On, In and Around Mondays: Saturday Escape to Silence

I am sitting on the concrete porch outside my door in Texas. Today the Retreat goes on without me.

Earlier, the rush of shower water next door told me Brad and Dan were awake. I listened to the sounds. Open. Close. Thump.

Yes, I am supposed to be somewhere. Breakfast with its pottery mugs, blue-grey. A view of the Canyon. Sky and circling birds. I pull the sheets to my chin. I am missing scrambled eggs, English muffins, a chance to talk to Ann or Ann.

I feel the gentle push-back from my pillow. I am not ready to leave my dreams, which must have mingled laughter, the Milky Way, me-sized cactus, blue-green river and turtles swimming.

A blond woman with a smiling voice opens my door. “Housekeeping.”

“Sorry! I’m still in bed,” I say.

“Are you okay? Can I get you anything?”

“No. No thank you. I stayed up late. I’ll be out in an hour. Sorry!”

Shoonk. The door shuts. I pull the sheets over my shoulder. I should get up.

I catalog what I have already missed. The eggs. Tea. Ann and Ann. Soon it will also be the morning speaker and maybe Ashley Cleveland, who laughs and sings deep, and moves with her magenta (or aqua) guitar.



Out the window are splintery trees I don’t understand, and white rocks in the sun. If I move quickly I will make it in time for the songwriting workshop with Over the Rhine.



Shower. Hair brush. Tazo tea, made in the coffee maker. Bagel I brought from New York, cinnamon raisin, already buttered. I think these things will mean a movement towards the crowd. They don’t. Maybe because I open my window and feel the morning air.



It is decided. Brown and white Indian-print skirt, a sleeveless brown shirt, blue sparkle bracelet, the silver shalom necklace I just opened (a gift). Tea on this concrete porch.



I need the silence, which is riffled only by small sounds I cannot place. I cannot seem to hear, or maybe answer. Are the trees saying, Thtick, thtick, thtick? Or is it phah-phah-phah, phah-phah-phah? Or maybe tahk-a-shh, tahk-a-shh?

My hair moves in the slight breeze. Grasses, long, with tawny feather tops, move too. The silence, the mild sounds of not-silence, tickling trees and wooden swings and me. I need this unscripted song, which is just now being written by the day.



Laity Lodge photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

Arrested

Empty. Wordless. Unmotivated. Arrested in my thoughts.

Not the usual fare for when I go away. In fact, I often do my best writing, my most poetic writing when I travel. But my last two trips in the last two weeks, to the "T" states, Texas and Tennessee, yielded nothing.

I didn't write one poem. Didn't do a single journal entry. I only wrote this because I'd made a promise to Jim to do a co-post. It was a real effort, a near-miss.

Perhaps it is not fair to say yielded nothing. Because what I found was a deep sense of connectedness with these places. I found that my eyes were wide open to hummingbirds and mallard ducks, my ears attentive to the unique whispers of creek and lake, canyon and sandbar. And I felt a profound sense of connection to people.





At Laity Lodge in Texas, I was particularly touched to meet a new friend named Perri (that's us holding hands above). And at a hospitable home in Tennessee, I was greatly moved by spending a few hours in the company of a group of women who had read Stone Crossings and who wanted to meet me. The circles of hands and feet are Sandy, Christine, Laura, Lue, Joan, Twila, Esther, Lee-Ann, Kathy Y., Mona, Cate, Kathy E., and Mary— sorry if I've misspelled any of your names! (Oh, and on Sunday I met their pastor, Dennis Mullen and we had a great discussion about books.)






Tonight, I thought I may tell about this meeting in my next book. Because it felt like a turning point for me, in which I was dearly open to embracing and nurturing a group of women. I just might put it in my chapter on submission. We'll see. In any case, these women with their poignant stories of pain, their longings, their loves and humors and questions, truly entered my heart and gave me joy.

I also had occasion to chat with Erin one day while I was in Tennessee. I told her how empty and wordless I was feeling. How I didn't even feel like writing about God anymore. She told me to look at the grass blowing in the breeze, just because it is pretty. There was no grass, but I went out on the deck and gazed at the lake. I watched a grey heron fly out over the water. I marveled at the roundness of tiny pinecones and tiny unidentified birds. Turtles made little plopping sounds and ducks talked softly. I was arrested by the beauty of the place.

And when I came home, I found words.


Lake in Tennessee, Perri and LL, Tennesse Book Club photos. By L.L. Barkat.

STONE CROSSINGS:

Heather's Stone Crossings Video

Ted's book club post: Sugar Face: Forgiveness

LL and Lauren (But not Jim) at Laity Lodge

Last week I went to Texas. For the very first time in my life. It was... beautiful. I went to Laity Lodge for a retreat. To hear Lauren Winner and Tod Bolsinger. Wow. (Photo of Lauren and I below. Do you dig that tattoo she got when she was only 15 years old?)



When I stepped out of the shuttle, onto the Laity grounds, the first thing I noticed was the weight of the sun. It seemed it might press me into the copper colored gravel. The second thing I noticed was the silence. It too had a weight. Like a silken blanket on my skin and over my senses. I was utterly taken.

The week before I went to Laity, I discovered that Jim Martin was going to be there too. From Monday to Wednesday. I was coming Thursday to Sunday. Sigh. But we decided to both write a piece on some stone stairs I thought I'd seen in a picture of Laity. We would post our respective pieces. (Rumor has it that Marcus Goodyear might also post such a piece.) I don't know if I found the right stairs. But here they are...



And here is the little piece I composed...

Morning, the last day. A stillness here. I witness canyon walls... striated grey, cream, mountain-Laurel flecked. Everywhere, things clinging to edges... yucca, purple-budded prickly pear, cedars in miniature. Water flows, ripples, catches new light. I close my eyes, hear the ascending and descending of a bird's 'too, too, too, too, too, too.' The air is barely tinged with chalky earthen fragrance. I witness all this through senses open, full, longing. Or does it witness me... morning, the last day, clinging to this edge?

RELATED:

Tod Bolsinger's Basking and Connecting at Laity Lodge

Marcus Goodyear's Rush Out to Nature, Rush Back to Work

Jim Martin's Days at the Quiet House

A prayer inspired by the canyon, the birds... Hand, at LL's Love Notes to Yahweh


LL ELSEWHERE THIS WEEK:

Why I Became a Vegetarian, at TCW Magazine


STONE CROSSINGS:

Ted's book club post Forest Star: Humility

Laity Lodge photos by L.L. Barkat.

Journeys

Recently, Long Island Express Girl talked about how her journey to Mount Hermon shook things up in her soul. Sorted things. Righted things. Clarified. As a result, she's actually going to change churches.

Journeys can do that for us. Turn things upside down and sideways. Take us away, only to bring us home with a new perspective. Bring us to action.

In his book The Attentive Life, Leighton Ford talks about embarking on a second journey, along which we begin more and more to become our true selves, to discover the true End of our lives. We often need, he says, a spiritual jolt to start us on the second journey, to make us stop and listen long enough to pay attention to what God is saying to us. (p.139) As I thought about Long Island Express Girl, I considered that, in going away, she had experienced a jolt that got her to stop and listen, to pay attention.

In the past year this jolt has been for me, quite simply, going nowhere at all. Just my own back yard. And I'm going to write about that, as many of you already know.

But even as I prepare to write about that, I'm quietly stepping into a new place. Yes, I spent a year going nowhere to go somewhere. Now I'm thinking about the flip side. Going somewhere to go somewhere. I may not manage to do any of these retreats offered by the people at Laity Lodge (sigh), but I am feeling a nudge to step beyond my own geography to discover the true End to my life.

I don't know where you're at. Maybe this year you need to stay put in your own back yard. Or maybe you need to journey elsewhere. If you're led to take a journey, you might just want to retreat to Texas. The offer to win that opportunity might be all the jolt you need.




Photos of Laity Lodge provided by Laity Lodge. Retreat Logo and Banner design by L.L. Barkat. If you want to join the High Calling Blogs group writing project and share your thoughts about the issue of retreat, alert Mark Goodyear and link to Chris Cree where all posts on this theme will be featured.

RELATED POSTS:

LL's Retreat to Appreciate
Kathy's poignant Only the Strong Retreat and Surrender
Carl's enchanting and profound Sacred Ingress
Gordon's lull-you-into-longing A Listening Prayer
Sam's touching story Asleep I Sang with the Body of Christ
Robert's surprise meetings, body and soul: The Power of Retreat
Mary's simple thoughts: Retreat, Retreat, Retreat... at Home
Spaghettipie's brief but powerful time of Retreat
Heather's poetic thoughts on Retreating into Creation
Gerrard's persuasive 10 Reasons: Retreats, Why?
A. Anjeanette's thoughtful (as always) It's God Who Draws Us to Retreat
Brandon's climb to retreat: The Symbol on the Rock

JUST A NOTE:
Ted Gossard started a book club for Stone Crossings. I love his first post and the surprising place of his conversion! If you'd like to listen in or comment on the conversation, check out Stepping Stones-Conversion. It would also be great to hear your own stories of conversion. If you post on the topic, you could feel free to upload your story to the Zimbio Stone Crossings Book Club.