MY WORK IS LOVING THE WORLD
“My Work Is Loving the World.” We will begin with the first line of Mary Oliver’s poem ”Messenger“ because it’s true, isn’t it? We are called to write about waves and bees, about seagrass and albatross, because we care about them. We write to stand still. We write to express astonishment. We write to rejoice. We write to lift our heads in gratitude.
So how, exactly, do we do this? How does writing teach us to stand still? Exactly how do words pay attention? How do we write sentences worthy of the astonishing world? How can a sense of wonder lift our work from the ordinary? How can we celebrate the natural world, even as it vanishes, even as we mourn its losses, even as grief powers our prose?
I believe that the best way to learn to write about the natural world is to write in the open air, in the presence of friends who are also writers. So that is what we shall do. This weekend at the edge of the sea, in the company of fellow writers, in the presence of feeding fish, will offer us a chance to do our work, as Mary Oliver describes it. To begin, we will put clay on the table, gathering images and facts and words that can be the material of our writing. That is, we will walk with awareness, write with abandon, stand still in astonishment, and write some more. Then, with firm hands, we will shape and fire a vessel strong enough to hold a story or a hard question, all the grief in the world or a dragonfly’s wing.
Bring journals empty except for three facts about something you will find in Hawaii – barnacles or lava or curved beaks or tides or the stuff in the bottom of an albatross nest. You decide what. In the end, you may use these facts, or you may give them as gifts to new friends.
