on the page was tattooed in my DNA from day one. Here are a few abridged quotes:
Storytelling may seem too commonplace--even trivial--to be the key to a writer's spiritual path. But this is because , like all seemingly simple work...we fail to see how remarkable it is. When you try to analyze the feat of telling a story, it becomes an act of immense complexity and depth.
When you tell a story, you become what F. Scott Fitzgerald called, "part of the consciousness of our human race." Stories sculpt meaning; they shape how we think about the world; they provide framework for understanding our place in the Universe. Stories determine what we cherish, despise or ignore. Stories express the inexpressible.
Stories remind us that we are not separate, isolated individuals afloat in the cosmos, but part of the universal stream of life. Stories are gifts.
E. B. White: "As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be personally held responsible if even a small one were to be lost."
Lofty thoughts, right? It's true that writing is excruciatingly hard work, exasperating, nerve wracking, ulcer producing and much much worse. But when the vision inside finally begins to come into focus on the page, the feeling of satisfaction warms to the core like a golden benediction and, like birthing a child, I instantly forget all that came before. I always go back for more.
May your pages be dusted with 'enchantment' today.
Happy Writing! Kathy-Diane
