Week No. 01 — Introduction
Lent 2023 | Day 01 | Wednesday, April 22
Welcome To The Wilderness
For the past year and a half, I’ve been offering these one-on-one, creative consultations called Coffee Dates. It made sense as “can I take you out to coffee?” became a frequent request throughout the past decade’s worth of writing and touring and playing shows in folks’ towns (and sometimes, your homes)…
You mean I get to have what will likely be a conversation I already know I’ll love to have — about writing or spirituality or some existential crises you’re having — and I’ll get free coffee? The drink of the gods?
Yes, you can take me on a coffee date.
Anyway, I began to notice a pattern in the conversations I was having with people. Someone comes to me saying that he doesn’t know how to publish a book and while that may have been true, what he really needed was someone to help him find the courage to do it.
Someone else says she’s sure her poem’s structure is disastrous but what she really needs is permission to let the disaster she’s trying to write about rise to surface and come out of her.
Someone else says he’s got writer’s block but by the end of the call he realizes what he’s really got is “vulnerability block” and it’s going to take bravery to allow the truth to spill out onto the page — and more again to voice what he discovers on that page with others.
Our Coffee Dates never end up being about whatever the person thinks that the thing is about.
It’s always about the Thing beneath the thing. Or the Thing behind the thing.
And that is the language of poetry.
It’s dangerous language. It’s the language of the inner world and that’s dangerous because that’s the language of the truth, and the truth cuts bone from marrow. Which is to say: divides families. Which is to say: hurts.
It heals, too.
It reveals yourself to you.
The you beneath the you you think you are, or are trying to be, or are desperately trying to cling to. The you beneath the you you’ve learned to be, who thinks that you are not — or cannot possibly be — the you that you’re discovering. The you who wants to become but doesn’t know how.
The truth will set you free.
“But first,” says Ted Lasso’s Sharon Fieldstone, “it pisses you off.” A thing. Or, makes you afraid? The thing beneath the thing.
Sometimes, I get stuck thinking that nothing I write will ever see the light of day.
Not because I don’t write, but because I — too — have a “vulnerability problem.”
How many truths will I bury in an “if only I could share this” folder on an external hard drive that — when I lie on my death bed, considering how short this blip has been — I’ll wish I’d have been brave enough to live into?
That’s not the kind of life I’m interested in. And if you’re anything like me, neither are you. We’ve lived it for too long. It’s the prison of a codependent framework. It’s a half-life. The fruit tastes awful and poisons us, and everyone around us.
“The fruit of the half-lived life is bitter,” says James Finley.
There is a different way to be in the world. A different way to approach our pages.
Vulnerability, Seeing and Being Seen
For me, quiet and contemplative practices have played a huge role in my work. In getting to the Thing beneath the thing. I’d like to spend the next month approaching our writing and creativity through the lens of one of my favorites: The Welcoming Prayer.
I’ve made The Welcoming Prayer a part of my daily practice for the past year and a half or so. It has helped me center myself, let go of what I can no longer keep, and examine what’s beneath the often strangling grip that becomes my auto-pilot when I’m trying to keep my whole world together with tightly clenched fists.
It’s a prayer of gentleness — a thing we’d better learn how to be with ourselves if we’re ever going to thrive — and not just survive — in this world.
Ultimately, it’s a prayer of vulnerability, because it’s a prayer about open hands, surrender and allowance instead of clenched fists, control and management.
I believe it’s a prayer that applies itself to life in general, but I’ve also realized the ways in which it has freed me in my writing — to enter into the creative flow that is, well... distinct, I suppose, but not disconnected from anything else in our very being, either.
Everything is One Thing, and maybe another way to say this is that we’re working together on getting to that One Thing.
Annie Dillard calls this the Unified Field. She writes:
“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters down, if you drop with them farther over the worlds rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power of evil, the unified field: our complext and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”
We’re working on getting to what Is and what Is Becoming.
Listen, we’ll get to some pragmatics throughout this journey together, but if you’ve followed me for long enough, you already know I’m not the prescriptive, bullet-pointy, “go therefore and do this set of things to try and prove your worth” guy.
And if you’re new to my work, then let me forwarn you that I’m the weird and mystical “hey, actually, let’s try to make art that comes from and flies beneath the realms of our consciousness and attaches itself to our heart strings” guy.
At the end of the day, what I’d like to do with our time together is give you permission. To write yourself out of whatever it is you might be experiencing. Or, if you’d prefer: to write yourself in.
This is less a “technique” or “writing styles” journey and more of an invitation to the inner workings of your own experience in the world through writing.
A common refrain in conversations I’ve had throughout the past few years has come from people who use the language of “wanting to feel seen.”
Some discover that not only do they long to be seen by others, but that they long to see themselves. I believe that this practice is a way to get in touch with who you are. The philosopher Kierkegaard is quoted saying, “Now, with the help of God, I shall find myself.”
A brief note on God: I don’t particularly care what you think or do not think about God in order to participate in our next month together, and I’m not of the opinion that you have to say these words to anyone in particular. What we’re practicing is an honest openness and willingness to take a look at the actual reality of the places we find ourselves in the world, and the persons we discover ourselves to be here.
Structurally, here’s how it’s going to work:
Weekly:
The theme of each week is going to be based upon a separate line from The Welcoming Prayer (and I’ll tell you more about it when we get started).
I’ll open up the session with a brief story about how the particular focus of the week is significant to me in my writing and journey.
Daily:
You’ll have a timer to begin and end your sit (listening practice), and recording of Welcoming Prayer (as read by yours, truly) to end it with.
I’ll share a quote with you that I’ve chosen in correlation with the week’s focus, and a little bit about the author / artist it is attributed to.
Based upon that quote, I’ll ask you a question and give you a personal example of my own answer and writing in relation to it.
Then, it’s time for you to write. Using that question as a prompt, I’ll ask you to set a timeclock, and the goal of each day’s practice will simply be long-hand stream of conscious writing. There is no agenda whatsoever, save allowing the prompt to lead you where it leads you.
Each day’s session will be accompanied by a song and/or video that relates to the theme, quote or prompt that you can use as inspiration for your own practice.
I’ll provide a daily image based upon each session so that if you choose to, you’ll have the option of sharing the day’s prompt publicly, in conjunction with your own writing/response to it.
Finally, let me just say that whatever you write is for you, first. If you want to share it, great. If you don’t, don’t.
Also, how you write is up to you. If it comes out as a poem, great. If it’s prose, fiction, memoir, a journal entry, a prayer, a rant… great.
This is not a call to do something “right.” It is an invitation into participation, however you see fit.
A Brief Disclaimer
I was going to make this a paid “course,” but decided against it — at least for the time being. Some iteration of it might make its way into a purchasable offering in the future.
That said, I am going to give folks the option to donate toward the project if they (you) so choose. No obligation, but if you find it beneficial, an opportunity is there for your consideration. If nothing else, it’d be helpful to hear from you. Information is currency, as they say, and I’ll be able to get in touch that way when necessary (like when I send you the playlist at the end of this thing).
I don’t know that this will prove to be your traditional "lenten” journey, but I hope it serves you, nonetheless.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…
Levi
P.S. Try adding something to your month this year instead of taking something away (thanks Brent Brown). Practice joy.
