Pamela Pumpkin

I can write but I can’t draw or paint. I tried and so did everyone else–some funny, some creepy, some beautiful. We had so much fun–like little kids with paints and sponges and brushes and pumpkins large and small.

Our ‘home’ is filled with decorations for this time of year so I look forward to pumpkin pie with whipped cream and mugs of apple cider or hot chocolate.

This  is also a good time of year to cuddle up with a great book, so yesterday when our traveling community library visited, I chose a book new to me: Willie Nelson’s Letters to America. I’ve been a fan of Willie’s music for decades. So now I’ll find out some new things about this “American legend.” It’s wonderful to continue my education through regular reading and conversations with others.

My writing clinic is also going well. Last time we met I asked everyone to divide a sheet of paper into three columns and title them PERSON, PLACE THING–the definition of a noun. Then we chose one memory we have about a special person, place, or thing in our present or past and write about that choice. Out of eight participants, five people chose teachers. That started a lively and heart-wrenching conversation. One of the women on staff who attends my clinic called her teacher that evening and read to her what she wrote.

The teacher wept and said this was one of the happiest days of her life. Whew! Now I feel like weeping.

Here is what the great mystic, Henri J.M. Nouwen had to say about the power of writing: “Writing  is a process in which we discover what is alive in us…I do not yet know what I carry in my heart but I trust that it will emerge as I write. Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to give away on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches.”

Consider his words as you share some of your life in writing.