I journaled my guts again.
Today’s pages focused on a dream about death. This
was not the first such dream through which I’ve traveled or about which I soon
thereafter scribed into my journal. And it is probably not the last. But the
images, relationship dynamics, final wishes, emotions, and desperations of the
long night’s dying story were possibly the closest match to my waking
relationship to my own mortality. Including the urgent need to finish my
current book project. It was that
real.
And the writing of it saved my life. Again.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that the peace with which I awoke; the
offering of the sunlight on the white tree bark upon which my eyes gazed as I
came into full consciousness of my breathing aliveness; the deep relaxed
inhalation of wellbeing; the sheer clarity and poignance of living on a
troubled earth; the realization of my death and the spaciousness of not yet
being near that edge saved my life today.
I mean that the motions of my today match the emotions and longings of my heart. I am realigned. Healed by the passionate engagement with
the callings that lead to actual daily doings in my life. Made whole by
consistence between desire and goalseeking, between what I hope to accomplish
and the actual being-in-action of “writer,” “mentor,” “meditator-on-beauty,” “guide,”
“partner,” “friend,” “family member,” “citizen,” “dog caretaker,” “neighbor,”
“lover of Nature,” “pray-er” … all in my first hour of wakefulness.
Writing this onto the page in the early morning was
my saving grace. The grace of a life that is rich and textured, colorful and
layered, thick with creative energy and that lies down in the face of the
divine, prostrate and humbled, willing to be
all that I have been gifted.
Writing in my journal allows the honesty of my
dishonesty, the fears or glories of daily life to live. To lie naked on the leaf.
The blank page bears quiet witness, only commenting via the pen of the
journal-keeper. It is more confidential than conversation, closer to the bone
than an intimate letter, dirtier than relationship, cleaner than my ragged
breath. Writing by hand in my journal frees me from my small self so that I can
type large as life into the to-be-published manuscript.
It is with a combination of authority-wielding,
shameless pleading, academic explanations, outright demands, and raw
self-admissions that I encourage those to whom I am “writing mentor” to
journal. Simply to scrawl onto the horizontal blank page. To pull from the
shelf, dust off, crack open, and write their lives into their journals.
I tell them it will save their lives, as well as
their writing project. I tell them it has saved my life and my writing
projects, over and over again.
Will you let journaling save you as you write your
guts onto the page?
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2015 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
