Setting Sundays #7 6th December 2023

Wintering, walks and Mary Oliver

It definitely isn’t Sunday. But this is definitely a Setting Sundays post. Time is fleeting, especially when caring for other people. I find that hours, sometimes days have gone past before I get back to what I was doing – writing. Yes, that was and is it. But somehow I am doing it, this writing. This is the evidence. And developing new writing exercises and researching ideas for the two ‘Wintering’ writing workshops I am running on 10^th and 17^th December via Zoom.

Looking after my dad is keeping me busy but I also managed to get out to meet a friend who I haven’t seen since February, for a wonderfully wintry walk in Richmond Park at the start of this week. It was very boggy in places but still, no wind, not too cold and thankfully not raining.

We tramped through a tawny carpet of leaves, brushed through the bracken and caught up on each other’s news and lives. It was so good to be out in the fresh air, chatting and laughing, and see the trees up close where I could greet them, rather than driving past.

Richmond Park

I felt so much better for blowing the cobwebs away and re-connecting with my friend. It has been months since I’ve been for a walk like that. So my intention is to do it again next week if possible, even if I’m on my own. Get out in the woods and fields and away from the roads, get into nature.

Today I snatched five minutes between various medical appointments with my dad, to read an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s collection of essays, Upstream:

I quickly found for myself two such blessings—the natural world, and the world of writing: literature. These were the gates through which I vanished from a difficult place.

In the first of these—the natural world—I felt at ease; nature was full of beauty and interest and mystery, also good and bad luck, but never misuse. The second world—­the world of literature—offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy (the first step of what Keats called negative capability) and I ran for it. I relaxed in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything—other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—­the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.

I feel this very keenly right now and am so grateful for this marvellous woman’s writing – what a gift she has bestowed upon us.

There will be some Mary Oliver in the two Wintering workshops, and more writers to inspire, as we think about what ‘Wintering’ is, physically, metaphorically and creatively; how it might restore and rejuvenate us as we move through December, into 2024 and the next season of our lives.

I hope you will join me!

Take care,

Lucy xx