“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.
First Song
In the beginning, before writing, all speech was song. It is said, in the beginning was the word, and in this story, the word is a song. Even before your first breath you were given a song. Finding the note that belongs to you is a remembrance, something you have always known, but forgotten, a recognition as close to you as your own face. Something no one else has, and or will ever be again. When you hear that song, it strikes yes in your heart. You belong. Everything belongs. You mount whatever horse is waiting.
Through song, somehow all your efforts and wrong turns are rearranged into a new shape that has always been. Waiting. Grace is this intervention, the silence between notes, banishing thought. Recognizing your own place in the world, finding and being found. The song is not singing to you, but to that place inside that knows who you are.
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!
Study in Blue
The first question from the students in my January online class was:
What do you mean, it’s the small things that are important?
I paused. This simple question struck unexpectedly deep. What I was thinking about was beginning the new year with something small, slender or secret— rather than pledging to do something big. Rather than make a splash, make an offering. Something you can hold in your hand, or your heart. After a pause I thought, that is where the power is.
What do you mean, it’s the small things that are important? She asked.
What I found myself saying was:
I just watched my father die. When someone goes, they leave a space behind. What does one who goes leave you? What memory strikes your heart? Is it their accomplishments, their possessions, their image? I saw clearly, it was not my father’s inventions or belongings, his work, or his beautiful hand-crafted Japanese knives. It was the small acts of kindness.
What sustains you in collective loss and anxiety?
If you are not exhausted by months of Covid, the upcoming US election, and the uncertainty and tumult that has visited our world, then you are among the few. What sustains you and replenishes you in this time of collective loss and uncertainty?
The answer, of course, is mostly known. But how often do we pause long enough to hear the voice inside, and the answer that is waiting? I make an effort to begin the day by reminding myself to wake up slowly, to extend the time between waking and sleeping. I just don’t let myself get out of bed with my mind racing ahead like it wants to … and there is plenty of time for screens later. There is an implosion of “newspaper truth,” which by its nature needs to be dramatic or dismal to get our attention. My only hope is to begin by extending the morning quiet. Just this morning, in the wee hours, the full blue moon got me out of bed, and outside in it. What a comfort she is in her constancy and change, unceasingly waning and waxing, departing and returning, from total darkness to lambent light. Millions and countless millions of years of gliding across the night, witnessing every kind of disaster and miracle. I feel certain we all have a moon inside — a witness, something that returns and brightens after every darkest night.
Hundreds of years ago, Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his journal on the necessity of slowing down, gazing … looking long enough at something until that something itself becomes alive. Any of you who have beheld the object you are drawing long enough know what I am talking about. Stones, apples, lamp posts and books — all things have their presences.
Fishing the River
The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.
— Barry Lopez
Anyone who has spent time in the desert, watching and listening, has felt the sense of depth and presence that defies the initial barren glance. I have taken many road trips to the New Mexico desert, and what follows is a true story of one I took years ago, headed toward Ghost Ranch.
Fishing the River
I am almost to the New Mexico border where the sign says, in big red letters, "You Are Leaving Colorado." Further down the road there's a second sign: “Welcome to New Mexico, The Land of Enchantment.” I have always wondered about that place between the two signs. It is some kind of demios oneiron, a village of dreams, that does not exist on any map.
Highway 17 is a rural mountain road circling above the Chama River. I have traveled it countless times on my way to teach at Ghost Ranch (named by the Spanish as a place of witches, “Ranchos de los Brujos”). This route is marked by reminders of our mortality. Rural New Mexican byways are decorated with descansos, a pastoral cross with flowers, honoring the resting place of one who has died on the road. Often I have stopped when seeing an old cemetery guarded by iron gates and filled with plastic roses and small figurines of the Virgin Mary. The gravestones have old writing and engravings of crosses, of which I have made many rubbings. New Mexican graveyards are distinct — flavored with Native American and Mexican roots. Mary is represented as the Virgin of Guadalupe, "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." There are many stories of The Virgin of Guadalupe, going back to the 1500’s. She symbolizes the bridge between heaven and earth.
To make a tax-deductible donation to the Mabel Dodge Luhan Retreat, click here.
"Aum is the sound of God's radiance." — Joseph Campbell
Many of you have asked about the possibility of me teaching online. I have thought a long while about this, and have begun by offering some “one-to-one” classes. Below are my thoughts on how to approach this.
My motivation as a teacher is to connect with my students. When we are all in the same room together, something happens: birdsong is audible, silences deepen, and the sky is visible. Presences gather as the class progresses. That energy does not communicate in the same embodied way through a screen.
What lifeline can we use through this electronic medium to evoke what we are missing? This is the question I have been asking myself in response to requests for me to teach online.
There are two things that are a part of every class I teach: meditation and poetry.
“We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.”— Howard Zinn
Laurie Doctor Studios stands in solidarity with Black communities, and everyone around this world who is working to dismantle systemic racism and white supremacy. I am taking a vow not to just stand by or retreat to my habitual comforts, but to pause and listen and actively work to remove the blinders that come with racial privilege.
But where do we begin? How do we avoid being overcome by despair at the multitude of problems? The title of this post returns us to the present. It is possible to find direction and create a starting point right where you are.
“We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an endless succession of presents, and to live now as we think humans should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
— Howard Zinn
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…
"It is not what we do, but how we do it." — Stephen Nachmanovitch
Coloring books may seem like an odd place to begin with the subject of improvisation, but doing something simple that has structure, and that you enjoy, leads to play. And play leads to improvisation. And improvisation leads to joy. Coloring books give you the structure of lines and the freedom of color.
In this time of sequester, I am thinking of the danger of listlessness leading to depression. Yesterday, pondering all the upheaval that has happened over here — studio flooded, preparing for a road trip to see my Dad, the dreaded IRS (that’s three, so things will turn soon…) — I remembered what Brother David Steindl-Rast said: the antidote to listlessness, boredom, overwhelm, and fogginess is joy. Instead of taking a nap, I asked myself that question — what joyful thing will wake me up and change the course of this day?
Improvisation, play and spontaneity are all components to this question: