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Blog about participating in Carrie's Sacred Ordinary Writing Workshop
July 16th, 2008
by Shawndra Miller
Living Mindfully
Adventures in the Present Moment
"The Sacred Ordinary"
Folksinger/songwriter Carrie Newcomer offered a workshop called Writing Mindfully: Exploring the Sacred Ordinary yesterday at Irvington United Methodist Church - within walking distance from me. Now how much better can life get? A little better: did I mention there was no charge?
Carrie talked about how writers commit to being here, experiencing what is, and then we get to experience the moment again as we write. "We get to live twice." (For me that number can be higher depending on the number of revisions, usually an infinite amount, except here in this blog where I have to let good enough be good enough.)
She also said - and here is where this blog has been a true gift to me - she tells herself, "This is the song I write today." She does not have to cram everything in her life into it, she does not have to make a masterpiece, she just has to tell this one story, make up this one song. Blogging is kind of like that: just a regular practice of setting down some small thing that seems meaningful or interesting or funny.
She also said:
I'm writing because that's what I do. That's what I love. And the words need to get written down.
It strikes me that surrender is a big part of that: we may not choose the words that need to be written, we may not even know what they are yet. Showing up, being present, and letting it flow is how we divine those words.