Though It's So Much More Than.

Week Three| For the Joy & the Sorrow | Though It's So Much More Than ...

Over in the Writing in the Dark chat, where we’ve been posting daily delights, I mentioned an event I attended on Monday here in Minneapolis—a kind of creative community jam called Morningside After Dark. It was an incredible experience—local musicians and writers gathered together sharing music and words, laughter and tears, and, in one instance, with the a capella performance of singer Thomasina Petrus, absolutely stunned silence.

If you want to hear Thomasina Petrus sing, here’s a link (Thomasina is the first solo). This is not what she sang on Monday, but it does give you a sense of her divine and transporting voice. I wish I could share with you the experience of hearing her voice in that small church basement, where she was almost close enough to reach out and touch. It was unbelievable. Thomasina is also a small business owner, and here in this inspiring, wise, and beautiful five-minute clip, she sings a little, but mostly talks about creative process as explored through the lens of her life overall as a singer, actor, and entrepreneur. You will see and feel her extraordinary spirit shining through in the clip.

Meanwhile, on Monday night, as the musicians and writers offered one mesmerizing performance after another, I laughed, I cried, I gasped, and I sat in quiet awe convinced that despite everything, despite the darkness and the evil, there is light in this world, there is light in human beings, there is light to be shared with one another, and in the space where that sharing of light happens, that is my understanding of the divine. That is my god. Yes, maybe even more than nature—the other place where I find unmistakable and wholly present divinity—it is in this passing of light from person to person that I experience what it means to be walking each other home.

Every single one of the writers and singers was magic, so I am sharing the program here in case you want to Google and check out their work (Jon and I came home and immediately ordered every writer’s book).

One of those writers whose book we can’t wait to hold in our hands was Still: The Art of Noticing by Mary Jo Hoffman, which emerged from her practice of daily walks during which she paid close attention and took one photo, which she shared on a blog, a practice very much in conversation with what we are doing in this current intensive For the Joy & The Sorrow, where we strive to notice and document daily delight. Mary Jo’s practice is also conversation with our daily attention exercise and our ongoing work with shimmers and shards—speaking of which, I’d like to congratulate WITDer Theresa Harris Marl, who announced yesterday that her gorgeous essay “Unravel” was selected by judge Emily Prado as runner up for the Bellingham Review’s 2024 literary contest. You can read Theresa’s award-winning essay here, and of course we are adding it to our big, beautiful Born in WITD directory of published work. Theresa says “so much of [this essay] was written while searching for shimmers and shards.”

I just love when this happens, when I get to experience various examples of simple practices of attention and noticing and precise articulation of those noticings, and when I get to witness how these practices gradually transform the people who engage in them and the art they make (Mary Jo described the exact moment when nature finally spoke to her because she was actually, for the first time, listening).

It is so beautiful. So, so beautiful.

And as we are learning, Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights simply radiates with the fruits of his attention to the world. I feel very fortunate to be immersed in its wisdom now, to be seeking to follow its example now, to be reaching for delight now, especially now.

And on that note, let’s take a look at this week’s selection from The Book of Delights, and do some noticing and writing, through which we might—just a little—heal the division in our consciousness and bring ourselves even slightly closer to communion with the world and each other. As always I look forward to the joy of reading your work.