{"id":6127,"date":"2019-06-01T10:44:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T14:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6127"},"modified":"2019-06-01T10:44:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T14:44:22","slug":"writing-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6127","title":{"rendered":"Writing Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Richard Rohr<\/a>\u2019s daily meditation:\u00a0 “<\/span>I learned that if the quiet space, the questions themselves, and blank pages had not been put in front of me, I may never have known what was lying within me.”<\/p>\n

It occurred to me that the times of blankness, which I find very uncomfortable, may be trying to get me to look at my inner process.\u00a0 <\/span>So I thought I would try writing to get in touch with a deeper part of me.\u00a0 <\/span>Paula was at the talk by Marcelle Martin<\/a>, who wrote the book on Quaker Spirituality that we discussed in book group.<\/p>\n

This is what I wrote on Wednesday, May 29<\/p>\n

Rohr talks about Ira Progoff<\/a>\u2019s journal method, and how writing in certain ways can bring forth things you didn\u2019t know you knew.\u00a0 <\/span>Paula said last night: \u201cWhat does your tender heart say now?\u201d<\/p>\n

What does my tender heart say now.\u00a0 <\/span>Pain, so much pain.\u00a0 <\/span>Pain for the species lost, the languages lost, the die off of pollinators \u2014 bees and butterflies, the impoverishment of what surrounds us \u2014 including ugly buildings \u2014 the people who are hurting from trauma, abuse by greed, war, pollution…\u00a0 <\/span>And I don\u2019t know what to do with it.\u00a0 <\/span>It weighs me down.\u00a0 <\/span>It makes it hard to keep going.\u00a0 <\/span>It makes it hard to sit and do nothing because then the pain starts pushing to be felt.\u00a0 <\/span>It no longer comes as depression \u2014 well actually depression was an effort to not feel the pain \u2014 it comes as push push, blankness, neo-cortex off-line.\u00a0 <\/span>It comes as apathy, despair, exhaustion.\u00a0 <\/span>It comes as difficulty taking care of myself because that requires paying attention to what I need<\/span>, not to what \u201cshould\u201d be done.\u00a0 <\/span>My tender heart says \u201cI hurt, I hurt, I hurt.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>What am I supposed to do with this pain?\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cLet go of bitterness that you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you… called to bear a measure of cosmic pain.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Can I just hold it and not demand of myself that I do something about it?\u00a0 <\/span>\u201coffer your pain as prayer.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>The god inside me, my inner teacher, is bearing the pain with me.\u00a0 <\/span>That goodness beyond goodness, that I touched once, is bearing the pain too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“neo-cortex off-line” is what some trauma experts say about what happens when PTSD is triggered. \u00a0The more recent part of the brain is shut down, and the reptilian core is running the show.<\/p>\n

“Let go of bitterness…” is a quote from Sufi master Pir Vilayat Kahn<\/a>. \u00a0The original quote says: “Overcome any bitterness..” \u00a0I changed it because I don’t think it’s possible to “overcome” bitterness.<\/p>\n

“Offer your pain as prayer” is a concept spoken in many books by Elizabeth Goudge<\/a>. \u00a0I have tried without success. \u00a0Maybe just holding it and not demanding more is prayer.<\/p>\n

The “goodness beyond goodness” is something I experienced in Quaker meeting. \u00a0I can’t recall the “felt sense” but most of the time I feel sure that it’s real.<\/p>\n

Friday, May 31<\/p>\n

3rd cup of tea.\u00a0Too tired to wash dishes.\u00a0I got up at 6, tea & supplements, fed Mocha, took her for a walk.\u00a0Then had breakfast in the caf\u00e9, then to the clinic for meds which weren\u2019t there yet.\u00a0Got back here feeling tired & blunt of brain.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s CAC meditation was on God within.\u00a0My problem with that is that the word \u201cGod\u201d contains the \u201ccapricious, malicious, and willful<\/a>\u201d baggage of alcoholic parents.\u00a0But the voice within me is defective because I am defective, not trustworthy because I can\u2019t trust myself.\u00a0But if I use the word \u201cSpirit\u201d everything changes.\u00a0\u201cSpirit\u201d is like water, it can gather in oceans, fall as raindrops.\u00a0Drops can coalesce and become a puddle, a puddle can overflow into a stream and run back into the ocean.\u00a0Spirit can vivify the Universe, and nest in my heart.\u00a0Spirit can be the voice of my guides and guardians, who I ask for help.\u00a0They always answer so lovingly and sometimes I distrust them thinking they are just me trying to make myself comfortable with a lie.\u00a0Then I have to believe they are separate from me, bigger and wiser, so I can trust what they say.<\/p>\n

Well, if my head is blank and blunt, I can at least write like that.\u00a0What I can\u2019t do is practical things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“My guides and guardians,” I started writing for guidance sometime in 1999 before I went to Findhorn for the first time. Findhorn<\/a> had started with two women, Dorothy MacLean and Eileen Caddy, listening or writing for guidance. \u00a0I had read about it and started writing for guidance as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Richard Rohr\u2019s daily meditation:\u00a0 “I learned that if the quiet space, the questions themselves, and blank pages had not been put in front of me, I may never have known what was lying within me.” It occurred to me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,9,11,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guidance","category-healing","category-journal","category-present-day","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}