On February 24, 2023, in celebration of four months of writing online the Covid Writing Recovery Project hosted an in-person event at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC Emergence Evening was a time to write together and listen as community members reflected on their emergence into this time of Covid recover, in this place If you missed the ArtsCenter event, you are invited to write about moving from "emergency" to EMERGENCE during this phase of your Covid Recovery.
Post your reflection by clicking on the word "Comments" below and scrolling down to the "Leave a Reply form" at the bottom of the page.
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Welcome to Prompt #5 of the Covid Writing Recovery Project online. Jump in here with a reflection, then share on the other prompts if you like. Perhaps you'll choose to respond to other people's comments, or simply read through all you find on the site. This is our community and our Project, which we are creating together. Almost three years into the Covid 19 pandemic, we still don't have a map to the territory. The global island we share keeps rearranging itself, foisting on our community new leathery tangles of vines, mountainous fire ant nests, and paper-thin flower blossoms the color of late sunrise. There is a giant "X" somewhere harboring a worthy surprise for us. What do we hope to find? Lead us to your TREASURE! Your words show the way! To share your reflection, click on the word "Comments" below
then scroll to the bottom of the page and use the "Reply" form to submit your work. Welcome to Prompt #4 of the Covid Writing Recovery Project online. Jump in here with a comment/reflection and add to comments on Prompts #1, 2, and 3. Perhaps you'll choose to just read through the site. However you feel inclined to celebrate what is here, we welcome you. This time of year has been called the "deep winter," imposing its mystery on us even as we light countless candles, gather (maybe) by the warmth of fires in fireplaces, and drink beverages latent with their own magic. We can easily become enchanted by the celebrations we see and hear all around us. Whether they are religious celebrations or community and family traditions, it is easy to feel the pressures of expectations and obligations. To CELEBRATE also means: To praise widely or to present to widespread and favorable public notice. To praise and draw attention to. Invitation to Write: During these days of allure and ambivalence, what do we celebrate? What do we have to praise at this point in the Covid Writing Recovery Project? What do we want to draw to our own and others' attention? Help us celebrate a community of creativity and resilience. Contribute your own vision of what we have to celebrate this deep winter! To share your reflection, click on the word "Comments" below then scroll to the bottom of the page and use the "Reply" form to submit your work. Welcome to Prompt #3 of the Covid Writing Recovery Project online. Jump in here with a comment/reflection and add to comments on Prompts #1 and #2. Perhaps you'll simply read through what you find on the site. However you feel inclined to join in, you are welcome. What does HORIZON mean to you? What about BEYOND THE HORIZON? Share your perspective by posting a COMMENT below. Comments on Till the Ground are moderated to prevent spammers and trolls from posting. Your comments will appear after a brief period fro review. To post a prompt response 0r read others', click on the word "Comments" below.
Use the "Leave a Reply" form at the bottom of the page to submit your reflection. Welcome to Prompt #2 of the Covid Writing Recovery Project online. Feel free to jump in here with a reflection, then reflect and share on Prompt #1. Or, perhaps you'll just respond to this prompt or other people's comments, or simply read through everything you find on the site. This is our community and our Project. Be it. Share it. Do it! As the pandemic winter begins to thaw, we might consider how our experience resembles one of the three phases of matter. Are we stuck where we sit, wedged solidly into a corner like an ill-fitting chair? Do our emotions overwhelm us without warning like a flash-flood's liquid panic? Or are our souls numb, every craze line and crevice filled in with the inescapable air of exhaustion? We are who we are: irreducible. Like atomic matter, we also experience ourselves in ways which phase and shift. During our transition out of the psychic and physical restraints of Covid, we can ask ourselves what phase of matter we might become. Solid, liquid, or gas? Solids hold their shape with authenticity. Liquids take the shape of their containers revealing the contours of relationships. Gases fill spaces with invisible presence, a subtle persuasion influencing life. In the case of ice, water, and steam, HEAT serves as the catalyst transforming one phase of matter into the next. We can ask: what catalyses us? Be a CATALYST FOR CHANGE by posting a COMMENT below. Comments on Till the Ground are moderated to prevent spammers and trolls from posting. Your comments will appear after a brief period fro review. To post a prompt response 0r read others', click on the word "Comments" below.
Use the "Leave a Reply" form at the bottom of the page to submit your reflection. During planting, a farmer drops seeds into a trench or holes wisely prepared, or presses them gently with a fingertip into well-tilled, spongey soil. If that were the end of things, the seeds would dry out in the sun or be washed away by a vigorous rain. But our farmer understands an essential natural truth: whatever happens in the dark under the right circumstances transforms life. So, dirt takes its place on top of and around seeds as well as under them. Think of the average caterpillar, spines like dandelion fluff. By some mystery, it clothes itself in the potent dark of a chrysalis - to all appearances lifeless, its future fruitfulness an impossibility. Yet, butterflies and moths are born. Sprouts show their unlikely strength pressing up, up, from underground. Amazingly, a chick delivers itself from the dark womb of the egg, and a baby sea turtle rises, struggling with its tiny might out of the sand. The impulse to grow through the dark towards the light is in us, too. And, while the dark can sometimes be so threatening it thwarts life and health, we must ask ourselves again and again if we can trust new realities to be born in us. Is ours a fertile dark? Invitation to WRITE:
Bring your reflections out of the dark by posting a COMMENT below. Come back to read and comment on each others' contributions, cultivating a conversation about transformation. Comments on Till the Ground are moderated to prevent spammers and trolls from posting. Your comments will appear after a brief period for review. To post a response or read others' reflections,
click on "Comments" directly below: On Friday, October 21, 2022, the first members of the Covid Writing Recovery Project gathered to write and play, focusing our imaginations on creating a communal vision of a vital, fruitful, future. Someone has to believe it's possible to live robustly in this troubled and uncertain world. By being together, we were saying: Why not us? COVID CONUDRUMS and their ANTIDOTES: To begin, we named what writing with the Project might help us to overcome - alienation, inertia, angst, the dirge of self-doubt. One woman mourns the odd freedom the pandemic gave her to be at home, reading and walking and visiting with her family as much as she wanted, in ways her work life never allowed her before. Next, we wrote down the ANTIDOTES to our various conundrums, saying aloud into the circle: "We are hoping for a healthy harvest, so I will plant" - ENTHUSIASM, SETTLING, MINDFULNESS, PLAY, RESILIENCE, STRENGTH, PRACTICING MUSIC DURING THE DAY, PRIORITIZING DELIGHT (even though I'm back at work). POEM IN THE ROUND: While our sprouting community discussed the meaning of RESILIENCE, a paper was passed around with the first two lines of a poem written on it. Before being passed to the next writer, the page was folded down over the first of the lines so only one could be seen. The writer receiving would pen their own line, folding the paper down again over the line above theirs, passing the poem on to the next writer, and so on. Here is our poem offered to the Covid Writing Recovery Project community at large: History cast its shadow over all the world Together we felt alone, but now the sun Reminds us that we share the same dawn And together we can start again Looking at the stars every night Brilliant points of burning light Illumine the way through darkest night Cherishing the crazed song of the owl That greets me even through the closed windows When our eyes meet through Shimmers of reflected light, I remember And I don't try to rearrange it But take my place as history's willing witness TOAST TO HEALTH: To conclude our evening, we toasted the participants of the Covid Writing Recovery Project, raising a glass in the ancient tradition of extending good wishes to the health of the particular people named, known, celebrated! A blessing needs only well-wishing to be complete ("Live Long and Prosper" is just such a blessing from Jewish liturgy, though which liturgy none of the four Jewish participants in our gathering could say). A toast affirms identity and hopes to augment it. Therefore, in the spirit of our HOPE FOR A HEALTHY HARVEST, the Till the Ground Toasters (do they come with butter and jam?) offer YOU, our online community, the following: To the Covid Writing Recovery Project - May we discover together that we are a great, renewable resource for the good of our community! To the cats, dogs, chickens and horses - for easing our Covid distances! To the bad Jews - It's hard to be a good one! Here's a toast to the ones out on a limb and to those bravely stepping into the space in between. May your grip on the Before be light so that your reach into the Beyond may stretch ever onward! Take a moment to name your own Covid Conundrums and consider possible ANTIDOTES. If more courage, humor, willingness comes into your life, how will it change you? What about your behavior, motivations, relationships, or circumstances will be different? Be specific as specific as you can be. *****
Create a toast for your family, your friends, or this community. Share it with them. Here, here! |