by Heather Plett | Feb 9, 2011 | prayer, Uncategorized, writing
Sometimes, I forget how to pray. No… scratch that – not just SOMETIMES, but OFTEN. Almost every single day.
I have a lousy memory. I forget what it takes to tap into God’s power. I forget that there is something bigger than me at work in the world. I forget that I don’t have to do all of this work alone. I forget that often the most valuable use of my time is to just SHUT UP and LISTEN.
As my last post suggests, I have too often fallen victim to the cult of productivity. We value “busy” in our culture. We don’t value sitting quietly and listening to the wisdom of the God of our understanding. Even in our prayers we think we have to be DOING something all the time. Like maybe we have to fill our prayer time with a whole lot of talking, reeling off a long list of things we think God should be doing in our lives and the lives of the people around us.
It’s not that God doesn’t want to hear from us, but often I think what God wants is just for us to sit quietly, submit our will and our thoughts, and just listen.
The book I’m writing is causing me to think a lot about the day to day presence of God. I have never had such a strong sense of the presence of God in my life as I did during those three weeks in the hospital waiting for my son to arrive. Yesterday I caught myself thinking “I wonder what I could do to go back to that place – to once again sense God’s presence in that way.”
God has a sneaky way of responding when we ask questions like that. Yesterday I read two books that, ostensibly, have nothing to do with prayer, and yet the topic of prayer showed up in both of them. First I was reading Lit
, a memoir by Mary Karr that tells the story of her journey from alcoholic agnostic to sober Catholic. When she joins her first twelve step program, she has great difficulty submitting to a Higher Power. It just doesn’t make sense to her. Gradually, she learns to get down on her knees and submit. Gradually, she is transformed and she no longer has to fight the battle of addiction alone.
After finishing Lit, I picked up A World Waiting to Be Born
by one of my favourite writers, M. Scott Peck. It’s a book about civility, but lo and behold, there’s a whole chapter on prayer. Peck says that when people ask him how he manages to be so productive in his life, his answer is “I spend 2 hours every day doing nothing.” Three times a day, for 40 minutes, he sets aside all other distractions and spends dedicated time in prayer/meditation. He credits his success as a psychologist and author to the fact that he submits to his Higher Power for direction and wisdom.
Two books in one evening telling me I needed to pray more. I got the message.
This morning, after the house was empty, I climbed into the bathtub and decided that would be my prayer time. Lying there, taking deep breaths, I said “God, I open my mind to your presence.” And then I lay there, open and waiting. Well, these things don’t come naturally, and just like my running practice, I know that I have to put in the day to day effort before something becomes natural.
Here’s a little how my thought process went. “God, I open my mind to your presence. Hmmm… perhaps if I picture setting a lovely table, complete with flowers and pretty dishes, and invite God to sit with me…. oooh… I like that… wouldn’t that make a lovely blog idea? I could prepare a guided meditation for people about how to invite God’s presence…. oops… I’m slipping into meta-praying – thinking about praying instead of doing it… Okay, let’s try this again… God, I open my mind to your presence. Come sit at my table and dine with me…. Hmmm… I better make this quick. I’ve got lots of work to do. I have to prep my teaching notes and mark all those papers and…”
Yeah, you know how these things go.
But at least I’m trying. And maybe tomorrow I’ll get a few extra seconds in before my mind wanders again.
by Heather Plett | Feb 8, 2011 | growth
Some days (like today) I am not very productive. I get one or two things done, but more often than not, I wander around the house (or the internet) rather aimlessly without any real focus. Often those days come right after I’ve had a particularly productive day (like yesterday).
Today, the whole concept of productivity is annoying me. Why do we focus so much of our attention on productivity? Why does it seem to be the be-all and end-all of success?
I just received an email about a workshop on innovation that had this opening line: “Increase your odds of success with tools that generate new product ideas using systematic processes. Build your world-class framework, blah, blah, blah.” For one thing – UGH. Gobbledy gook. For another thing, do our “tools of success” have to be wrapped up in “generating new product ideas” and “systematic processes?” I tend to be more in the organic school of creativity, so that language doesn’t really work for me.
Sure productivity is a valuable thing, but some days it’s okay NOT to be productive. Some days we’re much better off in contemplation mode rather than productivity mode. Some days, just wandering around the house is accomplishing exactly what we need at that time.
Recently I read an intriguing fact about Chinese bamboo plants. When you plant a Chinese bamboo, you have to be very patient. At first, nothing happens. There are no green shoots or any outward signs of growth at all for the first, second, third, or fourth year. The fifth year, a shoot pushes out of the ground, and suddenly it grows at astonishing rates – up to 40 feet in a year! (Credit to an article by Jean Shinoda Bolen for that tidbit.) Though nothing seemed to be happening at first, the bamboo plant was developing its root system and preparing itself for its year of productivity.
The same can be said for all of us. Sometimes we need to let the seed germinate. Sometimes we just need to be content with the process of putting down roots – for years if it takes that long. Through it all, we just have to trust that the day will come when we will sprout and remarkable growth will happen.
If you haven’t been productive today, don’t worry about it. Perhaps wandering around the house is just your way of making sure you’re well rooted and ready to blossom.
(Photo credit: Mike Lowe, Flickr)
by Heather Plett | Feb 7, 2011 | writing
It can be crazy-making, this writing thing. Every day you open a vein and pour your blood onto the page. Some days the blood flows, other days it dries up in an ugly clot before it comes anywhere near your page. And then some days it feels like you’ll never be able to stop the flow and they’ll find you dead on the floor, drained by the very page that was meant to make you feel whole again.
Every day you ask yourself “Is this working? Am I digging deep enough? Am I telling my whole truth or glossing over the details that will make me look like a fool? Am I wasting my precious time for nothing? Am I fooling myself?”
The ugly gremlins want to choke you nearly every day with their resistance. “Look how well so-an-so can write. You’ll never be as good as her. Maybe you should quit and go back to writing press releases. And besides, this story isn’t worth telling. It’s horse shit and you’re delusional for thinking otherwise. You’ll never amount to anything as a writer. Haven’t you noticed? Hardly anyone shows up at your blog – it’s because you’re boring them with this crap. All the GOOD writers have thousands of readers and you… well, you’re not one of them.”
And yet you write. You just keep showing up at the page day after day and you write. Because it’s the only thing you know how to do. Because you have to. Because it feels like breathing, this writing thing – it always has. As natural and life-giving and just as desperately necessary as breathing. Try to stop it and you know you’ll soon be gasping for life like a dying lung cancer patient.
Something on that blank page beckons you back to it every single day. And so you write. Critics and gremlims and prophets of doom be damned.
Writing is what you must do. Writing is your therapy, your salvation, your peace of mind. Writing is your drug, your life-force, and – when you can bare to offer it up – your paltry gift to the world.
You are, after all, a writer and you will write. Even if the only eyes that peruse that page are your own.
by Heather Plett | Feb 4, 2011 | journey, Wisdom, writing
“Have you always been this open on your blog?”
A student asked me that yesterday, marvelling at my willingness to put myself out here on this “page” in such a vulnerable way, sharing intimate details of my life like my breast reduction surgery, my husband’s suicide attempt, and the stillbirth of my son.
“It’s partly just who I am,” I said. “I’m a bit of an open book and if people want to read it, that’s fine with me. It’s not always easy, but I’ve learned often enough in my life that if we share our stories, it helps other people who are going through similar stories.”
This conversation took place after a session in class when I’d asked them to do a free write around the question “If I were fearless, I would…” When I asked if people wanted to share, most people talked about their fear of things like base-jumping or swimming in water where there is fish, but one woman dug a little deeper and opened up about how she deals with depression and has actually stood at the edge of a bridge contemplating the jump. “I don’t normally talk about these things,” she said, taking a deep breath, “but… I feel safe here, so I’m going to share.”
“I’ve come through some horrible things and I want to share my stories,” she continued. “If I were fearless, I would figure out how to share my stories so they could help other people.”
“You’ve started right here in this classroom,” I said. “You’ve taken the first step and you’re going to figure out how to take the next one.”
Her words have stayed with me, as have the words of the women who spoke to me after class about my own experience of sharing my stories. “I’m so glad you’re writing a book,” one of them said.
“I’m glad too,” I said, and I am. SO glad these stories that have been burning inside me for ten years are finally finding their way to the page.
I have to tell you, though, there’s a whole other level of vulnerability that I’m having to peel away in order to adequately tell the stories that this book entails. I may be vulnerable and open on this blog, but there are still things that I choose not to share in this place – things that feel too shameful or too personal or too raw to be seen in the light of day. If I am to do this book justice, though, some of those things will have to emerge.
What am I talking about? Well, for starters, today I’m trying to work through some of the deeply spiritual things that happened for me in the hospital. I’m really struggling with how to share those pieces honestly, because some of it will make me sound a little “out there” and some of it doesn’t really fit in any kind of box I’ve gotten used to placing my spirituality in. I don’t know what to do with that yet, but I’m trying because I just have a sense that this is really important and needs to be shared.
Yesterday I re-read the following quote from Jean Shinoda Bolen:
To bring about a paradigm shift in the culture that will change assumptions and attitudes, a critical number of us have to tell the stories of our personal revelations and transformations.
Wow. That was just what I needed to hear. I wrote that quote on the whiteboard that sits in front of my desk. (And just now, as I re-read it again, I had a powerful sense of deja-vu, remembering reading something similar about paradigm shifts while I was in the hospital waiting for Matthew to arrive.)
These stories are important. Not just my stories, but YOUR stories and the stories of the students in my class. Sharing them brings about transformation and change. Sharing them changes us all.
Today on a Skype call, my wise friend Desiree said to me, after I’d shared with her some of the discussion in yesterday’s class, “it sounds like you need to teach a course about writing for social change.”
“Huh, you’re right! I hadn’t thought of that.” I love teaching the class I’m teaching now, but as you can tell, I’m not sticking to the traditional curriculum of Writing for Public Relations. I want to see my students emerge as writers who can impact change, not just get good jobs as spin doctors.
Writing for social change. That’s what we do when we share our stories. That’s what we need to do more of.
That, my friends, is why I’m writing a book, and that’s why I’m going to dig down deep and tell the stories that scare me and that might make me sound a little crazy.
by Heather Plett | Feb 2, 2011 | Uncategorized
A few updates:
1. I’m no longer blogging at my old blog, Fumbling for Words. I decided it was time to stop fumbling and just start writing. It was a little sad letting that URL go after nearly six years, but it felt like it was time. I have, however, migrated all of my posts from there onto this blog, so you can find any of my old posts here.
2. As many of you know, a book is in the works. It’s taking top priority right now, so I’m not going to promise that I’ll be the world’s best blogger. One or two posts a week is all you can expect to find here. If you find more, it might be a good time to send me a little note that says “GET BACK TO WRITING YOUR BOOK!”
3. That being said, as crazy as it may sound, I’ve started a NEW blog. As you can tell from my last few posts, I’ve fallen in love with running. It’s starting to take over too many of my posts around here and it doesn’t totally fit with what I want to do here. Plus I’m annoying my Facebook friends because every time I run I come home on an adrenalin high and I just want to shout “I WENT RUNNING! IT WAS AMAZING!” So I decided to house my little love affair with running over at a new home called Running Practice. It’s partly about how my running practice has become my spiritual practice, my creativity booster, and so much more. I won’t promise any brilliance over there, though – some days it will just say “I went running. It was amazing!”
