Monday Meditation (19)

 ‘At sunset Nature is painting for us….day after

day….pictures of infinite beauty.’

 John Ruskin

Return to Dixon Hill

There’s a double celebration going on here today. 

For starters, it’s Joss’ birthday - he’s reached the grand old age of nine.  But also, after months of living like gypsies, we’re finally back at Dixon Hill. 

There’s been building work - remodelling - going on here forever (and that’s barely a figure of speech!).  Back in November, in order to speed things up a bit, we moved out - except it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that.  We’ve actually moved house seven times in the last seven months (yes, really!).

There’s still a long way to go before all the work is complete, but it does feel good to be back on our own little patch of earth.  And to see lights shining from the old house again.

Ten Steps To Becoming A Fiction Writer

Once upon a time, there was a small girl who adored reading and dreamed of writing books of her own.  But whenever she sat down to write, her efforts - to her mind - fell far short of the stories she liked to read.  And so, after only a few paragraphs, she would tear up her words in disgust.  And she decided she was no good at writing fiction.

The urge to write, however, never went away.  Though she had no idea what she wanted to say.  And was at a loss how to break through the barrier she had unwittingly set in her own way.  There followed, therefore, many years of frustration and self-loathing.

Eventually, when she had pretty much given up all hopes of ever becoming the writer she wanted to be, she discovered the world of blogging.  And promptly started a blog.  She quickly found that, when it came to writing just a couple of paragraphs, she had plenty to say.  But it didn’t really count, because real writers write fiction.  Don’t they?

After she had been blogging for precisely two-and-a-half years, the girl found herself one day in front of a bookshop and stopped to peer at the window display. And there, right in front of her nose, stuck to the inside of the glass, was a poster advertising a short story competition.  And something inside the girl said simply, ‘It’s time’.  And so she went into the shop and asked for an entry form (Step 1).

The following day, she filled out the form (Step 2).  Two days after that, she flew to Istanbul for the weekend, hoping that while she was there, an idea for her story would come to her (Step 3).  But instead, she returned from Turkey with a whole completed story.  Which had come so easily.  And quickly.  And not at all in the way she expected.  Instead of having an idea then writing it down, the story had spun from the end of her pen as she wrote, surprising her as it unfolded as much as it might surprise a reader.  Which was much the most fascinating and fun way to write (Step 4).

Next, she produced an image for her title page (Step 5) - which actually took longer to create than the story itself had taken to write.  The next stage was to print and bind her curious tale (Step 6).  And then to deliver it - ta da da! - to the bookshop (Step 7).

At home again, the girl composed a blog post, announcing she had won first prize, even before the competition closed (Step 8).  Because she believed in the power of intention and of gratitude; and because she knew there was magic and synchronicity in this chain of events.

But then she had a realisation….an awakening (Step 9).  It dawned on her that the magic lay not in winning the competition, but in the words streaming from her pen.  And so, without waiting to hear the results of the contest, she hit the Publish button and announced to the world that she was now a writer of fiction (Step 10).

The Beginning

Changing Places: Jenna McGuiggan on the Scottish Highlands

New Year's, 1999. Four Americans living in the U.K. We gathered in Edinburgh, celebrated Hogmanay, and headed north.

Night drops early there in winter. From the backseat of the car I peered out the cold glass at dark-on-dark. Sections of the horizon deepened like giant, mounded cutouts into another realm. We had reached the high land. I listened to what I could not see: an ancient song thrumming in the octaves below my breath.

The light of day revealed the sky as a blank white question. The ground: an ancient, craggy moonscape undulating in brown and grey. A sort of shaggy moss covered the valley, the faintest cast of yellowing green shimmering under downy white frost. In the summer, this land would be spongy with loam, bogs, and marshes. But in January, the frozen earth appeared to have been chewed up and spit out by the jagged mountain teeth surrounding it. Fissures and frozen rivulets channeled the land into segments like the thick, cracked skin of a man’s feet in winter. No trees here, save some strong evergreens I fancied marching across the moor like MacBeth's Birnam Wood. We drove for miles on deserted roads twisting through uninhabited terrain. The mountains engulfed the valleys, ridges rising up, snowtopped and unyielding, a raging sea of whitecapped rock.

We stepped out into the naked wind and weak daylight for photos. I stood apart from my friends, transfixed, trying to catch the tune humming beneath the wind. I recognized it as the voice of God. It wasn’t the still, small voice that the Bible describes, but a deep, sonorous tone resonating through every thing. Mountains had never spoken to me before. The rhythm of my heart is the beat of ocean surf. Water is my holy ground, but Scotland baptized me into the sanctity of earth. In that valley everything became elemental, the land a thin space, a wafer between worlds visible and invisible.

I imagined the valleys carpeted with green, the hillsides draped in lush heather. The believer in me wanted to see that hard, empty land filled with color, but as I stood in its bleakness, I encountered a version of the Divine so raw and immediate that no amount of yellow sunshine or purple heather could ever compare.

I carry this experience with me like a clod of that frozen earth. I return to it when I need to feel rooted, when I need something sacred. In that hard land, I felt a pull like a tide in my soul, calling me to something greater.

Jennifer (Jenna) McGuiggan is a writer, editor, and writing coach who lives in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania and longs for the sea. To soothe her wanderlust and make sense of her spiritual journey, she is at work on a collection of essays set at seashores and thin places around the world. Visit her in The Word Cellar.

Changing Places is a guest post series about the power of place to change us.  You can read other stories in the series here.  If you’d like to share your story, please contact me for submission details.

An Elephant Never Forgets

Came across an incredible video today (via Lenora) and just had to share it with you.  I cried as I watched this.

Shirley the elephant spent more than twenty years chained and isolated from other elephants.  The film shows what happened when she was taken to an elephant sanctuary.

Click here to see the video - it’s just over seven minutes long.  But get your hankie out!