I have only 10 days left... "Hearing"

Well, things really aren't getting any less busy, BUT, I have found time to sit down and write a little and and then find time again to blog about the experience...
I usually find myself on days when I don't have work or school going to a prayer that's a little north of me. It's a quiet place and I find that time has it's own flow there.
An hour can feel like ten minutes and ten minutes can feel like an hour... but it's the place that I go to get quiet, to sit, to listen and to write, draw and pray (not particularly in that order). I call it my 'mountain top'.

But today's writing is going to be a little longer, the challenge posed was this, "What sound set your life spinning?"
This question all comes out of the past few challenges of being still, allowing memories and thoughts to be anchored by a physical focus; ie, breathing, the position of your hands, even what you hear... and what you have heard affects you.

So, Natalie Goldberg asks a simple question, when in your life did a sound, that you perceived, rock your whole world at that moment.

This story is one that I consider a changing moment for me and I felt that it is something that I needed to write down, so that it can be shared to you and others and be allowed the opportunity to encourage.

Be blessed!

"Hearing"

This is another story about Kansas City; I had been out of the Onething Internship for about 3-4 months; life at that point was a series of late nights and work.

A typical day would be; wake up at noon, go to work, come back around 6 or 7 at night, hang out with good friends, eat food and play music till about 2 am (activities of the night were determined by how many people were over, which ranged from 2 to 30), then to bed.
This was a fantastic time for me, becuase I got to hang out with all these cool people and got to develop relationships; friendships, sisters and brothers, with these people that I may not have otherwise...

But my relationship with the Father was suffering.

One night, I was chatting online with a friend of mine that really challenged me with, "was I living this christian walk becuase it was what I believed or becuase it was the only thing I knew to be right?"

That really grabbed my heart and I remember laying in my bed just journallying this struggle within me, "God, why do I follow you?"

After about an hour or two I was on my face on the floor and I heard God ask, "Eric, do you want a thunderstorm to prove my love for you?"

I told God no, thinking that it wasn't "righteous" to take God up on his offer, so I answered, "God, your presence is enough."

But God knew what I needed; he saw the wounded heart of his son and knew that he needed more than just an etheral expression of "his presence" to know the love that He (God) had for him, he needed something, real.

No more than the words, "...is enough." had left me lips then I heard a monsterous clap of thunder roll across my room...

I grew up in the plains of Missouri, so I'm pretty used to thunderstorms, but this was something else...

It was deep, piercing through wall, window and mind, it captured your attention and as it rolled by you, you heard it's physical presence make itslef known by the car alarms that were going off outside.

You felt it's vibraitons in your chest, and as my mind, ear and heart heard it, I knew it to be an expression of the heart of the Father towards his, son.

And I wept...

With each casading rythme and beat, a new wave of tears swelled within my eyes as I saw this expression of sound turn into the layers of God's love that he had for me. 

I couldn't move, I could barely breathe, as I allowed the tears to flow and my heart to break open as love flowed to take the place of fear, rejection and the wounds that we carry in our hearts.

Finally, I was able to stand, a few of my friends were sitting in the living room; one of them being a girl that I felt was an older sister to me.

I laugh and smile a little at the thought, becuase she asked me if I had ever felt or had God make something that we could see, hear, taste, smell or feel.  

And I told her what had just happened in that bedroom and that this storm that we all were experiencing was God showing his love for me.

She marveled at that thought for a minute, but as the night went on and the storm contunued to flash and roll with it's thunder, she would radomly, and frequently, hit me in the arm, pretty hard too. And give me a look as to say, "I know that God made this for you and I'm jealous that he did."

But all I could do was smile; becuase I was with and around these that cared for me and I for them, a place that was warm, friendly, light with laughter and a joy in the eyes...

And outside, was a manifestation of love, from a God that cared for me enough to show his heart through something that I loved, a thunderstorm.

Thanks for reading everyone! Here are some pics on a piece that I'm working on in sculpture; the final piece is going to be carved out of stone! :D
The clay model is only about 4 inches high... I'm hoping to find a good piece of stone and carve it out so that it's 6 or 8 inches... we will see!

Have a great night my friends,

-Eric Alan

Great Students

Today I am in Missouri seeing some of my family over spring break. Traveling for 10 hours yesterday and hanging out with my brothers made it so that I wasn't able to blog... but its good to be back and getting back to the writing!

Today is only one writing, it's a bit longer than the others I have shared so far (the limit I gave myself was 20 minutes instead of 10). The chapter is called "Great Students", in it, Natalie Goldberg remarks on how we all remember the great (and bad) teachers in our lives; those that helped shape us, guide us and, well, teach us. But she asks the question, "What about great students that we knew?"
She goes on to say that this writing is looking into negative space, focusing on what you have not noticed, like drawing attention to everything around a tree, except the tree itself.
As she says, "You're focusing not on the teacher but the key element that creates a teacher. No teacher exists without students."

So, here's to all the students that I have encountered in my life and to all the teachers that helped us get there... cheers!

"Great Students"

Great students in my life? That's a bit of a hard one; my mind is racing through a myriad of times spent in a classroom; grade school at a private christian school in Missouri, community college at Moberly and the study partners that I had, especially in history classes.
For me, history was always easy, but for many other people it's a tedious study up there like math is for me.
I remember my first art history class, there was this cute, little, out-going blond girl that mostly didn't have a clue about what was going on in class (nothing against blonds, I am still one if I had my hair ;), but she was fearless enough to ask people around her if they wanted to study together, and I said yes.
Most of the time it was just me and her going over my notes that I had taken in class (I took some seriously detailed notes, including small drawings of the pieces/art that we were studying), she would sit down at her kitchen table, pull out her notebook and we would slowly go over everything that we had covered in class; boiling everything down to a quick outline that can be looked over to help get over those pre-test jitters.
There were several people like that, we would get together at homes or local eateries, like Country Kitchen, and spend hours pouring over pages of notes of names, dates, babies (just kidding), places and pieces.

I remember my biology class and how all my classmates there worked hard to make sure that they got passing grades.
This was most exemplified by these green pieces of paper that we got before we took out biology tests.
Our teacher, handed out these blank "study sheets" that were on green paper, and the deal was, that we could write down as many notes, facts, definitions, etc. we could on those pieces of paper and we could use it for the test as a reference.
You should have seen how small people can write when they are allowed too.
I remember several sheets (my own included) where there wasn't a square inch of that paper that was not taken with some definition, concept, or scientific fact that I felt was need on that test.
I can only imagine the hours that we all spent writing and re-writing our notes so that we could get as much information as possible... fun times!

Other people that I can think of would have to be in art classes.
So many people would come in clueless about what they were to draw, paint, or make with clay.
They would struggle with taking a ball of clay and "centering" it on the wheel (that's when you would take the clay and throw it on a wheel and then apply steady pressure to the clay with your hands to make it so that it wouldn't be wobbling all over the place as you spun the wheel around).
They would start...

Times Up!

Looking forward to see what the topic is for tomorrow! Hope everyone is well and if your on spring break, I especially hope for you that you get some of the much earned rest that you deserve!
Take care everyone

-Eric Alan

PS. Brittany, you can borrow the book when I am done :)

Bolt and Bicycle

Hello fellow blogrimager's!... and other people :)

Today's reading from "Old Friend from Far Away" was pretty short, just two simple writing challenges called "Bolt" and "Bicycle".
Here are the descriptions for the writings; Bolt: "Tell me about a time something dawned on you, a realization, worlds came together or simply you saw a lightening bolt on a mountain. Where are you? Go for ten minutes."
And for Bicycle: "Tell me about a memory associated with a bicycle. The spokes, the wheels, the narrow seat. Go for ten."

And without further ado... I give you "Bolt" and "Bicycle". Enjoy! See you all tomorrow (maybe, I have to drive 12 hours tomorrow so we will see what happens, until next time then!)

"Bolt"

Nothing really comes to mind at the present; there was one moment though.
I was about 16-18 years old, I was laying my my bed waiting for the sleep to take me for the night, when I heard the sound of thunder in the distance.
I knew inside of me that this was going to be a big storm, and I love watching thunderstorms unfold amongst the stage of creation, so I sat up in my bed, turned to my window and gave a shove as the old sill creaked against the effort.
I took a deep breath and felt the cool wind brush against my cheeks, the smell of rain filled my nostrils as thought the air itself was pregnant with the rain that we were about to receive, the smell of it seemed to drift through me. And there, in the far distance, across an acre of our lawn, past the highway, over the corn fields that lay in the front of the house and past the silo that kept steady watch over us; the sky blackened with intensity of an ever approaching storm.
Lighting flashed across the sky making what was night, day, and showing a dance amongst the billowing clouds the energy that it felt...

In that moment when all was still and there I was leaning out my window watching the scene of legends past, unfold, a still and small voice spoke to me.

Not a voice that you hear with your ears, but a voice that calls from within you and travels through you and makes itself known to your thoughts, and it said, "I made this for you."

Times Up!

"Bicycle"

The memory that I have of bicycle(s), is the annual trip that my grandparents hosted up in northern Iowa, maybe Minnesota... Anyways, they had a couple of campers and they would take the whole family up to this camp ground that had this huge barn that was converted to a restaurant.

We would run around like young cousins do; climbing in places we weren't supposed too, playing cards in the cramped and humid quarters of a campers kitchen table (to escape the mosquitoes), swimming in the local pool, floating down a near by river; but the big reason we were all there, was for the bike trail...
It ran several miles, starting in one small, non-descript town; lazily crossing several rivers, an innumerable small creeks, through several other small towns that all boasted of fantastic local food (which it was!) and little stores that possessed all sorts of interesting items awaiting the curious to discover.

Every morning, grandpa would check all our bikes to make sure that they worked right and then we all (the cousins) would head out on the trail, simply going a mile or two as we were instructed by our adults, and usually one following us :(
But once every trip we would do the big bike ride!

All the aunts, uncles, grandma and grandpa and cousins young and younger would get up early on the chosen morning, mount up on our individual bikes that were available, and we would ride our butts off all day long.
Sometimes we would take quite a few stops here and there, taking in sights and time and eating our full at the local places and always searching for a way to quench our thirst in the hot noon day sun, drinking our fill of water whenever we had the chance.

Times Up!

Hoped you guys are enjoying the writings, let me know what you'll think.
Looking forward to what memories are revived as this blogrimage continues!
Take care.

-Eric Alan

Plain

Hey Everyone!
I read a couple of chapters from "Old Friend from Far Away" today by Natalie Goldberg. Most of them talked about mentors and teachers that we have had in our lives and how there memories, voices, remain with us throughout our lives and become apart of the legacy of who we are as we go through life.
In a great line Ms. Goldberg writes, "It is our hope that writing releases us. Instead maybe it deepens the echo. We call out to our past and the call comes back. We are alone-and not alone."

All that being said, here is our little memoir writing challenge for the day: Tell me about someone who was a true teacher for you. Don't be sentimental. Tell it straight and plain: who was this person? Go. Ten minutes.

"Plain"

His name is Fergus, he was my ceramics (pottery) teacher for two years; he was, and still is, a wiry older man with a love for his home state Kentucky.
He loves the smell of bacon but maintains the vegetarian life style and has never wanted to go back.
He lives in a small house in a suburb close to downtown and has taken the attic as his bedroom, so that his two kids can have their own rooms.

The man taught me more than just how to center a ball of clay on a moving wheel or the semantics of creating something that is not perfect and being ok with it; to even celebrate the beauty in its own imperfections...
As we say in the pottering community, "happy accidents".

Fergus is an avid bike rider all his life, this skinny man has remained the same weight since be was in high school (much to the chagrin of most of the woman that know him).
I learned from him how to compliment a woman, how to allow space for another to say what they will in the time that they say it and he opened me up to the wonderful world of coffee.
But most important of all, the man helped me to take time and "see" the beauty that was and is around me.
He taught me that it's ok to wait for relationships, and when a desire creeps over you to "have a girlfriend" to remind yourself that woman aren't fruit in a grocery store that you compare one to another, but that every relationship should start with a small conversation that is slowly grown between two interested people.
He's a man that every time I go home, I make sure that I sit down and have a beer with.
He's also a man that collects rocks on his dashboard...

Times Up!

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow! It's good to be writing again.

Sincerely,
Eric Alan

Monkey Mind, Wild at Heart and My Life

This being the second day of the blogrimage, I had the unexpected point of the day when I was getting ready to head to bed and remembered that I hadn't shared my thoughts yet today with my friends across the wide wed and my close family that is updated automatically whenever I write, what my grandmother calls 'journals'.

That being said, I have a correction from the previous day. I had mentioned that this wonderful book that I have rediscovered on my bookshelf was called, "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg... it is fact, not.
The book that I am using is still by our beloved Natalie Goldberg, but is called "Old Friend from Far Away" a much more fitting title of walking through the process of writing ones own memoir... but I digress (always wanted to say that!).

Today, I picked up the weather beaten copy of this book that I own and realized that I still have about 250 pages worth of writing challenges, short stories and writing theory to go through before the final punctuation on the last page... this is going to be a looong journey!

The first thing I read was a short chapter titled "Monkey Mind", dealing with that little voice in our heads that keeps telling us that we can't write, shouldn't write and have nothing to say to the world. This voice is simply to try and act in our best interest because how often in the past have we, as the human race, stopped and consider where we have come from and where we are going and how the (excuse my language) hell we ended up in the place we are in and the choices we have made... if we had all stopped and considered all these questions at the same time... how many of us would be able to walk away from them without self-imploding upon ourselves.
All that being said, this voice is a distraction, and one that does not easily go away, but can be overcome with the simple act of writing, of expressing ourselves in the midst of this 'chattering monkey mind'.
So Goldberg's sage advice? Keep writing, don't stop, and through time and a ton of commitment, that voice within you will go from opposing your retrospection, to embracing it and helping you through it...

That leads us to the next chapter that I browsed, "Wild at Heart". In it, Ms. Goldberg introduces us to a poet, Allen Ginsberg and a short excerpt from a biography of the man's life... and how what he grew up in and through, didn't make who he was.
Although most of us have grown up with the arguments of nature vs. nurture in our heads, our childhoods; how we grew up, with whom, for how long... doesn't necessarily have to define us.
It's like you have all the raw materials for making Mac n Cheese (in my case, with hot dogs), just because you have the hard noodles, milk, butter, powered cheese and cold package of hot dogs doesn't mean you have the final product of what this will be... it needs spark, fire, process.

All that to say, there was a small writing challenge in this little chapter, "write your life in 10 minutes".
A daunting task, I only got to my early/mid childhood years before the timer went up. But here is what I have to share with you and I'm looking forward to what we will have for tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Eric Alan

"My Life"

I was born to Linda Ordway and Philip Gregory Ordway, although everyone that knows my father calls him Greg.

I was the first born of a family that eventually would grow into four boys, and now consists of somewhere around 26 boys if you include all the foster children that my parents care for.
I was born into family that went to church every Sunday, every Wednesday and every special service that was within a two hour drive, my parents called those 'revivals'.
Most of my early life was spent with the struggles that all young boys desire/ go through, acceptance by the path of having my schoolmates be my friends; feeling that I was a normal child but always being sent to another classroom when it came time for math, seeing a difference among my classmates plastic milk containers that we used to hold our books and school supplies, and then seeing my little, worn out card-board box on the bottom of that small stack of crates, but one day, feeling the joy of coming to class and seeing that my teacher had taken that card board box that was caving in upon itself and replacing it with an old, brown milk crate that she had had at her house.
To this day, that little act of kindness to a young boy brings a joy to my heart when I remember it. Funny how its the little things that will stay with you.
Normally, we (my brothers and I) were considered, "the Ordway Boys" being called upon and volunteered whenever there was a move our parents heard about...

Times Up!

See you all tomorrow!

Day 15 & 16: Sideways Step and Test III

Happy Easter everybody! I hope you all found warm tables to sit around with good family and friends, chowing down on a good ham and all the fixen's that go with it! Haha!

Today's topics are Sideways Step and Test III

In Sideways Step, Natalie Goldberg wants to ingrain in us that when writing your memoir that you don't want to tackle head on, but rather to come up along side it. One way to do this is to pick one thing that you like; gardening, painting, working on cars... You name it. As you write about these experiences, you start digging in a little deeper: How old were you? When was this? What season was it? Where were you at? What was it like? Were your folks sick? Who were you dating at the time?...

These questions help to give a depth in your writing, but more importantly it gives you practice!

If you want to do anything you need practice, hard work. You need to be constantly looking, constantly writing about the happenstance's around you; tripping over a rake in the grass, something you notice while teaching algebra.

As Goldberg puts it, "you need to stay in touch with notebook and pen, to be connected with your search. If you don't know you're looking, you won't find anything."

What does this practically look like? A fellow by the name of Rob Wilder, he taught workshops with Goldberg for four years, had been writing short stories for nearly twenty years... but wasn't really well known or published from what we can tell.

Anyways, Goldberg tells the story that in writing, you can work hard for years, but it won't do you any good unless you are willing to jump off the ledge, get out of your 'comfort zone' (for all conservative christians out there) and become vulnerable in your writing.

So Goldberg would have Wilder get up and tell stories to the students, with each story that he told, they got more detailed, more involved. The students would sit enthralled to hear him and some would come to tears about what he was saying.

He would talk about how he got started writing, about his two boys, about his trips to England and other countries, all things that he regarded as old boring stuff. But after every story Goldberg would tell him to write it down, and he would merely have this perplexed look on his face.

Eventually, Wilder did write a story down, it was almost immediately published in an online journal, an writing agent sought him out and made deals, now he has a book out about parenting his two kids called, Daddy Needs a Drink.

What did I take from all this? 1) Write all the time about anything that you like writing about and about anything that happens to you. Because you don't know what stories will trigger something inside that will unleash the thing that you want to share. 2) Hard work will only take you so far. You need to know your voice and you need to be able to be who you are in your writing... no matter how that may look or how vulnerable that may be :)

Now that I've said all that!

Test III is simply a couple of 'I remember...' exercises that you do in a short amount of time. There were supposed to be 2 minutes but I went ahead and made them 3, just because I like the extra time to set the memory. The four exercises are:

• A memory of cabbage
• Some instance of war
• A cup you loved
• A peace march you didn't attend

Test III

A memory of cabbage:

I have a memory of sauerkraut, which I count the same since all it is, is fermented cabbage.

I was in Germany, the summer of 2001. I was probably in week 2 or 3 of our three month long missions trip around the world.

We were walking along the streets of his old city full of cobble stone roads.

There was a food stand we came up upon that had tables set out in the plaza, each one with a bowl, full of sauerkraut.

I had never had sauerkraut before, and instinctively put a bit of it into my mouth...

Time.

Some instance of war:

I was young, about 13 or so I want to say. The news was all a buzz with what was going on in Kosovo at the time and my interests in war had been peaked by a fascination with World War II that had been peaked not too long before.

I sat eagerly on our couch in the basement, listening to commentators talk about possibilities that the U.N. was going to send troops.

Still shots of the United Nations building filled the screen as we waited eagerly for the decision to pass.

Suddenly, word came across the air that America was sending troops!

In my little mind, America was going to war...

Time.

A cup you loved:

I actually still have the cup that I love!

It's a hand crafted mug that has a textured, salt glaze on it that was received probably from a six day wood fire.

I was helping my former instructor/mentor/good friend/master potter Fergus, set-up and run a booth that had his pots at the concert hall in downtown Columbia, MO.

My eye had been on this sleek, oval bottle that had a hole right through the middle of it...

My plan was that I was going to buy that bottle after the show had closed down...

Time.

A peace march I didn't attend:

When I was going to Moberly Area Community College about 3 year ago. I had this old philosophy teacher that reminded me of Santa Clause (now as I remember it, it seems that every philosophy teacher that I have had has reminded me of Santa Clause).

Sometimes, he would lean back in his chair in the basement of the college and start telling us stories of the peace matches and demonstrations that he used to take part in.

One such march, he was with a group of thousands that were demonstrating in front of the Pentagon in Washington D.C...

And... Time!

Well, thank you all for reading!

Let me know how you guys are liking the blog (i.e. what do I write that you really like? that I do well to illustrate?) and also any pointers to help me become a better writer (i.e. What are some things that I can improve on? punctuation? word usage? vocabulary? mental pictures that are created in your mind? Jazz like that).

Tomorrow's topics are: Monkey Mind and Wild at Heart

See everyone Tomorrow!

-Eric Alan