I can’t even remember now how long ago it was that I picked up a small book by Minnesota author Brenda Ueland entitled If You Want To Write. It was a no nonsense guide to the writing life. I loved every word between its covers. It was challenging and wise, inspiring and practical. I am sure that it was in this book where I learned that the first rule in developing a writing life was to put your behind in the chair!

After reading that book I went on to read her memoir ‘Me’. It was a rambling(in a good way) account of her life living near Lake Calhoun in simpler days of street cars and neighborhoods rife with small businesses and people who knew one another. She told of her interesting, perhaps even eccentric, family, a family of staunch progressives who filled their children with confidence and a strong independence. Mostly she talked about all she observed in her daily walks in the world. Another trait of a writing life……being a good observer.

So it was with great surprise that Ueland’s words showed up in an email I receive daily. I hadn’t thought about her in some time so it was a joy to once again read her wise, to-the-point, advice:”Sometimes say softly to yourself: ‘Now……now. What is happening to me now? This is now. What is coming into me now? This moment?’ Then suddenly you begin to see the world as you had not seen it before, to hear people’s voices and not only what they are saying but what they are trying to say and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal–not this object and that–but as a translucent whole.”

Isn’t that lovely? And wouldn’t you love to endeavor to do that every day as much as possible? I know I would. To hold myself to the accountability of ‘now’ seems one of the noblest things to possibly do. To be so present in the moment,to see the world as I imagine I did as a child, with eyes new to the beauty and the pain in the seams of every blessed day. To hear the sweet and raw sounds of the voices that are both familiar and foreign and to know in those voices the depth of the truth they are trying to express. To experience the weft and weave of any given day with such presence that it is a whole, no longer this thread or that one, but something that comes together as a tapestry never lived before.

I don’t think Brenda Ueland would have described herself as a mystic but it seems to me the words she offers to those who long to write are the message of the mystic,the everyday mystic that is. The one who wakes each morning knowing that the canvas that is about to be painted with hand and foot, with heart and head, with word and sight, is something more than any of us could imagine or create on our own. It is an art that is created quite literally by the dance of heaven and earth, of Divine and Image of the Divine breathing together.

Over the years I have read many books on how to be a writer. When I think back about the wisdom and exercises they offer, the lessons held out are almost always ones about living. Really living. Lessons about being in the moment. About noticing and paying attention. Advice about showing up and giving yourself to the scene in which you find yourself. Words about persistence and great patience, with yourself and the creative process. Challenges to sit in the chair and just begin. One letter after the other until something emerges that often surprises.

As the letters and the words, as the breaths and the moments, flow out into this day, may each of us have the presence of mind to whisper over and over…..”now
…..now…..now. This is now.”

Indeed it is.