“I heard my whole self saying and singing what I knew: I can.”
This poem by Denise Levertov struck me for the new year. It reminds me that no matter our circumstance, some presence can make itself felt, and this is all the confirmation that is needed to make the world new.
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me—a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic—or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
— Denise Levertov, Variations on a Theme of Rilke (The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem I, Stanza I)
Wherever I find myself in 2024, it is always possible, and even hopeful, to begin again, to feed the unuttered seeds born in darkness. January is a time when thr eventual blossoming of these seeds is nourished by turning inward. There is that phrase in the Levertov poem about being given an honor and a task. Even if I don’t know what this means, I can begin with something that matters. Something that matters meaning simply something that matters to me alone.
“Our summer made her light escape into the beautiful.” —
On this side of the world, outward-looking summer has ended just as spring is beginning in Australia. Wherever we are, we feel the shift of seasons and time passing. Here, the equinox, the balance of days and nights, is a reminder that even the happiest life requires balancing success and failure, glad and sad, right and wrong, pain and love. The movement into longer hours of darkness turns us inward. There is often a sense of loss when the long days of light recede. What is lost has the possibility of being returned to us in a new shape; a recognition of something deeper — seeds hidden in darkness.
Isn’t this what creation, the occupation of makers, is all about? Finding a new shape? Or recognition of a shape that is both new and has always been? In this short pause of equal days and nights, what is it that we wish to bring with us from summer into autumn? Or, on the other side of the world, what sleeping promise is ready for a new beginning?
“After the final no there comes a yes”
After the final no there comes a yes; And on that yes the future world depends.
— Wallace Stevens, Well-Dressed Man With a Beard
I am writing on the winter solstice, the darkest night. I have just awoke to the first snow and below freezing temperatures here in Kentucky. The bird feeder has been blown down with gusts of wind. The whole country is in this storm. It is time to plant seeds inside, to plant prayers for the coming light, for the new year.
It is time to do the thing you are afraid to do. It is time to do the thing I am afraid to do: send my book out to publishers. I am imagining that saying this aloud to you will give me courage.
Writing peels away layers, forms questions, what do I want for my readers? I see what is probably obvious, that all my writing turns toward what Robert Johnson called the numinous “slender threads” — fate, destiny, synchronicity, faith in what cannot be told, faith in the transforming ability to make a bridge between the visible and invisible world with your hands. Give your hands something to devote themselves to. Dream while you are awake. With this devotion and attention, work naturally becomes prayer. Every kind of mending is made possible.
The Invisible Driver
All these dreams about being in a car — mostly as a passenger with an invisible driver, headed for disaster. There is always a tragedy about to happen: the car is on the wrong side of the road or careening out of control down a steep incline, or in a sudden slick ice blizzard.
Just as in the “impossible tasks” theme in the old stories, there is no apparent way through. It is terrifying. I am in one of these dreams; this time I can see the driver, but he is facing backwards. His hands are not on the wheel, and he can only see where we have already been. I am in the passenger seat, looking, and unlike the driver, I see what is ahead. The road has a hole in it large enough for a truck to fall into, and deep enough for a dozen. The faraway caw of a crow draws my attention to the distant hill, where a crowd has gathered. Then, somehow, the crowd vanishes. The driver and I are alone, heading at rapid speed toward the cavernous opening. When I try to speak, no sound comes. At the last moment, the driver, still facing backwards, adeptly navigates the car over the hole with the compass of a blind seer.
As in the old stories, help comes from unexpected places. In these dreams it is the invisible driver, as most often I cannot see who is driving — I only know it isn’t me.
"Tree, Stone, Eye" | Student Images from Taos
Before I left for Taos to teach the opening classes at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, I was pushing against the inertia of our long, long sequester. I felt the uncertainty that had grown in many of us about going into the world. I felt the reluctance to move. The poem below made me smile:
My head was heavy, heavy;
so was the atmosphere.
I had to ask two times
before my hand would scratch my ear.
I thought I should be out
and doing! The grass, for one thing,
needed mowing.
— from “Inertia,” a poem by Jane Kenyon
Now I have returned from a few weeks in New Mexico, teaching the classes that had been postponed for almost two years. We were the only ones at the retreat, and the classes were small. The landscape was beautiful, christened with desert showers and new blooming flowers. Everyone had been through something significant in our long period of sequester. There was rejoicing — the fresh newness of being together in a room. This rejoicing was helped along by spectacular food, made by our chef, Sophia, and her team — and good wine.
I began, as always, with the conviction that each student who shows up has a particular gift, and is in class to enliven and strengthen that gift — the seed they were given at birth. Everyone is born with a gift. I believe, and am privileged to witness, that the making of art for its own sake will “bring into realization the self most centrally yours” (William Stafford).
Laurie Doctor Newsletter: Current Online Classes and Work
Responding to requests, we are going to offer another session of “Speak to Me From Everywhere” the week beginning March 15. Our intention is to support the lovely Taos retreat, Mabel Dodge Luhan House. We will donate 5% of all the proceeds to Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, where I hold annual retreats.
Thank you for your enthusiasm, encouragement and participation. We are delighted with the level of connection that can happen online, in spite of the longing to be in a physical place.
The focus in the class is on exploring our “near environment” through writing— using four aspects of landscape: scale, value, movement and pattern. My intention is to create an online class that mirrors, as much as it is possible, the contemplative atmosphere of the physical classroom.
Click on this link to register for “Speak to Me From Everywhere”.
Examples of student work from our most recent online class follows!
"Only in our doing can we grasp you" — Rilke
Only in our doing can we grasp you, only with our hands can we illumine you….
The first line of Rilke’s poem speaks to makers of all kinds, and how our hands can bring us back when we feel off center. Sometimes the hardest question to answer is What do I do? Or to ask yourself, listening deeply, What do I need? As they say in the old world, the veil is thinner now, Covid time reveals with urgency the gravity of the imperative to listen to your inner voice, to your calling. And to be aware, each day, of what you need. What do you need?
Odysseus’s journey was said to take 20 years to indicate it was long. For many, Covid time has shifted from something that felt more spacious, and had some security built in for the unemployed, to a feeling of long, and how can I get through?
The mind is but a visitor, it takes us out of our world…
There are so many distractions with news and this turning world, but often the biggest distraction is one’s own mind, the visitor. That visitor needs to be quiet for awhile, and let the soul emerge. Your gift has already been given. What you are waiting for has already begun. I was listening to an interview with Jordi Savall, a beloved musician, and the interviewer asked him, how did you get interested in ancient music? Jordi replied by saying that this is a misunderstanding, there is no ancient music. There are ancient manuscripts, but the music is just sleeping inside you. Take out your instrument. Begin playing and the song awakens inside you — made new.
"Every journey has secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." — Martin Buber
In preparation for a series of 14-hour drives through farmland to my father’s, from Kentucky to Minnesota, I revisited the story of Odysseus. Most of you will remember his 20-year voyage, and the monsters, goddesses, Sirens and storms he met along the way. I felt the mythical impact of being called to attend to my 96-year-old father and his dying wife, but also the “something else” — the invisible difficult web present in the family legacy. I felt trapped in that story, which creates a fixed frame of reference. A fixed frame of reference impedes the celestial help that is always here. I needed to have a deeper story inside me. Not the monkey-mind stories, but one from the universal myths that carry a timeless wisdom and a primordial knowing that has nothing to do with culture, race, gender, economics or time.
How can I begin to tell the transforming effect of having a story, which becomes a sacred map inside you? The map shows the next step, and the road is a pathway to traverse the human dilemma— the impossible circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in….
Find a place you trust
I am reconsidering this theme of finding a place you trust. This idea is needed more now, during the uncertainty and loss we all find ourselves in. Suddenly, as quick as lightning, a dear friend is gone.
Sister Corita’s first rule for her students was find a place you trust and try trusting it for awhile.
I cannot improve on this as a place to begin. When fear arises, as it does in the face of change and unpredictability, what do you do? Anxiety is a natural and universally human response, and can even be an aid to taking action. Yet we need to prevent anxiety from taking over. Everyone has gone through narrow passages, and the one we are in now is world wide. Everyone has the possibility of choosing courage over fear. With the courage it takes to traverse difficulty, something good inevitably comes. You muster the nerve to navigate the narrow passage, in spite of your fear and anxiety. Looking back at my life, I can see that when I was able to do this, coming through that door offered its own reward. Taking the risk to choose courage cultivates a trust in life, a resiliency that abides in the bigger picture, and the awareness of other forces at work.
This attitude translates to being a creator…
The Revolutionary Act of "Doing Worthy"
Doesn’t everyone have a day when things fall apart? When it takes more effort than you think you have to put one foot in front of another? When even your technical devices seem to collude against you?
My reverie, pure joy, after my exhibit was done, ended abruptly with a letter from the IRS announcing they are coming to audit my business next week. On top of this, my intrepid father, at 96, fell for the first time and broke a bone.
So my retreat here at St Meinrad, scheduled so long ago, has been infiltrated with dread and piles of papers. The amount of sorting and retrieving of records is overwhelming, seven detailed pages of requests from the IRS … which calls to mind, once again, the old Greek story of Psyche. Her first impossible task was to sort seven different kinds of seeds, filling a gigantic room, floor to ceiling, before nightfall, before Aphrodite announces her time is up. I am thankful for these stories, and for the way a story puts the human dilemma in perspective. Just this morning, on my first day of this retreat, my son, who was born a muse, called. Ma, I had this dream. In a big room were all these small piles of seeds neatly sorted, and a spiral of seeds floating upward.
There are a few spaces in my classes at ABC 2020 in Alberta, Canada this summer: