“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
These words belong to the poet Mary Oliver, although one could argue that these words belong to all of us now. They came to her in a moment of total focus, perhaps a moment when she forgot her own name, her troubles, all of that persuasive neurosis, and was overcome with the rapture of living.
And then the words permeated our collective consciousness, by magic. When you hear these words now, it’s as if nobody wrote them at all, as if the phrase has lived as long as the earth itself.
But how can we know what to do with our precious lives, Ms Oliver?
How can we wear our lives more lightly, yet feel them with greater richness?
How can we honour ourselves without falling for the lie that we are privatised selves, existing separately from everyone else?
How can we go on living in the face of death?
How can we keep that spark alive, that magic and rapture, even as the years turn us over and over, marking us always, beating and withering us?
Received wisdom maintains that life strengthens us, but I have never once felt toughened by a storm. To me it seems that each slice of living only makes us more sensitive, another layer of skin having been removed.
And so I am a girl in search of a spiritual practice that doesn’t involve the G word. That is spiritual in the sense that it keeps my spirit alive, robust, strong and dependable within the storm of life.
In January of 2022, I felt at a low ebb.
I was falling regularly into anxiety and panic, partly freer than ever, partly devastated. Even writing and filming and all of the things that had once felt like decadent indulgences were beginning to feel weighed down by my doubts about life, and about myself.
And so I picked up a beautiful and at times enraging blue book. A cult classic, a spiritual text, a 1990s Standard.
The Artists Way.
The premise of the Artists Way is that our creativity can be cultivated as a spiritual practice. That our fears around creating can be healed and replaced by a new relationship, in which art becomes what it was for so many of us as children: a sanctuary, something to save us again and again. I made it my goal to complete the twelve week course in its entirety, and in the messy and imperfect way of all things in life, it did begin to change me. The course and its prompts triggered series of discoveries, which have brought me closer than ever to a creativity that is truly a grounded, beautiful practice. One that I might use to keep that spark alive. So that my spirit is bolstered, capable of holding the grief it must learn to hold in this life, and capable too of the rapture, oh the rapture, of living.
But such ambitious commitments are hard to stick with alone.
My wonderful experience in this course is thanks, at least in part, to Veronica. Every week we called for two hours, checked in with each other, enlightened each other. As the weeks drew on, the conversations began to flow easier, go deeper, so that I would come away from them inspired, invigorated, cathartically relieved and emotionally spent, with a pain in my chest.
Julia Cameron believes that inside all of us lives a creative spark, a playful childlike artist who is injured by our struggles, self doubt and social conditioning. I went into this process hoping it would help me write and create more freely, but it has given me so much more than that.
I believe that it has given me the tools to live a more wild and precious life.
But let’s start at the beginning. Veronica and I have decided to share our our journey
together with you for the next 12 weeks. The topic of this week, our first ever check in, was fear. The fears and learned feelings of inadequacy that hold us back.
I hope you enjoy, and that perhaps something of our journeys will resonate.
Much love,
Feargha