MaW session 24th August 2021

 

The sun stole a few of our writers away today leaving us with a smaller, cosier group.

Adrienne introduced her "Noticing the content of the undercurrent" practice with a  poem "Well of Grief" by David Whyte 

Bev took a writing prompt from the poem "Shore Leave" by Charles Causley:

 

but I hasten away

******************************************************************

And now for some of 

YOUR WRITING:

INVISIBLE

by Karen Ewing

Our telephone rings, but I choose not to answer

Knowing you will reach for it before the third ring,

I know the news already.

The chaotic dialogue of Orderly, Manager

And an anguished son, estranged by mile upon mile of motorway.

Against the invisible background she weeps.

A tax payer all her life,

Never a burden,

Reduced to this.

Entombed in a failing hospital bed,

More dishonest than her failing eyesight.

Why now? Why me?

I’m ninety-three for Heaven’s sake.

Deep within this noisy, post pandemic ridden ward

With its odourless food,

The one sense she can never recover is her sight.

I close the door on their conversation 

Riddled with anger and disappointment and fear.

“Capacity - we have no capacity today, Sir

No capacity to discharge your mother home today.”

Another day we will never recover.

And still she weeps silently into our telephone.

Shore Leave

by Doreen Kelly

I have been chosen for shore leave this evening. Oh what will the others think? In the depths of the darkness I cower not sure if I'm good enough. Am I strong enough? Am I good enough? Am I the correct size and shape to fit into our mosaic to join the wishy washy dance? But I hasten to do my bit as even shore leave needs all to do their bit. Away we hasten towards the rising moon, away from the unfaithful ocean toward the siren of the shore. Goal achieved, peace follows as shinge rolls, rearranges and forms anew. In that moment I looked up and observed a goddess at peace yet awesome. Statuesque in the moonlight. I tiptoe away hoping not to be the cause of her stirring. Please don't let the mirror shatter on my account.  

********************************************************************

Thanks to you all ...

... for your heartening feedback as always!

Kay: wonderful thanks kx

Giovanna: “before you glimpse beneath the surface of my skin and ask” I love this Cath

Catrice: “Memories like unstirred dirt”

Giovanna: ALL OF THAT KAY!!!

Catrice: “What scribble of my pen, would be worth the read” — so honest and poignant!

Catrice: “This shrug of ailing earth”

Giovanna: “touch the body, smooth cotton skin”

Kay: thankyou everyone   a wonderful session  kx

********************************************************************

 

Thanks to funders

Lapidus Scotland gratefully acknowledges the support of Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership's "Wellbeing for Longer in Glasgow Fund" (managed by Impact Funding Partners).

MaW session 10th August 2021

Today Adrienne introduced her senses practice with a poem "The Road" by Kenneth Steven.

Bev took a writing prompt from the poem The Way it Is by William Stafford:

there’s a thread you follow

******************************************************************

And now for some of 

YOUR WRITING:

Thread

by Bonbon

I wake up every single morning with a joy to be alive

I wander around MY world with my wonderfully happy dog, he’s just padding and bouncing beside me 

I engage with almost everyone in my path even just with a nod or a smile or an hour long conversation

I sometimes give - I sometimes receive

When I listen I hear so much pain, grief, sadness and tremendous confusion and turmoil

Strangers we are - yet we open up and reveal so much of ourselves

Just in one day , the thread of me is weaving in and around people I may never meet again

Our threads have criss-crossed but never tangle 

We’ve woven a beautiful fabric together, all shapes and sizes, but always large enough for us to take something away

In parting ways - I wander on - somehow my thread feels stronger

There is a thread to follow (to Sutherland)

 by Joyce Nicholson

The road north, north north and west,

landing in home, where I have never lived,

but deep down, in the thick threads of being, connecting ancient memory.

Here among the peat bogs and waterlied lochans

I find the start and end of my threads in this world,

Three billion years of geoshifting thrust beaches on top of mountains

and left the bones of lynx, polar and brown bears in limestone caves.

The majesties of Suilven, Canisp and Quinag sharply slope to gaping white wild beaches

where, just before jagged cliffs lie two heroes of ours holding us closely with their threads of peaceful praxis, ever alive. 

I'm following my heart

by Karen Ewing

I'm following my heart.

I've grown accustomed to the quiet stirrings of nature,

And birdsong,

And wildlife

Here, in my magical nature park.

I remain free to choose

Who I see,

Who I visit,

Who I invite to my new home.

I learn to care less about offending, more about the necessity of solace.

I am in control,

I am steering this ship which occasionally tries to throw me overboard.

I have no need for endless chitter chatter, and gossip, and white noise -

The whisper of my new life, my newfound self beckons.

It is enough.

And I relish the peace which comes from knowledge,

And writing,

And listening,

And breathing.

Solitary rules!

Although I have some need for company

Now it is measured, precious, timely

And when the clock pauses and the conversation stops,

I return to my other life -

My life of wild swans,

Leafy lanes and

Frothing streams.

The Mill where the reed beds churn, and fold, and float away upstream

Into the future.

My thread of new life,

Newly lived in the dawn of another day,

I am breathing in my future.

‘there’s a thread you follow’ (William Stafford)

by Britt Doughty-Godchaux

It pops out of something you’re wearing

the thread. Maybe it’s an old jumper or

a sock as you bend to pick something else up

off the floor. That thread is you. 

It is the you you forgot. It’s the you

you forgot when you were trying to figure

out who to be. 

You pick it free, and unfurling before you

is that person past. The one with

sharp corners, tactless responses, 

clearer vision. 

It’s like that jumper or sock from

where the thread emerged came itself

from a box in the attic with a

hinged lid pinned down with lifetimes of

dust. 

You are that treasure inside. 

You were waiting there for you to find you.

And now that you have, 

what will you do?

untitiled

by Doreen Kelly

There's a thread you follow that weaves through the different colours and textures of our homes. Following it as it runs through hopes and fears you flow through your life. A shaper stronger needle is used to guide a double strand out of the front door and into the community. The thread stubbornly binds together hatred and love, the needle stabs and tugs the double strand of cotton through grass and pavement, unthinkingly the artisan binds justice and injustice together.

You follow as the cotton cuts into your ever so sensitive hands, sharing the suffering you are not watching from a distance. 

********************************************************************

Thanks to you all ...

... for your heartening feedback as always!

Annan: I’m aware of how my body is more sensitive to others stress when I allow myself to open and be aware.

Annan: My protective self wants to engage when I hear of death and ambulances, and this is how I shut down in day to day life. How to be open and not take in others pain? Or is it ok to let the pain in and pass through me?

Catherine: sorry for being so late, didnt realise the time

Bev: there’s a thread you follow

Giovanna: Hi all, sorry I’m late. Can anyone tell me the prompt? thank you!

Amber: there’s a thread you follow

Giovanna: Thanks Amber

Giovanna: “the shark in me” I want to have that framed!

Amber: Thank you for sharing your experience Karen and Bev. Very current and useful for me to hear.

Britt: Karen, could you please write your poem out (whether this vision or the next or the next) as I think I might need to refer back to it in future. Thank you!

Giovanna: So glad I made the last hour, so many brilliant words here, thanks averyone

Amber: Really wonderful to hear from everyone who spoke this evening. Plenty of resonance on topics in my life and food for thought

Annan: Thanks everyone. Your words and honesty inspire me and call upon my higher self.

Karen: Such a powerful session. Thanks everyone, God Bless xx

Nichole: Thank you, take care everyone

Catrice: Thank you for this class.  Much appreciated.

Joyce: thankyou what nourishment

 

 ********************************************************************

 

Thanks to funders

Lapidus Scotland gratefully acknowledges the support of Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership via the Wellbeing for Longer in Glasgow Fund managed by Impact Funding Partners

MaW session 3rd August 2021

 

Today's mindfulness practice was Loving Kindness and Adrienne introduced it with the poem "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

 Bev introduced the writing sessions with  ~ "Revenant" by David Donnison

long gone though you are

or

your kindness is

*******************************************************************

And now for some of 

YOUR WRITING:

Your Kindness is…

by Joyce Nicholson

 

Your kindness is a safe refuge

among violent recurrent storms and even calmer peaceful days,

your kindness is the lightest of loves, lip curling and nurturing holding,

your kindness is a solidarity to me and all beings, an equanimity of love,

kindness is the most powerful essence of hope and transformation.

Metta to all beings, regardless of the place you were born, where you travelled from to get ‘here’,

or what mother tongue was geid to you,

Metta to you regardless of the house you live in or the street you lie down in to sleep, the clothes you wear or the work you do, 

Metta to you regardless if you eat too many carbs, indulge in ‘the drink’ or inject crack and heroin into your arm or groin,

love and solidarity to all beings, transforming our hearts and minds, that is what your kindness is. 

inspired by David Donnison’s ‘Revenant’

by Kay Ritchie

 

In primary 1

I was the one who tied boys’ shoelaces, read The Secret Seven to the class.  Perhaps that was why Miss Haggart, renowned harridan, now long gone, showed patience when I wrote with the wrong hand, left instead of the right, wrote my letters back to front.

She didn’t rap my fingers with a ruler.  She didn’t tie my hand behind my back, although she terrified our mothers, terrorised the boys.

But looking back I realise that she was of that generation who’d lost fathers, brothers, lovers, to the war, were traumatised, numbed and often hard as rock.

So I consider her indulgence at my cack-handed copperplate a kindness, a sort of love & I appreciate.

On our anniversary

by Annan Paterson Hansen

Your kindness is

the thing my father 

read about before we

said our vows.

How could we imagine

that sweetness could

grow sour with days

of disappointment?

Now we lie together,

face to face.

I say “I’m sorry” and 

you say “I’m broken”.

Forgiving and healing

through these years

of love and pain,

we are transformed,

so that even if we 

head now towards 

the great unknown,

alone and afraid,

we hold hands

as companions of mystery.

The grateful understanding

of thirty eight years.

Long gone though you are

by Doreen Kelly

Long gone though you are, your assurance still lingers. As long as I breathe on this Earth your influence can never be banished. Your different view of the world and the questions you dared to voice opened my mind. The world may have been telling me that my differences were wrong, a problem and a source of shame that required to be hidden deeply away from society. You acknowledged it all and never questioned my experiences and interpretations. What you did question was whether THEY are, were and could be correct?

      Friends may have been hard to come by elsewhere but your ironclad assurance sent me back to my everyday world stronger and more resilient. In these days of social media I learned that throughout these twenty odd years our loving kindnesses have seen us sitting on our immoveable rocks gazing towards each other throughout our late teens and young adulthood. We were separated by arguments and dogmas that we probably didn't fully know or understand. A brother's, mother's and sister's actions threw up walls that we had no technology to help us climb back then.

prompt: long gone that you are (David Donnison)

by Britt Doughty-Godchaux

Is it bizarre that I know you’re going 

long before you’ve gone? 

Is it bizarre to imagine your memories

even as we make them?

Can the present be bittersweet and missed

even as I sit steady in your gaze?

These are the things of flesh, of flesh

leaving as it holds souls near. 

These lips and hands will not stay

even if they are not parted. 

How do I hold you close knowing

the holding is foolish?

(Although it’s also all I can do.)

These koans of this lifetime

these thousand meals at this table

these moments caught or forgottenn

they are life. 

Until they are something else.

The things unknowable beyond. 

********************************************************************

Thanks to you all ...

... for your heartening feedback as always!

Joyce: thankyou xxx

Kay: such a lovely exercise   thankyou kx

Catrice: I feel so lucky to be part of this beautiful community. This series is part of my own personal self-care.  Thank you. 💚

Susan: sending everyone everykindness

Adrienne: ❤️

Bev: long gone though you are or your kindness is

Bex: Thank you all for sharing your time tonight. I'm slipping away just now but look forward to seeing you next week xx

Giovanna: I completely agree with that CArth

Britt: I love that line 'companions of mystery'. Amazing.

Giovanna: “traumatised, and numb and often rock hard”

Britt: Agree. I know too many who are rock hard from their losses.

Giovanna: “your kindness is the lightest love”

Doreen: I loved the rhythm of that Helen

Britt: Agree, Doreen!! And it is so interesting that we keep dinosaur bones around and visit them and ignore death. I never thoughts about it.

Britt: Thanks for sharing that, Doreen...

Helen: Thanks Doreen,,,brave to share and great that you have reconnected

Helen: brilliant last line

Joyce: wonderful Kate thankyou xxx

Britt: I'd love to read that again.

Doreen: That was amazing, Amber

Helen: fabulous tribute, he sounds a very special person

Amber: that made my hair stand on end

Catrice: From my children’s laugh-loud lips — Love that line!

Helen: blown away

Doreen: That's why Giovanna makes us all jealous and question whether we should be allowed to use the same words.

Giovanna: Don’t do that Doreen, your words are so important

Giovanna: Wait until they all see your amazing book

Doreen: "Laugh loud mouths" amazing phrase

Annan: Got to run to my meeting  on the hour. Thank you all and blessings.

Giovanna: thanks Cath they sound great

Amber: Thank you for creating this wonderful space Adrienne and Bev.

Amber: Great to spend this time with you all

Kay: such wonderful generous words shared at these workshops    thankyou to everyone   kx

Britt: Thank you!! <3

Giovanna: HUge thanks again to everyone, and especially Bev and Adrienne xxx

Y: Thank you all. Tonight was so incredibly powerful. I feel so lucky to be a part of this group  Love to you all xxx

 

********************************************************************

 

Thanks to funders

Lapidus Scotland gratefully acknowledges the support of Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership via the Wellbeing for Longer in Glasgow Fund managed by Impact Funding Partners