The holiday season brings up so much for us – family, love, loss, and revisiting the sacred.

Every story ever written includes loss, and overwhelming moments of grief, moments when a flower blooms and you say “SO WHAT?”  Hiding our sorrow, or stepping around that part of a story, means you are missing helping the reader understand the whole of your story.  Loss is the most important part of every story, of every human journey.  It’s our unwelcome teacher, who knocks on our door when we least expect it – taking our loved ones, our job, our country, our home – even our self esteem.

To rewrite my title essay of my upcoming essay book Freeing the Turkeys,  I had to go back to the real reason I went to Italy – to stare down death in the starving cats in the coliseum, the cemetry of the Capuchin Friars, and renaissance art, where Jesus was suffering and Mary was grieving.  I became obsessed with images of grief, and it made me return to the memory of the cold winter blizzard, and the icy drive to my lover’s home where all the Christmas lights had been strung and the gifts unwrapped. Whenever there is ritual, or celebration – grief seeps in, which is why the holiday season can be a challenging and fruitful time to create our sacred stories.

Whenever there is singing and celebrating, there is a reminder of a time or without, or our missing family members.

Poetic Form & Craft explored

Poetic techniques and poetic forms show up in all writing, reminding us how to invite the magic in our stories and hoping us find the luminous language associated with loss and suffering. In this four week class we will find the words and techniques to help us bring our stories and poems into sacred language.

Grief is chaotic, and sometimes revisiting loss can feel like adding cliche’s to your work. In the Luminous Language of Grief we will find all the ways to write into loss and sorrow with scene, specificity and metaphor, to personalize the universal experience of loss.

When we lose something or someone important to us, the world comes to an end, only the world does not come to an end. This is why we revisit these moments and write our stories. Writing gives us a container for the loss and the chaos and the sometimes overwhelming beauty and clarity.

As writers, it’s our job to take readers on a whole journey, and to do this successfully, we have to explore the whole of the journey – loss is part of that journey.

We remember that grief is devastating

That’s something we can hold onto.

But what good poems of grief also say is:

life is worth living, and even grief has its beauty.

And that is almost impossible to think of

until it is enacting itself inside of you  

What a Story is by Laura Lentz

In two six-week sessions writers will write their books, essays or poetry by using important elements of the Hero’s Journey, in a new practice of the Soul Journey:

WEEK ONE:  The Original Wound – Releasing and Reimagining   

A sacred object may be a physical, energetic, spiritual or imagined object – it can be an old watch, or a flip phone that belonged to someone we loved, a cluster of letters, the words fading on a yellow page, or it might be an alter you’ve built for your ancestors that is forever changing as your story of them changes. They help us to stay on the path we have chosen, and to be faithful to it. They give us energy and faith when we need it. Objects help us dive deeper into our story, they welcome us to language, and can be a tool to help funnel, transmit They help us to stay on the path we have chosen, be faithful to it. They give us energy and faith when we need it. In this class we will learn how to bring a sacred object into a story, and create a story around it. It can be a container to hold intent. It tool to help funnel, transmit or transmute energetic intent from and/or to a greater power.

WEEK TWO -PLACE & MEMORY

Places often remind us of a time in our life, or a person, or a younger side of oursevles we have left behind.  Grief can come when walking into a bedroom, a home, an airport or a temple. In this class we will create art around how a place can take help transport us from the past to the present.

WEEK THREE: ODES TO OUR DEPARTED

An ode is a celebration, praise, and often uses repetition and metaphor. In this class we will explore writing an ode to someone we love who is no longer living or no longer in our lives. In this session we will explore grief through celebration.

WEEK FOUR: WRITING A PRAYER OR A BLESSING

In this class we will explore what makes a story or poem a prayer or a blessing, including repetition. Poet Jan Richardson says, “a blessing does not explain away our loss or justify devastation. It does not make light of grief or provide a simple rix for the rending. A blessing and a prayer meet us in the place of our deepest loss, offering us a glimpse of wholeness.”