When Did You...

“When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of your own silence?”

Dr. Angeles Arrien shared these provocative questions as the four questions she learned were asked in shamanic societies when someone was battling with what we call depression or the feeling that something just wasn’t right, or that they had somehow lost their way.

For me, personally, the truthteller gut-punch question that lies in the same vein is: “When did you stop writing?”

Yes, the ever-accumulating stacks of notebooks testify my commitment to daily scribing, filled with the snippets, the lists, the rough agendas, the observations, the half-brained ideas, the words of others, the chronicling of my days, and yet, I wince when I think how long it has been since I have written something with intention, taking a craft-like approach, engaging gleefully in the clickety-clack dance forward and backward in an attempt to unearth something real of me, to me. And as more time passes and less of this “real writing” (not a helpful term, I know) makes its way to the surface, the attempts to reach down through the strata feel more….futile.

I wonder if there is a question for you that evokes a similar wincing?

I have borne witness countless times to, and personally experienced, the occupational hazard of demanding an earning from the very thing that brought us the most joy and sense of escape from the pressures of the world. The moment we decide to attach monetary value and proclamation to what we most love to do, we do shift our relationship with it in some inherent way. And yet, I still stand behind that choice as being a vital leap for many of us to take. But then…what happens when we get asked the dreaded question:

When did you stop cooking? (they ask the restauranteur)

When did you stop throwing pots? (they ask the ceramics production manager)

When did you stop surfing? (they ask the surf shop owner)

When did you stop walking the hills? (they ask the GIS technician)

When did you stop praying? (they ask the mega-church pastor)

For me, I don’t know what stops the writing. (I could certainly hypothesize + rationalize….It must have been the fear triggered by the pandemic that did it, or the chronic exhaustion of the sandwich years, or the overwhelm from the recovery of the flood, or that slow deadening of the doubt…)

But today I am choosing to lean into the hope that might come from sharing the moment in which I felt compelled enough to start writing something here again. It was an encounter with something tiny and unexpected that did the trick and then the recall of it: This afternoon, I was coming around the bend in my car with full sunlight behind me, enough to blur out the mess of storm debris we still have everywhere. And strangely a memory of a photo I took a few weeks ago popped back in my mind. I had taken a walk with my dog Ruby down to the creekbed as the snow began to fall and I felt a sense of deep peace settle in. It was such a welcome feeling after a long stretch of, well, not that feeling. Before turning around to head back up the hill, I felt compelled to go down to the water’s edge and see if there were any ice formations yet in the shadowed spots. And oddly nestled in was this snow-dusted pomegranate. Who knows how it got there but it felt like a gift picked out from the infinite possibilities on the planet just for me.

What I experienced in that moment was what happens when we encounter something beautiful and unexpected in the world surrounding us: The pulse rise that comes from surprise. An appreciation of its form or function morphs into a sense of delight and leaves us with a flutter of inspiration (no matter how small, or perhaps, yes matter how small).

And so… this has led me to pose the invitation here to those of you who may dread your question being asked…. when did you stop….?

Where could you go or what could you do to up the odds of rekindling your relationship with your medium? What might happen if you reclaimed a bit of “the territory of sweet silence” in honor of it? Could retracing your steps or scenes (maybe through the help of your camera roll) spark a flame of delight that is worth following through as it leads you into the creation of something new, even if it is simply so that you can say you no longer have you stopped doing what it is that brings you alive.

Whatever it takes to shake the dust off. I really do believe it’s worth it. For ourselves foremost, and for the joy we then carry for a spell. For the world we inhabit deserves that.