It is in movement that I am called

I’ve been swimming every day and I want to see how many days in a row I can swim. Yesterday was day four. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. In the water I find stillness, in my movement I find quiet, in the waves I find perfect solitude.

I am not usually one for a challenge, but Cardi B says I’m my own competition I’m competing with myself. I feel this with my swimming goals. I want to see how long I can go without a break. Without a pause. Maybe it will only be one more day and I will start again at zero.

I started writing down every swim I have done this year. From plunging in the cold fresh water ocean on the first day of the new year to river swims with my beloveds in Western Massachusetts. Every swim I am reborn and I am new and the layers sheds and the light comes in.

When I swim I feel one with everything. With the big and remaining grief of Palestine, watching Biden’s press conference and feeling sick at our options, my actions and movement work can only bring me so far. I must float on my back and submerge my head to integrate all the parts of my anger and sadness. The endurance required to stay awake also requires the stillness of doing nothing in the big lake.

I have never regretted a swim, I have only regretted not swimming.

Today is the first day of the Landscapes writing retreat. My writing practice and my swimming practice look like my dance practice and my quilting practice. The improvisational weaving together of thoughts and language - I bring forth what rises from the depths of my spirit to be brought to my inner world, and then to be given to the people.

I found our visioning session on Saturday to be so nourishing, so delightful, so invigorating. It was recorded if you couldn’t make it live. I look forward to writing every day this week at 11am EST, working on , and tending to the written form in the same way that I tend to the form of my swim.

It is rare that a day goes by I do not write. At a minimum I write my gratitude list every day that I send to Anna. I usually do my morning pages at an hour of my choosing, and writing on the computer takes up at least four days a week. I am excited to push it to five this week.

I find the written word isn’t coming to me as easily as it often does on a Monday. Perhaps I am entering a phase of needing more time between essays, more time between the understanding of my experience. So much is easily expressed through my movement practice right now, and bringing back Personal Practice has been such a strange and needed joy. To move my body through the tapestry of the world is a gift I was no longer giving myself.

I hope you’ll join us today for the writing retreat. I have some special readings and exercises in store for us.

May your words come to you in the timing they are divinely designed to arrive in
May you return to any practice you miss
May you pause when necessary
May you be prolific in your output
May you be free of the expectations of its impact
May you be in the water of life

JOIN LANDSCAPES

Longtime friend and part time neighbor Geoff Holstad is putting on a very fun event this weekend along Lake Michigan and here are the details :) You can walk/run/swim/bike and definitely join for the picnic at Bohemian!
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