Jan 10 2009
Pages from a quieter place
Wow, when one closes off the world, even partially, for a couple of weeks–reading a 1000 page novel (highly recommended by the way–Pillars of Earth by Ken Follett), trying out some new recipes, sitting by the fireplace in the evenings and watching the Christmas tree with nothing going on but a little mental reverie, and then opens the door again–the whoosh is intense! The week has sped by–and it’s not the whoosh I want to write first into the new year.
We stepped out of our two-week mid-winter rest last Saturday evening (January 3rd) by attending a concert at the local arts center and then a reception full of island friends. It was so sweet to be greeted a dozen times with words of welcome, “You’re back? You came out for this? What did you not do this year?… I thought of you, as this was the year I spent the holidays in some kind of retreat because we were all snowed in and had to be quiet!”
The reception was potluck, of course, and candlelight and clusters of conversation moving from room to room. All we middle-agers stayed up late, “My goodness it’s 11:00PM…” We drove home in the dark, floated in the hot-tub, and slept in the next day. Sunday we took down the tree and began admitting how few holiday cards we were sending. We put away Christmas.
It’s a week later and the evidence left of our quiet time is two card tables in the living room where we are still working a few evenings more to catch up on our annual scrapbook. This is a project where we go back and review the year, collect photos and journal entries and write out the narrative of life experiences. It is an act of storycatching that always surprises me in the meaning it gathers over time.
“Maybe we don’t want to do this anymore,” I said on Solstice in my desire for totally unstructured time… “We don’t have to…Nobody looks at these but us.” And then we open the books of the years behind us and see what is there. On one level it’s a photo album: the children grow up, a grandchild is born, we look older, events both personal and professional are recorded. On one level it’s a chronology of community building: one by one and two by two and group by group, here come the people who surround our lives with love, collegiality, inspiration, outreach into the world–trips to offer circle training, consulting, vision quests, storycatching, writing (see www.peerspirit.com, our educational company website if you’re not familiar with all this). On one level it’s a shared journal of reflection on the meaning of our lives: quotes from our actual journals, strings of narrative thought, perspective over time, the chance to write things like “little did we know…” or “much to our surprise…” or “now we see…”
Of course, we want to keep doing this.
While it’s fresh, while the mess is still part of our decor, here’s the value of this record as I understand it now. First, it sends me into the pages of my own journal, starting with last winter’s volume, and the story I was carrying at that time. I had forgotten how grief-filled I was over the state of the world, how I was working with myself to attach to spirit in ways that would keep me going. Having shifted out of that space, it’s privately fascinating to watch myself work it through in the journal, to observe my process and learn from it the way I might learn from reading someone else’s writing. And then, as the work picked up and carried us forward in an astounding momentum of travel and commitment, I watched myself grow into the “yes” we had said. And when Ann had a car accident and my brother had cancer and a colleague died, and a book contract came through–I could see both the fresh and the reflective reactions to the chronology of events.
And the second benefit is sitting side by side with my partner who is having a similar experience. How often, as we are passing scissors and glue and blank pages back and forth, one says quietly to the other, “Can I interrupt you a minute, listen to this…” And that most private revealing occurs between us–how we held one another from near or far, how we individually perceived the same event with different emphases, what we wrote in the times we were apart. It is amazing to hear the voice that we each use to speak to ourselves when there is no other audience than our own hearts.
And something alchemical happens in how we can see the patterns we’ve just come from, and how we look into the path laid out before us in the coming months. We know the new year will be full of both plans and surprises–no one schedules in an accident, a health crisis, a flood, an economic crash, renewed activism, more gardening, less money, more need for community… And what we see from the volumes of the scrapbooks is that we always find ways to respond to life that make sense out of plan and surprise, that we are making in this record the raw elements of story. The building blocks, the things we count on.
How do you do this in your life?
And what are your thoughts as you enter the new year?
Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.
This year, I created a blog which enriches my journal life. Being snowed in for two weeks permitted me spend hours exploring the blog world. I never imagined I do so and it has been… kinda odd. At times funny, and at times profound. Lots of learning and new discoveries.
I always look forward to your blogs, Christina. Happy New Year and thanks for the work you and Anne do!
My birthday is in December, three weeks exactly til the end of the year. So each year I begin a notebook process on my birthday and look at what got done, what did not get done, what I thought I wanted, what I want to acknowledge others for and what I want to be acknowledged for. This year I added in forgiveness, who did I need to forgive and who did I need to ask for forgiveness. Then on Christmas, I declare my year complete and begin a collage of my vision for the new year! Looking at the domains in my life (some might call them categories) I invent an affirmation or vision statement for that domain and from that statement I collage my vision of the new year. Besides being a lot of fun, it can stand as a trim tab and keep me on course in, say, June when I have forgotten what I said I want. Blog on!
Thank you so much for this blog Christina… your words inspire me greatly!
This year is my 40th year, and I have been working on uncovering and embracing me. I have done a lot of healing work over the past decade, and focused last year on taking inventory and understanding who I am now and why. As part of this process I went through my many pictures and finished scrapbooking my backlog of photos.
Currently, I am working on a “summary” scrapbook that captures the joy, the love and the happy experiences of the past 40 years that have shaped me. This very personal scrapbook has images only, no words. Last night I was up way too late surfing the internet for images to capture the places, experiences and feelings that have shaped me that I do not have photos of and it was so delightful! The feeling I experienced as I found yet another image that captured the way I was feeling or the energy of a place was astounding. I am a person who expresses myself best with words, so it is really fun for me move outside of my comfort zone and use only images to express myself.
This process has been so extraordinary for me that I plan to continue it as an annual event and add to this scrapbook annually with a photo collage of each passing year.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts in your beautiful blog.
Shel
I am making peace with not being a regular journal keeper, and accepting that saved email to a few core friends, does do a fine job of keeping a story log. Perhaps your annual scrapbbok ritual will inspire me to orderly go through these saved treasures and edit, cut & paste the gems into those beautiful (but mostly empty,) leather bound or beaded journals in my cupboard!
I renew the pledge to myself to continue my quest of enlarging my committment to the practice and dissemination of gratitude, compassion and forgiveness.
Thank you for all the stories, inspiration and beautiful modeling. You are National Treasures! INTERNATIONAL!
I would like to pass along your blogs to women in my Northfield Mt Hermon class of ‘62 who get together quarterly to write. Thank you for including me on your blog list.
I am new to blogging, but your entry at the New Year is reminiscent of my pilgrimage across Spain in Sept/October. The metaphors were daily very significant: following the signs, letting go, keeping it simple, do I really need it? Feel free to check out my past year in Hawaii, Kenya as a “missionary” and Spain as a “pilgrim”. http://cynthiabarnard.wordpress.com. Forgive me for my slow learning curve on adding pictures and later comments.
I look forward to more of your blog entries.
Cynthia
It is interesting that I came across your post today. I am just settling back in after 4 days away at a retreat with lots of circle time. At one point we all created our lifelines up to our current age. It is amazing what significant events come and go that we forget about.
While I don’t really scrapbook, I am a photographer (by spirit, not profession) and often wonder - why do I bother taking all these photos? No one sees them but my partner & I most of the time. In the last year I didn’t take nearly as many & I can feel the whole that created.
One year I spent the entire year creating a photo scrapbook where I took at least one picture each day to mark my take on that year. To this day it is an amusing, touching, and wonderful thing to return to.
Thanks for sharing your story…