Living from a place of abundance...
I’ve had a full week. Well, a full five days.
I’ve been sick as a dog since arriving at my friend Jackie’s place for a bespoke writer’s retreat. Our friend Cheryl joined us at Jackie’s bucolic farm amidst the rolling fields of Huron County in southern Ontario, Canada. Lake Huron, a mere 20-minute drive away, beckoned, but I was too sick for a field trip. Jackie and Cheryl went together to feel the golden sand and be buffeted by the wind and experience the pounding waves of a bright and warm fall day. I slept off the first day of a terrific cold, the worst I’ve had since I had COVID three years ago.
I missed our play at Stratford the next day. “Something Rotten” was by all accounts, a fabulous show – the perfect play for us writers. Cheryl had never seen anything like this, being American and all. The town of Stratford, Ontario plays host to the Stratford Festival, has done so for the last 73 years. The Stratford Festival is globally renown, and internationally acclaimed for Shakespearean drama, pushing the boundaries of how to present these age-old classics. And I missed it, sick in bed with my first cold of this coming winter season.
I was up for the sound bath we’d organized the next night, but it made me dizzy and I could barely stand after. The event was held in the Trivitt Memorial Anglican Church in Exeter, in the heart of Ontario’s farmland. The church is impressive, having stood on this site since 1860, when Canada was just a colony of Great Britian. The massive bell tower still chimes on the quarter hour, has done so since its refurbishment in 1890, adding to the sound bath we experienced. Inside the church, the golden-hued wooden rafters support the roof, providing the perfect combination of beauty for both eye and ear. But after the last chime of the bowls melted away and it was time to rise, I could barely stand, as the sound bath reverberated through my mucus-filled head causing me to stumble on legs too unsteady to hold me. I was dizzy until the next morning.
The next morning, we finally sat down to write together in earnest, in notebooks provided by Jackie, as part of our retreat package she lovingly curated. Each meal she made was exquisite, from breakfast to night cap, for five days running. Her farmhouse held us close, with writing nooks all through the main floor of her home and out onto the back deck. We swam in her pool, and lounged in her hot tub, and told stories of our lives, weaving together a bond that belies our two-year friendship.
Despite my illness, and how I “missed out” on so many field trips we’d planned together, somehow my being sick helped us to pace our time together. We moved languidly from activity to activity, holding all things but each other loosely, allowing our energy levels and interest to indicate our next activity.
Using writing prompts we each provided, we explored our hearts, our pasts, and grew insight that will, no doubt, inform our individual memoirs. Writing, good writing, comes from the inside out. And it takes a great deal of introspection to titrate out the sharpness of emotion that robs a story of its magic. We did some of that work on this retreat. It was a rich time together, unbelievable when you think that our friendship is so new, but feels eternal.
Living with abundance enables us to see all things in their positive light, even challenges like bad colds at inopportune times.
Comments