Tuesday's Attention #83 (On a Wednesday)
When No Words Are Needed
Full disclosure, I wrote a note to myself before bed to wake up and write and publish a Tuesday’s Attention with fully believing today was Tuesday, only to finish most of what I wrote, recognizing it is indeed Wednesday. So, here we are, a day and some weeks late, but here.
Sometimes, here, whether on time or late, is enough.
When No Words Are Needed
Words have been hard recently.
I shared with Kenny this morning that I wanted to sit and write, but words have been hard recently. He replied, “That’s a great first line to write.” I playfully rolled my eyes while a smile ran across my face, thinking, that is the very comment I would have given someone else. He knows me well.
With Kenny’s gentle nudge, here I am, showing up to write after a few weeks of quiet.
I have been trying to understand why words have been so difficult for me to access recently. I believe it is a great mix of things: finishing three years of graduate school and being a bit burnt out on writing after cranking out essays week after week; a wave of great grief sweeping in from multiple angles—news of losses dear friends are holding, news of how the most vulnerable in our country are growing all the more vulnerable, and having a job that lends itself to becoming greatly acquainted with heart wrenching stories and pain; and then there’s physical fatigue that has been knocking me off my feet lately as I have been in some more difficult health weeks. In the midst of all of these factors, there have also been some ridiculously beautiful moments that have swept me off my feet in delight. The pendulum has been swinging to great extremes, rendering me overloaded and wordless.
…
This summer, I am co-leading a 14-week Creative Therapy Group that centers around Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Wednesday nights are nights where delight washes over me as I sit in a room full of brave individuals vulnerably pressing into healing. This past week, our theme was centered around “recovering a sense of abundance” based on the chapter we each read prior to the group session. To start off the group, I shared a quote from one of my favorite writers and creatives, Ross Gay, that resonated with the week’s reading.
“Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.” - Ross Gay from The Book of Delights
When I first read this from Gay’s book, I had to re-read the last few sentences and look up a few words as well to understand more of what he was communicating.
“If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming.”
Duff. A noun that means decaying vegetable matter covering the ground under a tree(s).
Teem. A verb that means to be full or swarming with something.
Gay’s words echo the words Jeff Chu wrote as he has constructed his “theology of compost” in his recent book Good Dirt: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand. Chu’s book explores finding God in a pile of rotting vegetables and how it is in the compost where new life is born. In his book, he wrote
“The wider world is not much different from the farm. It carries so many wounds and scars. It offers so much beauty. Its resilience is remarkable. Grief is inevitable and real. So is the invitation to participate in healing and proclaim grace, to believe again in goodness and live a life of hope… because grief is love that has no place else to go.”
Perhaps this is where I have found myself in these past few weeks. My love has found its home in grief for a bit, as it has struggled to find where else for it to go. Words feel so feeble. The holding of two hands, as tears fall, though, is what is speaking in strength; it is what may soon become the flower and the food. It is in the holding of two hands or in the hug that holds until the one in deep pain can melt into love, for a moment, where joy finds its way into the depths of sorrow, too. The invisible made palpable.
The both/and is in full bloom, rooted in the dark ground beneath.
No words are needed.
Prompts:
If you have never composted, maybe give it a try. Keep the scraps of your vegetables and fruit, the cracked open egg shells, and the used coffee grinds. Let nothing be wasted. Dig a hole in your backyard, add some mulch and dirt, and release your compost. Notice how you feel seeing nothing wasted.
Create a watercolor painting utilizing used coffee grounds and the dye from a red onion’s skin, inspired by compost and flowers blooming up out of them.
Take yourself on a walk and pick some flowers you love. Press them in wax paper for the next week between the wax paper and with heavy books on top. Then, go into your recycle bin and grab some plastic, cut it into two stirrups, the size of a bookmark. Place your flowers on them and paint with Mod Podge. Utilize as a bookmark in your days ahead.
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Words for Your Week:
As you carry on into this week, may your days be filled with words that encourage you, laughter that heals you, and moments of beauty that pull your attention in and bring you to slow down.
May you know that you, yourself, are worth paying attention to.
