The Gallup Independent, Spiritual Perspectives  June 2, 2018

I’m the Child

I’m the child of water
of two waters that came together 
but no prayer was given
for a bridge over that boiling river

I’m the child of water
of rain and snow, they melted together
but no instructions were given
for laying stepping stones through that muck

I’m the child of hail and sleet
but no prayer was offered
when the dawn came, and no
blessings were laid out, no path to follow.

And I’m the child of the blue-mirrored lake at dawn
that breathes and does not speak,
the lake that I imagine loves me
only because it has no words
and doesn’t judge.

I’m the child of laughter and sunlight
but all I remember are the wounds—

I’m the child and I rise again now
I choose to remember the light.

      There’s a way of writing that gets you to writing in short bursts—ten minutes at a time—it’s amazing what can come out in that short period. I’ve just started taking a creative writing class where I drive an hour each way to sit down for a couple hours with a small group (eight is a full class) and have a teacher, national award-winning poet Lauren Camp (laurencamp.com), tell us to write in timed bursts of ten minutes, after being given a writing prompt. At this first week’s class, she primed the well by first having us discuss a poem for half an hour and we found all sorts of things in it —things I didn’t notice even after I’d read the poem the first couple times.

It’s a really long time, that ten minutes.  When you really let yourself go. And then to write again another 10 minutes. I’m hoping this class is going to put me in touch with my wild mind, my wild writing mind. It’s a method popularized by Natalie Goldberg, a writer, teacher and Zen meditator in New Mexico who wrote a book back in 1986, “Writing Down the Bones” and another, “Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life.” It’s a method of writing stream of consciousness writing without judgement, without letting that inner critic zap you, and soon something comes out that you don’t even know where it came from. One of Goldberg’s popular prompts is, “I remember . . .” Another is “Looking at . . .” To write, maybe twenty minutes a day.

Listening and paying attention to what’s inside you and what’s outside you – we might actually be losing the ability to do that, to pay that kind of attention, what with all the time we spend looking at our cell phones and running around being busy all day. There’s a possibility that we may even lose the ability to have our own thoughts because we are being constantly told what we should think, apparently mostly to get us to buy something, to “like” something, to put our attention here, over here, not over there.

I was assured this is not entirely my imagination—why I should be having so much trouble concentrating that I should have to drive an hour to take a class to write for ten minutes—by a book that came out this week by the winner of the $100,000 Nine Dots Prize. When news about this fabulous contest first began circulating  a few years ago it was almost impossible not to look into it. Hungry writers everywhere read, “The Nine Dots Prize is a new prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary societal issues. Entrants are asked to respond to a question in 3,000 words, with the winner receiving US$100,000 to write a short book expanding on their ideas.” And the inaugural Nine Dots Prize question? It was: “Are digital technologies making politics impossible?”

The winner, who formerly worked at Google on advertising products and tools, and now studies their ethical implications, wrote a short book “Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Persuasion in the Attention Economy” that basically points out that digital media is rigged to grab our attention and not let go, and that it is our duty, if we wish to remain independent humans, to gain control over where we direct our attention.

  So, what did I write in Lauren’s class? I felt an intense concentration. It was real quality time with myself. I don’t know that what I wrote this first class was so great, but the man sitting next to me said he was moved by it. So with a little trepidation, I’ll share a bit of what I wrote in response to the first prompt. And it unintentionally caught some flavor of that idea of directing our attention; that when we start to feel weighed down by the stones of our past, we can choose to look towards the spirit. Lauren told us to start writing, with the simple words, “I’m the child of . . .”

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Diane Joy Schmidt is a writer and photographer who was raised in the traditions of Reform Judaism and is an admirer of all things spiritually resonant.