Julie Tallard Johnson
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  • Explore with Me
    • BOOKS!!
    • LIVE Retreats & Circles >
      • ​Come As You Are, Meditation & Writing Retreat
      • A Year of Transformation, Initiation & Manifestation: World into Word & Action
    • Online Courses >
      • Be The Cause of Your Life
    • Spiritual Mentoring
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Julie's Blog
​
 World into Word & Action

everything is waiting for you

7/24/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
 ​THE LIGHTEST TOUCH
​
Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then, like a hand in the dark,
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line,
you can feel Lazarus,
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.       David Whyte,

- from EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU and RIVER FLOW
 
Everything is waiting for you, for us. The completed book, the house, the relationship, the revelation, the peace of mind – the idea, is there. Here. For you. Even when the world seems to be revealing the opposite, and our heart may be breaking. Of course what shows up may not be what we expected or wanted. 
 
Work with that. Write from there. 
 
A fundamental truth (for us writers) is always here for each of us at every moment: to find that place where the internal landscape and narrative of our lives meets with the outer world  experiences– this is the writer’s frontier. You don't ever leave it. 
 
What works, for me, is to stay in the conversation. When writing on a particular subject and theme – I  listen and notice how these come up in my every-day life. This is how my writing practice has become part of my spiritual practice. Everything becomes material for me to work with (on and off the page). 
 
We have to rely on others, to ask for help, to give into the vulnerability of not knowing. We can choose to listen to and engage the uncertainty. We will have to open our eyes even wider to consider what we might do, where we might go. Listen to the internal conversation as much as to the outer experience.  Like the advice I've given in sweat lodges -- keep your eyes open; there's much to see in the dark.
 
Be curious.
Get help.
Stay in the conversation.
Never leave home without your field notebook. 
Work with this.
 
 
My view? That the very health and beauty of this world relies on us to do so. 
 
 
SOMETIMES

​
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest, 
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories, 
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound, 
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests, 
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it, 
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life, 
questions
that have patiently
waited for you, 
questions
that have no right
to go away.
.- David Whyte, from EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU and RIVER FLOW

JOIN ME AND OTHER WRITERS for a a FREE WRITERS’ RETREAT:  MONDAY August 19th from 10 am till 4:00.  Email me for location (near Barneveld) and for other details.  julie@julietallardjohnson.com

(For those who are wondering if I got my novel done -  YUP! Now for some serious revision before I send it out to an agent.)
1 Comment
Suzan
7/25/2019 07:16:37 am

Julie, all of your blogs take me along for good rides where my writing wants to go. I started a new piece and did not know where it wanted to go after the initial burst onto the page. Then, I cutnpasted this blog right under the opening paragraphs with the wonderful reminders that we are in dialogue on our writers' frontier. Fantastic to have you in my conversations as I check out the boundary stones on the frontier!

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    Author and counselor Julie Tallard Johnson
    I live in Mount Horeb WI where I walk (snow shoe in the winter) my dogs through Stewart Park or Military Trail, garden my corner lot, wear a mask in public (and a cape at night). I love to write & connect to writers and spiritual seekers. My book The Clue of the Red Thread is my latest of eleven, written in collaboration with Parker J Palmer and poet Rebecca Cecchini  The Clue of the Red Thread: Discovering Fearlessness & Compassion in uncertain times  came out in January, 2021 through Shanti Arts, Nine Rivers Imprint. 

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