Heather shares her presentation : Journaling for $elf

The guidelines to do a timed write: (from Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones)
1) keep your hand moving
2) don't think, don't get logical
3) forget about spelling and punctuation.
4) do not cross out (we aren't editing. If you write something you didn't mean to write leave it and move on)
5) if you reach a stopping point, or get stuck go back to the topic
6) go for the jugular (if something comes up that is scary or raw, dive into it. It probably has a lot of energy)

Before you get started it's a good idea to clear our minds with two minutes of quiet meditation.
Focus on your breathing. Let your thoughts pass over you. If something comes to mind just let it go.
Why?
1) prepare our ability to stay focused
2) create a space where we can just exist and forget about what we have to do, or the demands of the day

First Write:

Look at this photograph of Earth . It's first picture of the globe that many people saw. Now, we're accustomed to seeing this image but at the time people were amazed by it.

Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, had these observations about the image:
[It was] motivating for a lot of people, because it gave the sense that Earth is an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space. And it’s so graphic, this little blue, white, green, and brown jewel-like icon amongst a quite featureless black vacuum. Islands know about limitations. Bucky [Buckminster Fuller] led me to this notion. He said people still think the earth is flat because they act as if its resources are infinite. But that photograph showed otherwise. This is all we’ve got and we’ve got to make it work. There’s no backup. (Massive Change Radio, March 2, 2004)

Topic 1: Tell me what you see and what you feel from looking at this image (Write for 10 minutes).


Second Write:
The Power of Detail - excerpt from "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg:
“I am in Costa's Chocolate Shop in Owatonna, Minnesota. My friend is opposite me. We've just finished Greek salads and are writing in our notebooks for a half hour among glasses of water, a half-sipped coke, and a cup of coffee with milk. The booths are arrange, and near the front counter are lines of cream candies dipped in chocolate. Across the street is the Owatonna Bank, designed by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright's teacher. Inside the bank is a large cow mural and beautiful stained-glass windows.
Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. We live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning, buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they're not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter.”

Topic 2: Describe to me a place, one outdoor place, that you love. Or a time you felt connected to the natural world. Describe it, tell me what the air smelled like and what did you hear. Give me all the details. A place I love...(Write for 10 minutes)



Third Write:

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry that I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with s sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Topic 3: List all the changes (everything that comes to your mind) that humans beings can make in order to create a better more sustainable world. Write it all down, get out as many ideas as you can, from the most improbable to the things you are already doing. List all those paths not traveled, list the changes we can make in the world. GO (Write for 10 minutes)


Conclusion:

Let's challenge ourselves to view our world with brand new eyes, to take note of the details, and to make one small change every month toward living a more sustainable life.

I hope that you will discover the treasures of journaling!

Thank you!
Heather