Words are my life, my work, my livelihood. They paint portraits of the soul. My writing class, which met again today at Pompanuck Farms, has a kind of magical chemistry to it. My students are gently but powerfully connected to one another, as diverse as they are. There are working mothers, a former Bishop, school teachers,  a college professor, a communications director at a hip college, a massage therapist, a doctor, a nurse, a journalist, among others. They hear each other, help each other, listen to one another.

My job is to show them their passion, their bliss, to help them see what they do well, not what they fail to do. A lot of pushing and pulling, always gently, always in good faith. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Many people don’t wish to go where I suggest that they go. That is fine, that is the nature of any kind of teaching.

Everyone can write in their own way, I said. You can blog. Journal. Publish. Write for yourself, for others. There is not only one way to write. We talk of overcoming fear, of finding time, of finding voice. Writing is not about spelling or grammar, but feeling and emotion.

I believe this, and I teach this: unconscious forces announce themselves through words, the reveal the nature of our existence. Sometimes they are mute or stricken and their language is not the one we speak. Maria speaks in images, I speak in words. Only that which can be submitted to the magic of words can be brought to the daylight of conscious thinking – or writing and reading.  What cannot be expressed in words has never, in one sense, has happened, or be known.

Writing is, in so many ways, finding our voice, finding the words to tell the stories of our lives.

Only words that can be written or uttered or transmitted can awaken the soul, stir the unconscious, bring our ideas and feelings to the light. The process of self-awareness, of self-awakening, of authenticity, of true therapy are, to a great extent, related to bringing the light to what is buried in the depths of us, we so often do not know who we are.

The great writers have almost all, to a one, taken the oath of self-discovery, so often a painful, even searing one. You cannot explain the world if you cannot explain yourself. Watching my talented wife, I see this is very true of artists as well. I see her doing the hard work every day.

Today, Maria and I worked together to put storm windows up on her Studio. We broke the glass in one window in two places. Let’s go to the hardware store I said, and I saw her face, suddenly stricken with fear, she was close to tears. What’s wrong?, I asked. I’m afraid, she said, openly and honestly. I used to do this, I fixed so many windows, so many of them. I don’t want to fix windows again.

You don’t have to, I said, let’s take it to the hardware store. I feel badly, she said, I should be doing this, I know how to do it. No, I said, your face says you shouldn’t ever do it again. I can tell this story in words, it is important. It is her story. It has to be told, has to be written, has to be re-created in image and art.

Maria tells this story eloquently and powerful, all the time. She tells it in images, symbols, in fabric.  In my very special writing class, we are all sharing in the process of learning how to paint portraits of the soul. Each in their own way.