Photo credit: Damien Taylor – 

Novelist Billy Coffey gave a great talk and reading Saturday evening.

This past weekend, three writers gathered two dozen more
behind barn walls.  In a square room,
wrapped in wood, floored in concrete, we sat around white plastic tables in folding
chairs while a fresh breeze blew in through barn doors thrown open wide. 

We held space.

We held silence.

We honored words – ours and others’ and others’ still.

Then we held more silence, listened, and held space for
words unspoken and words yet unheard. 

We pruned words – ours and others.  We trimmed back the dead, exposed new shoots,
sank small sleeping seeds deep in darkness and watered them with attention and
simple care.  We plotted out the
landscape of our days, made plans to fence in empty spaces right in the middle
of our back home, work-a-day, noisy, crowded lives.  We envisioned fertile ground, held apart, separate, where words and silence might wed, like water and sun, and bring forth bright blooms,
arching vines, gnarled roots.     

Blue sky, rolling hills, and passing clouds wove mountain
magic around us and we believed, again, in ourselves, in each other, and in the
truth that “what we need is here.”  We
found ourselves both hungry and fed, both giving and receiving; and it was good.
 

//

Friends, I am just back from helping to lead the annual God’s Whisper Writers’ Retreat in Radiant, VA.  We’ve already set the date (June 22-24) for next year’s retreat and will have the website up and running soon.  Meanwhile, you might want to nurture your writer’s heart, by signing up for Andi’s Discover Your Writing Self course which begins July 1st.