Emerging Form

How might gratefulness infuse your creative practice with trust, awe, acceptance and wonder? In this episode we speak with Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful: the Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted, about the surprisingly practical ways gratefulness inspires and fuels our creativity. She offers lots of prompts and how-to steps. 

Kristi Nelson is the executive director of A Network for Grateful Living and author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. She has spent most of her adult life in non-profit leadership, fundraising, and organizational development. In a wide variety of roles, she has helped to lead, fund, and strengthen organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. In 2001, Kristi founded a values-based fundraising consulting and training, and leadership coaching business, and in this capacity worked with organizations such as the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spirit in Action, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. During this time, she was also founding Director of the Soul of Money Institute with Lynne Twist, Director of Development at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and Director of Development and Community Relations for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. She received her BA from UMass/Amherst, a graduate certificate in Business and Sociology from Boston College, and her Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Leadership Studies, from Harvard University.

Kristi Nelson’s book: Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing For Granted

https://gratefulness.org/

Kristi’s story of moving through stage IV cancer 

https://gratefulness.org/resource-category/poetry/

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a crystal ball so we could see where our creative road might take us? Or, perhaps as we discuss in this bonus episode of Emerging Form, perhaps what we really want is to just stop worrying where our path might take us. We talk with science journalist Jill U. Adams about her own creative arc and the surprising chat with a college counselor that sticks with her.

Jill U. Adams is a science journalist who reports on health, psychology, teens, and education. She lives in upstate New York and tweets as @juadams. She shares her drawings on Instagram: @juadams1.

Jill’s essay at Nieman Storyboard, “Jumpstart your writing routine: coffee, journals, sketches and postcards,” in which she explains how her morning writing rituals lifted her out of COVID malaise.

Everyone agrees: creative routines can ignite our creative practice. But why are they so hard to maintain? How can we create more sustainable creative practices? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with science writer Jill U. Adams about her morning routine--how she established it, how she changes it, how it serves her, how it pushes it, and how she makes it sustainable. A sweet surprise: How postcards have become a way to engage with letting go of perfectionism. 

Jill U. Adams is a science journalist who reports on health, psychology, teens, and education. She lives in upstate New York and tweets as @juadams. Check out her drawings on Instagram: @juadams1

Jill’s essay at Nieman Storyboard, “Jumpstart your writing routine: coffee, journals, sketches and postcards,” in which she explains how her morning writing rituals lifted her out of COVID malaise.

Early to bed, early to rise, coffee and quiet--these are some of the daily routines that help drive the creative life of poet, editor and writing coach James Crews. In this bonus episode, we talk about life on the farm in Vermont with his husband, the importance of trust in our creative life, how we can sabotage ourselves by trying to know where our creative path will take us, and Crews’ mentor Ted Kooser’s advice about conditioning the mind. 

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.

Jack Kornfield

Ted Kooser

How might stillness and a heightened sense of awareness infuse your creative endeavors? In this episode we speak with poet, editor and writing coach James Crews about how a daily mindfulness practice can help us meet creative stumbling blocks such as self-judgment and writer’s block with more clarity, curiosity, acceptance and even surprise. Can mindfulness be a hindrance to creativity? Are there “rules” for how and when to to do it? Can being quiet really help an art that depends on words? How might your creativity infuse your mindfulness? 

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. Crews teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University and lives with his husband on an organic farm in Vermont.

John Kabat-Zinn

Sharon Salzberg

Jane Hirshfield

Naomi Shihab Nye

Darn Lucky

for James Crews

It happens, you know—the day opens itself

like a tulip in a warm room, and you meet someone

who amazes you with their willingness

to be a thousand percent alive, someone

who makes you feel grateful to be you.

And it’s as if life has been keeping a beautiful

secret from you—like the fact that they make

elderberry flowers into wine. Like muscadine.

Like the yellow-green floral scent of quince.

Like the perfect knot for tying your shoes.

And it turns out life does have wonderful

secrets waiting for you. Even when the news

makes you cry. Even when some old pain returns,

that’s when you will meet this new friend.

Someone wholly themselves. Someone

who makes you smile in the kitchen, a smile so real

that when you go out, the whole world notices.

It’s enough to make you want to wake up in the morning.

To go into the day. To be unguarded as a tulip, petals

falling open. You never know who you might meet.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

A few words about what happens at a writing retreat.

Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery

Photo: Rosemerry’s altar for her recent writing retreat.

What would it be like to give over completely to your creative self? To get away from daily distractions and responsibilities and just write or paint or dance? In this episode of Emerging Form, Rosemerry and Christie talk about writers' retreats--why going away somewhere to write (or create) is so important, what it might look like, and how you might plan for one. From food prep to altars to finding daily rhythms, we talk about some of the ins and outs. Do you need one? Maybe you can’t afford not to have one. 

How do we abstract our sense of self-worth from our creative work? That’s one of the themes in this bonus episode in which we converse with writer/artist/poet/editor Sarah Gilman. We learn about her reliance on small blank notebooks, the efficient layout of her office and the importance of having books around.

Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, Hakai Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesigns

https://sarahmgilman.com/

How can working in one art form strengthen our practice in another? Our guest Sarah Gilman describes herself as a “creative smush,” and in this episode, the artist/writer/editor talks about how all these art forms inform each other--how all of them allow her to “think in terms of metaphors.” As she says, by working in multiple fields at once, she can enter into a place where “themes can combine in immersive ways that foster empathy, respect for nuance over polarization, and a sense of awe for and accountability towards the world as it is—still huge and full of mystery and beauty, however threatened or diminished.” We also talk about how to get out of our own way, the importance of going outside, and how community and connections can fuel our work. 

Sarah Gilman is a Washington state-based freelance writer, illustrator and editor who covers the environment, natural history, science, and place. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate the complicated ways people relate to landscapes and other species. In her visual art, she’s most interested in the cultivation of wonder, and the ways it might help more of us come to value and make space for wildness and each other. Her current work is at the nexus of the two fields. Her writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Audubon Magazine, The Washington Post, High Country News, BioGraphic, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing. Her work has been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11. In 2021, she will be a Knight Science Journalism fellow. She’s also a contributing editor at Hakai Magazine.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/HiddenDrawerDesigns

https://sarahmgilman.com/

South America's Otherworldly Seabird, Sarahs’ narrative and illustrations of how scientists are working to save a tiny seabird in the Atacama Desert.

For Auld Lang Syne

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet,

says the song, and I would give you

the cup, friend, would fill it

with whiskey or water or whatever

would best meet your thirst.

I fill it with the terrifying beauty

of tonight’s bonfire—giant licks

of red and swirls of blue that consume

what is dead and melt the ice

and give warmth to what is here.

I fill it with moonrise and snow crystal

and the silver river song beneath the ice.

With the boom of fireworks and with laughter

that persists through tears. With

Lilac Wine and Over the Rainbow and Fever.

I toast you with all the poems we’ve yet to write

and all the tears we’ve yet to weep,

I hold the cup to your lips,

this chalice of kindness, we’ll drink it yet,

though the days are cold, the nights so long.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 ____

The Next Storm Comes

And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

         —Meister Eckhart

And suddenly you know it’s time

to shovel the drive. For though snow

still falls, at this moment it’s only

three inches deep and you can still push it easily

with your two wide yellow shovels.

Yes, it’s time to start something new—

though it doesn’t feel new, this

shoving snow from one place to another.

In fact, your shoulders still feel

the efforts of yesterday.

But with each push of the shovels,

the path on the drive is new again. At least

it’s new for a moment, new until snow

fills it in. Then it’s a different kind of new.

How many beginnings are like this?

They don’t feel like beginnings at all?

Or we miss their newness?

Or they feel new only for a moment

before they’ve lost their freshness?

There is magic in beginnings, says Meister Eckhart,

and sometimes we see beginnings all around us,

a new path, a new promise, a new meal.

A new prayer. New snow fall. A new song.

Is it too grand to call it magic, this new calendar year?

Too grand to call it magic, this momentary

clearing on the drive? Too grand to be magic,

this momentary clearing in my thoughts?

Or is it exactly, perhaps, what magic is—

something we allow ourselves to believe,

despite logic, despite reason, something that brings

us great pleasure, makes us question

what we thought we knew, our sense

of what is possible changed.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

_____

Watching The Wizard of Oz on New Year’s Eve, I Think of a Resolution toward Peace

As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

—The Wizard to the Tin Man, The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum

Give us hearts that break

when we see how cruel the world can be

and hands that extend toward others.

Give us eyes that weep when we feel

the beauty of home, and

lips to speak love, to apologize.

Give us courage to say what must be said

and ears to hear what we’d rather not hear

and eyes that will not turn the other way

from anyone in need.

Give us brains that are wired

for helpfulness, compassion

and curiosity. Yes, let us ask for hearts

that break and break and grow

bigger in the breaking. Let us

love more than we think we can love.

And the cup of kindness, may we

ever remember to drink of it,

let us share it with each other.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer