37days

Retreat to move forward

Sometimes in the madness of our lives what we really need is a quiet space on 63 acres of rolling land in the mountains of North Carolina, a moment to look at our life's stories, to learn from them, and to re-story ourselves.

I'll hold only one public retreat this year, from September 26-28, 2008, near Asheville, North Carolina. I would love for you to be there. It won't be the same without you.

Participants will be the first to receive my new book, LIFE IS A VERB, which won't hit bookstore shelves until October.

We'll explore six conditions for intentional, mindful living as a small learning community in a beautiful space. We'll eat organic vegetarian food cooked on site for us by a Kitchen Goddess. We'll laugh. We'll leave refreshed and connected and more.

Information is here, including details on our 2008 full scholarship for a single parent to attend.

Unfortunately, we are limited to only 20 participants, so early registration is advised as participation is on a first-come, first-reserved, basis.

Retreat to move forward

Sometimes we have to retreat to move forward.

The next 37days retreat is scheduled for September 28-30, 2007, and registration has just opened for it. Limited to 14 people, I hope you can be one of them. I'll be joined by my business partner, David Robinson, in facilitating the weekend retreat. He's magical and brings so much to the gathering. Plus, we laugh a lot.

September 28-30, 2007  / MIND THE GAP: The Power of Personal Stories

[A 37days Retreat]

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” -James M. Barrie

If you had only 37 days to live, would you feel happy with the story you have lived thus far? How would you express that story, learn from it, leave it for others? Those are the fundamental questions behind this blog and the grounding for this unique, experiential weekend gathering focused on unmasking our personal stories to achieve greater creativity, healthier relationships, and fuller engagement in what poet Mary Oliver calls our “one wild and precious life.”

Often, there is a gap between how we wish to be seen and who we really believe ourselves to be, between the story we meant to write and the one we’ve written so far. This gap mutes the colors of our lives and inhibits the quality of our engagements with other people—in our families, our organizations, our communities. Maintaining that gap diminishes our creative impulse and often splits our intentions. Why, then, don’t we do more to shorten that distance and mind that gap?

This unique Gathering will explore these questions:
How do we make meaning of our lives through story? What are the stories we tell ourselves about others? About ourselves? How do those stories reduce us? What learning and significances are right in front of us, in the stories of our days? How can we summon the courage to move beyond the limits of who we think we are into what we were meant to be? How can we relinquish our “role” in order to discover who we might be beneath the mask?  What treasures can be found in the in-between space between me and you, between perception and preconception, between my Self and the Other?

We’ll explore concepts such as:  Life as a finite or an infinite game, intention and direction, wicked problems & tame solutions, and naming our vicious and virtuous circles, those patterns that either reduce us or allow us to live expansively.

Learning Activities / We will: 

• Use improv theatre, ritual, metaphor, mask, story, writing, and other narrative tools
• Explore “role” and other expressive personal and organizational “masks”
• Be 85% experiential--not in the sense of simulations or role plays—but as unmasked engagement with others
• Invite participants to extract meaning from experiences as a collaborative learning community
• Use focused free writes to help participants frame experiences in their own language for deeper exploration
• Experience how changing ourselves can deeply impact our families, communities and organizations.

Here's what people had to say about the last 37days retreat:

“You created a safe environment for valuable learning.”

“I loved the gentle humor that developed in the group, the inclusive quality of the experience, and the practical writing techniques that I’ve probably encoded into my cells.”

“You don’t facilitate as if to say ‘we are the leaders.’ You’re great at taking cues from the group.”

“The story you wove through the whole weekend was masterful and amazing.”

“Your facilitation is beautifully collaborative.”

“Your ability to bring movement and play into the experience, and at the same time, relate that play to deeper concepts, was truly a pleasure to experience and to watch.”

“I appreciate all the thought, caring, and preparation you put into making the retreat weekend transformational for all of us.”

 Cost / To honor the impulse of giving behind 37days, this retreat is offered for a reduced fee of $475-775 inclusive of tuition, materials, housing, and all meals. Please pay what you can in that range.

Location / Our 2007 retreats will be held at the Bend of Ivy Lodge in Asheville, North Carolina. Go here for more information and registration forms for this and other 2007 retreats (PDF).

We'd love to have you join us there. It won't be the same without you.

Read more poetry

Two years ago, I attended the North Carolina Writer's Network annual conference. I was amazed to find hundreds of writers there, all talking about writing.

It had never occurred to me that so many people write or that, in fact, people actually study how to write. Go figure. Just think of all the time I've wasted, not in a writing group or studying with a teacher.

It was a real moment of clarity - I decided that it might be a good thing to take a writing class or twelve, to get work in front of others for their comment, to explore whether a writing teacher could see the architecture of the pieces that I couldn't see, not yet.

At the last moment, and at the last session of that conference, I decided to attend a workshop on memoir. For some reason when I walked in, I felt that the teacher was someone who would be significant in my life--I didn't know how, and I knew it didn't really matter if we continued our connection past the end of the workshop, but for that moment, his influence would be significant. And it was. I'm still figuring out how. It doesn't have to do with proximity, as so many things do.

His name was (and still is) Sebastian Matthews. A poet and memoirist, he teaches classes in which we read and listen to other writers, explore the structure of our pieces, and workshop the works of others in the course. I'll begin my next class with him on February 14th.

It's important to support writers, don't you think? Sebastian has a new book of poetry out - a perfect Valentine's Day gift, perhaps? You can find out about it here.

And guess who has written praise for Sebastian's work? Yep. None other than my beautiful Billy: "Music and musicians run through most of these poems—Louis Armstrong to the Beach Boys and many in between—but Sebastian Matthews has his own poetic music, which is poised, tuneful and able to shift from major to minor so nice you hardly notice. We Generous is a terrific collection, an assembly of smart and evocative moments." —Billy Collins

Find your saxophone

"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it." -Joseph Campbell

If you’ve read 37 days before, you might have picked up on my love affair with actor Johnny Depp. Beautiful, talented Johnny. Quixotic, funny, odd, quirky Johnny. Did I mention beautiful? Ooh-la-la.

What can I say? There’s no defending it. I won’t pretend it makes sense, this long-distance obsession from North Carolina to France, this enormous, smothering, consuming disdain for that little fragile wispy twig of a French blonde he keeps taking to awards shows and having children with for some unimaginable reason. Why, I could take her out in the blink of an eye, the bat of a more well-nourished eyelash, were I the least bit inclined toward violence, which - of course - I am not, having attended a Quaker college (whose football team was paradoxically the "Fighting Quakers," but I digress).

Celebrate every orange flag

“The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he's wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him where he is right. The reason we don't do it so often is that it's more fun to throw a rock through a window than to put in a pane of glass.” - Robert T. Allen

Three stories, one theme:

The first story

One afternoon a few weeks after my older daughter started first grade, I picked her up from school and drove to my husband’s bookshop to say hi. When we pulled up, John ran out to see us, leaning in the car window to give Emma a kiss. “How was school today, Buddy?” he asked.

“I had my first test today!” she exclaimed brightly. (How wonderful, I thought. A whole lifetime of testing has opened up for you…).

What was our first question to her?  “How’d you do?” (Yes, let’s get straight to the bottom line.)