March 2021 Prompt Where have you had a spiritual experience?

 Recovery Writers March 2021 Prompt

                                            Margo Brodowicz on Unsplash

Capturing a Spiritual Experience.

I had a sponsor who suggested that I list the places where I had had a spiritual experience and “visit there regularly.” Initially, I got caught in the burning bush scene—where, I wondered, had God been speaking, even if I defined God as a voice within me?  I have found that if I ask and keep asking, the moments will appear.  They lend themselves beautifully to a “list poem.” 

Here and There

My hospital room, my first baby wheeled in, her tiny baby face aglow with mystery—the mystery of me and not me, who she will become, and I think, God, yes. There you are.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a man, the single black face in a sea of a white, singing: God Be With You Til We Meet Again.  And I think: God.

The window with organdy curtains, outside white fences, horses grazing. The grandfather clock ticks, ticks, chimes. I long for that clock like our puppy, her first night bundled at our hearth, nestled with a clock, to remind her of her mother.

The doctor’s scale that said my anorexic daughter had gained 10 pounds in a month, impossible. My daughter, returned to the living, her desperation to be thin outweighed by the demands of marijuana.  Thank God for marijuana.

At my tenth wedding anniversary, my husband whole-heartedly recited vows before a God he privately called a maggot.  For me.  For our two daughters.  For the third, who unbeknownst to us was even then, stirring.

The hymn in church, “Is it I Lord, I have heard you calling in the night.  I will go Lord, where you lead me.  I will hold your people in my heart.” I don’t know yet who these people will be. The call a mystery.  I’ll find it years later in a church basement.

Fern Brook, the perfect peace of a perfect summer afternoon, children chirping among smooth stones, the minnows, the waving leaves. Everybody flowing in the same direction.  

A sleeping granddaughter, nestled near my neck, breathing in her baby smell, of soap and milk and skin, her tiny fingers grasping one of mine.  

My dog Belle, never more than ten feet from my feet. Dozing, waiting, leaping at the jangle of the leash. Always at the door when I return.  Yes.  There you are.

The first violets of spring when I am eight.  I reach down each tender stem and pinch, gather in a silver urn, a surprise for mother.  Each year.  A surprise.

The Madonna of Justice, a painting with Mary and a giant book, a Latin inscription. She calls to me. Mystery. Law. Rules. Books. Babies. Angels.  She wants my help. She wants to help me.  

Three kittens, all black, using me as a playscape on a sick day, the delight of kitten fur, pink tongues. Suddenly, they tire, drop, sleep. And I think: Yes. This is what you feel like. 

Prompt:

1. Write a list of the different places or situations where you have had a spiritual experience.

2. Consider odd coincidences.  Consider music that has affected you deeply. Consider moments in nature that felt profound. Consider both moments of high drama and what seemed ordinary, but looking with the eyes of recovery, perhaps profound.

Connection to Recovery:

I need to write down places where I have felt the spirit or I risk forgetting them or robbing them of their power.  My disease wants me to "forget" or to say "it's no big deal," "how important was it?" My naming those places and writing them down, I see that I have been a spiritual seeker all my life.  I also see that the spirit of love, connection to others, and the natural world are all connected. 

Taken from "Beneath the Steps, A Writing Guide for 12-Step Recovery", by Christine Beck (available on Amazon.com)

 Here is the REAL City Lights!

zoom for Recovery writers is: 443 381 9966 password recovery

February prompt

 

                                            credit: Pauline Loroy on unsplash.com

Losing Our Identity

People-pleasing is one way we lose our identity, our True Self. As we conform our conduct to

what we think other people want to see or hear, we ignore our own wants or needs. It’s not

uncommon to begin recovery with no idea of what makes us happy, what our gifts are, or what

our true calling the world might be. As we begin to explore our feelings we can see that even as

children, we had talents and gifts. As a young person before recovery, I was attracted to the

lives of other people that I found in books. Even as a child, I would hide from my father’s anger

with a book behind the drapes on a window seat. I can see that books were my parents for

much of my life.

City Lights, San Francisco

Damp as a sodden bathing suit,

beaches driftwood gray, fog obscured

the Golden Gate, North Beach, Angel Island.

On Broadway, neon lights blessed a strand

of strip joints. The barker at the Condor Club plucked

my coat, urged me to try my luck in the topless contest.

Around the corner, I escaped to City Lights --

a bookstore bathed in shades of black,

home to Ferlinghetti, Ginsburg, Kerouac.

I wandered empty aisles, picked up a stack,

found a threadbare chair, settled into acrid pages,

searched for a plot that I could fall into.

Prompts:

1. Write about any escape you made as a young person or one that you now wish

you had made.You will see I escaped from the barker at the Condor Club. Did you

ever encounter a person who urged you to do something you knew you shouldn’t

do?

2. Think of a place, such as City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, where you could

“be yourself.” Write about that self.

3. Try to use imagery, such as the fog in stanza one or the empty aisles in the

bookstore that reflect something about your identity. Check your words, such as

sodden, obscured, urged, wandered, fall into to make sure they match the tone

you are striving for.

4. Why do you think the neon lights “blessed” the strip joints? Was there something

attractive about them, some alternative to the bookstore as a place to find

identity?

Latest Recovery Writer Poem!

 

The ratted birds nest on the ground

Handknit, by a mothers love

A broken egg- inside

Its blue….so am I

The death of promise to its flock…

Sad, grief

I wonder, did bird mommy know her babies fate? Does she know baby died?

Is she soaring with the others in acceptance of what is….

Mommy, are you there?

Did you know that I, or...when I…. fell from your nest?

I was tangled in the leaves…I held my breath

I smoked and toked and drank so numb

I believed you when you called me dumb…

That immaculate nest… was a messy mess...

Shells smashed with shame and blame-

A daily coup upon our souls

"Do not break a bowl!!!! Do you hear me? “

The youngest did indeed die…..

Ssshhhh don’t -

Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel.....

that was the deal

In November you passed … at last...

I have no tears,  less fears…

Mommy….dont blame, that I have no shame

From somewhere I hear You say, 

Oh Sandee!!! “how uncouth to tell the truth”

Sandee B

                                             Mitchel Lensink on unsplash.com

Give me Twenty Minutes

Those who have attended a Recovery Writers session know that we include twenty minutes in which to write individually in response to a prompt, before we reassemble to read and lovingly respond to each other’s writing.

As we expanded and grew, I started thinking about this twenty-minute “dark time” and whether there was a way to eliminate or restructure it.  Yes, I heard many of you say that the group meetings are the only time you write, but really, I thought, can’t I inspire or encourage you to write outside the meeting?

Luckily, I have a higher power. My higher power advised me to honor process over project.  That twenty minutes is important to our process. It is a sacred time. I don’t need to fix it or control it. 

My higher power also has a sense of humor! Later that night, as I was reading “The Equivalents,” about a grant program in the sixties to benefit women who did not have time or money to pursue their art, I happened upon a conversation between the poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin. They would frequently phone each other and then despair: “why aren’t we writing?” One would suggest a line or concept. The other would say “give me twenty minutes,” and either ring back or keep the line open. Sexton said she loved the pressure of the twenty-minute interlude. ‘It was the most stimulating thing. It’s a challenge…We’ve got this much time, and goddam it, I’m going to have something there.’”

There, in black and white, was confirmation of our “twenty minute writing break.” It works because we work it. 

Publication by Phyllis, one of our Recovery Writers! Congrats.

 

January 17 prompt

 Writing about Death and Grief

January 2021

 Even though I spent a lot of time with my mother, I was not with her when she died in the hospital.  I had no language for grief. Not until I became a mother and witnessed a child’s reaction to a lost kitten did I begin to appreciate the child within me who was abandoned and bereft by my mother’s death. Even in the face of suffering, even when death seems a mercy, the pain lingers underground. It can then pop up in unexpected places:

Lining the Casket

Two are black and white, feisty, thirsty; the third,

soft yellow, like sunshine mixed with baby carrots.

we name it Calico, a patchwork guinea pig.

It’s the runt, a slip of fur and darting eyes, skinny 

as an anorexic, heart pounding through her fur. My daughter 

loves it with the passion we reserve for the unlucky.

Its mother runs away when Calico approaches.

I take the healthy babies out to force what can’t be forced.

I briefly think of killing it, then recall my father’s tears

when he tied kittens in a sack and held them under water.

I tell Calico, “You can go now,” then feel a fool

for playing hospice with a guinea pig.

I didn’t say goodbye that January night, when my mother, 

wrapped in an iron fist, stopped asking if the sky was blue.

I took the train back to Manhattan, to the job she bragged about.

I recall the flowered dresses with matching panties

she smocked for me, as I line a cardboard box with chintz, 

head down the hill to meet my daughter at the bus.

Prompt:

1. Write about the death of a pet or a death that is not close to you and allow your poem to “circle around” to the death you really want to write about.

2. Write about what you have said about death to a child or as a consolation to someone whose loved one has died.  Make a “list poem” of all the platitudes, such as “he had a good life,” or “at least he didn’t suffer” and explore your reaction.

3. Write an obituary about a caregiver who has died and say what you would really want to say about that person. 

Years later, I wrote a poem in a less narrative style about grief.   You will find in your own writing that certain objects or images carry emotional weight for you.  They will show up again and again in your work, reminding you that you have hit on something important.

What I Never Wanted

Ashes in a vase, September mourning, 

distant calls of loons, a fractured sky,

sullen earth mounded under dogwood,

leaves burned hot as afterthoughts,

afternoon of unbelief, wall of windowpanes,

hangers in the closet, askew and bare, 

their fragile chattering, a sound like empty acorns,

nutmeats dried, the harvest passed.

 Prompt:

1.Take phrases, words or images from your first poem and “translate” them into a more imagistic poem about death. You can see I used the following:

Ashes, mourning, earth mounded, unbelief, bare, fragile, empty, dried.

All these words give a “tone” of emptiness and loss. The ashes and mounded earth indicate death. The empty clothes hangars chattering in the closet are the voice of mourning.