Monthly Archives: January 2011

Post your last small stone here!

We’re nearly there!

Tomorrow’s small stone, on Monday the 31st of January, will be the last of the challenge.

Share it with us by posting it as a comment on this blog. Let’s see how many we can gather.

I do hope some of you might carry on past the end of January. We’re working on a new page to gather all your small stones together – you’ll need to post your small stones to a separate blog (or have a separate RSS feed) to be eligible.

We’ll let you know how to submit your favourite ten small stones for possible inclusion in the forthcoming ‘river of stones’ soon.

Many small-stoners are gathered at our new Writing Our Way Home community forum – do pop along and say hello.

Over to you. Thank you so much for your company during January. Me and Kaspa have had a truly WONDERFUL time reading all the stones and hearing about your experiences. Roll on July ; )

The sound of silence (and win a free book)

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What follows is one of the weekly musings from my book A Year of Questions: How to slow down and fall in love with life. I’m giving three copies away as a celebration of my new site and forum, if you’d like to be in with a chance of winning, just email me with ‘book’ as the title before the 14th of Feb. It might be your Valentine…

This weekend I’m off to Salisbury for a day-long meditation. There will be an opportunity to sit still in a silent room with other people for half hour intervals from 10 am until 4 pm. Nobody will look up into each other’s eyes once we have begun. We’ll be on our own.

There’s a part of me that can’t wait for this. A whole day to sit and just be. And there’s another part that’s terrified! What will it be like to stop ‘doing’ for so long? What will emerge from the silence?

This meditation day is a chapter in my ongoing battle between clearing space in my life and filling it back up again. No sooner have I arranged a free weekend or cut back on a commitment, than I find myself saying yes to something else, or deciding to start a new writing project.

I know that more space is a good thing for me. It feeds my muse, and it puts me back in touch with who I am and what I really want. But I need to acknowledge that it’s scary too. Sometimes it’s only when we give ourselves enough space that we get ill, or feel sad or angry. What have I been trying to avoid?

Things you might be curious about

What happens when you give yourself enough space to get in touch with yourself? What resistance do you have to doing nothing and just being? What opportunities might you have to stop doing and start being a bit more?

Suggestions for this week

Put aside a short period of time each day to be quiet, or a longer period at the weekend. Sit and do nothing. During this time, note the thoughts and feelings that arise and then let them go. Afterwards, be gently curious about what came up for you.

I love the deep quiet in which I live and grow against the world and harvest what they cannot take from me by fire or sword.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A new offering

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I’ve posted about the crystallisation of my new offering to the world at the newly named blog for Writing Our Way Home. I hope you like how Kaspa made that bird perch on the end of my squiggle ; )

You’ve already done lots of ‘spreading the news’ for us, so I won’t ask you to do any more, but I do hope we might see you at our new forum at some point – the ideal place to post small stones, enter into conversation, eat virtual cake.

It’s good to hear that people are already planning to sign up for our July write-a-small-stone-every-day challenge. But January isn’t quite over yet…

We’re getting excited about the marvellous morsels we’re expecting once we open submissions to the ‘river of stones’ book. In the meantime you can always submit to my blogzine, a handful of stones.

I hope you’re seeing more clearly, wherever you are, and whatever life is throwing at you.

A new offering: Writing Our Way Home

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You might have noticed some changes around here.

Planting Words is now Writing Our Way Home. This is my new offering to the world.

Over recent months, something has been crystallising in me. I’ve been reading the marvellous Chris Guillebeau, and thinking about what I can do with the rest of my life. How can I make a difference? What is my unique experience and how might it help others?

The answer is: to help people to get to know themselves and the world through writing (in a river of stones, on their blogs, in their journals), and to love themselves and the world a little bit more as a consequence.

To help them come home.

There is a new community forum where people interested in this topic can gather, eat virtual cake and support each other. There is a gorgeous new site designed by Kaspa. There is a new look for this blog (don’t you just LOVE the perching bird?).

I’m feeling very grateful this morning. To you, for reading and for being there. To the world, for giving me everything it gives me, even the difficult parts. To that mysterious ‘other’, whether you believe in it or not, who seems to know better than I do.

If you’d like to help me out, help me to share the news – I’d be happy to do an interview on your blog, or you could post the link on Facebook, or tell your friend who’s always wanted to write but never knew how to start. Thank you.

Deep bow.

BRAND new Writing Our Way Home forum (all singing all dancing)

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……..drumroll………

We have a community forum!

It’s called Writing Our Way Home, and it’s for anyone who’s interested in writing as a way of feeling more at home with ourselves and in the world.

It’s about an hour old, and we already have some sterling inaugural members. I’d LOVE it if you become one too – whether you write small stones or in a journal, whether you belong to a spiritual tradition or are spiritually ambivalent, whether you are web-savvy or not. Just click on the link and say hello.

There’s also a new website to go with the new brand, designed BEAUTIFULLY by lovely Kaspa.

What do you think?

Can’t wait to see you there.

BRAND new Writing Our Way Home forum (all singing all dancing)

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……..drumroll………

We have a community forum!

It’s called Writing Our Way Home, and it’s for anyone who’s interested in writing as a way of feeling more at home with ourselves and in the world.

There’s also a new website to go with the new brand, designed BEAUTIFULLY by my lovely fiancé.

What do you think?

Can’t wait to see you there.

BRAND new Writing Our Way Home forum (all singing all dancing)

Planting Seeds: The most powerful magnifier of slack ever invented

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As an experiment, I’ve decided to take every Saturday as an internet free day. No Facebook, no Twitter, no email, no browsing.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you won’t be surprised that the prospect of this filled me with a deep sense of dread. On my first Saturday, I woke up wanting to check my emails. I wanted to check something online. I wanted to tweet something. I wanted to send an email. Etc.

As the morning went on, I started to settle a little. I cleaned the house, and to my great surprise I found it deeply satisfying. I tidied my desk. I stroked the cats.

At lunch time I had a whole free hour.

I sat in our shrine room, which is always tidy and peaceful. It has two comfortable chairs, several beautiful objects, our golden Buddha and a bookcase. What more could anyone want?

I lit a candle, and I started reading a pamphlet of James Brush’s little poems, which he’d kindly sent me from all the way across the Atlantic as a thank you.

I savoured these little morsels in a way that would never have been possible if I was reading at my desk, or between two emails.

Maybe I should extend my Saturday ban…

Raindrops glisten
liquid flowers, transient
jewels in the weeds.

Late summer –
molted feathers hang
in sage bushes

A deep blue fall sky –
dragonflies with numbered days
hover above the road

The big dipper pours
a gruel of thin clouds and stars
over the houses

(James blogs at Coyote Mercury and Gnarled Oak – thank you for his permission to reproduce these here and for my lovely peaceful hour!)

Things you might be curious about

What interrupts you? What are you compulsive around? How could you give yourself a completely uninterrupted hour once a week?

Quotes

We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.
~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The Internet is the most powerful magnifier of slack ever invented.
~Author Unknown

(This email was sent out as a part of my Planting Seeds newsletter which goes out on a Sunday/Monday – if you’d like to sign up for weekly emails and get them delivered to your in-box, go here).

Day 23 already, hellebores and manifestos

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(start here if you’re new)

Yesterday I visited Stroud with two friends. Caroline bought a tangle of golden wild mushrooms from a man who told us where the best cafe in the town was. In the best cafe in town we ate fresh chewy sourdough and shared a table with the wife of the owner, who told us where the farmer’s market was. In the farmer’s market we met a potter who’d emigrated from New Zealand many years ago and had a soft kind face. She was selling these luminous hellebores. I wish I’d bought them.

small stones abounded.

You are writing to tell us that this project is helping you to keep your senses open, and become more intimate with the world. It is helping you find moments of peace. Writing small stones is leading you gently back into writing after some time away, and helping your confidence. Your usual and your small stone blogs are merging into each other. As I’ve said before (but it needs re-saying) this makes us very happy.

Look at the blogroll on the right. The small stones keep coming.

I’m still working on my Writing as Spiritual Practice e-course, writing about the links between writing and faith, perseverance, clear-seeing and praise. I’m loving it. (It’s full for March so let me know if you’d like to go on the ‘interested’ list for May or Sep.) When I’ve finished that, I’ll be re-designing my sites and writing a ‘manifesto’ (inspired by the very wonderful Chris Guillebeau). Kaspa & I will be asking for submissions for the river of stones book in mid-Feb. And we’re hoping some of you might join us in a July challenge – to write a small stone every day in July – which will give us a chance to pick up some sunny stones. All that, and more. The river is flowing.

Keep letting us know how you’re getting on. It’s a gift to know that many of you are out there in the world, pen in hand.

Time has passed with the swiftness of light

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As part of our morning Pureland Buddhist service in our front room/shrine room, I recite a verse.

It begins:

Time has passed with the swiftness of light.
It is already morning.

A moment ago, I looked up from my laptop. The cats were asking for their dinner. The sunlight was draining from the sky. It is already afternoon.

Time has passed with the swiftness of light.

This morning we didn’t have time for our usual service. Instead we lit the candle and did five prostrations before the Buddha.

It is a way of remembering our place in the world, and of remembering to be grateful for this day – to spend it as wisely as we can.

Time has passed with the swiftness of light.

I’m going to enjoy a cup of tea before the next thing, and read some of Terry Tempest Willam’s Refuge. I might have a dip in the river.

Impermanence rushes upon us.

Time has passed with the swiftness of light.
It is already morning.
Impermanence rushes upon us every moment,
Mara follows every step.
Oh practitioners of the way,
Strive diligently! Attain Nirvana!