Ellipsis

This Sunday we'll be gathering for the first of this year's monthly therapeutic writing sessions, The Sunday Pages. And this time it’s an extended session of 90 minutes so we’ll begin at 6pm for a finish around 7.30pm.

As usual, this is a session of writing prompts curated around a theme, during which I offer invitations to relaxation and mindfulness and perhaps some gentle seated movement. I offer these to encourage presence and deep reflection, and to nurture flow both within and from our words.

So the theme for this extended writing session is Yonder.

I fell in love with this word sometime early December. It features a lot in carols doesn’t it, and it crops up in the language around Christmas and Yuletide.

And I thought it contained so much more than the kind of glance we give it at this time of year.

Yonder seems to me to hold something essential about wintering. About this moment in the year, this long moment, longer than we really are led to understand.

This is still a time of winter celebration, of winter retreat and resourcing, of winter immersion. How might we weave this into the reality of our lives?

So yonder to me means to consider the distance, the horizon. And for that we need to have travelled. It suggests to me that we have arrived at a certain point, perhaps on a journey. To think on yonder we need to be still a moment and take in the view around us with our own eyes, as well as the path that brought us here.

So we might look back, we might look down at our feet, we might look at the horizon.

We might consider the condition of our shoes, whether the view is clear or clouded. Or we might check on a few things. We might check on our kit, our resources, our energy, and our intentions for the onward path.

And I got to thinking that to look yonder, we must be here now, acknowledging the so far and how we have been carrying it. Feeling the terrain underfoot and the wind against our skin, feeling the beat of our own heart.

And the best moments of a hike, of a journey - I'm thinking of a mountain perhaps,

or it could be a journey across any kind of natural landscape - the best moments are surely, for me anyway, the moments of rest.

Gathering with companions, taking water, sharing food, reorganising kits, adjusting clothing, filling the lungs, resting the muscles, the gaze adjusting from foreground to distance and back again.

We might share a smile at this point, or a sigh or a story.

When we still ourselves in rest and reflection, we might check the map. The one we always hold within us. Have we wandered off the path a little? And if so, how are we finding the untrodden way?

And where to next? What might be the rough coordinates? How might we imagine the journeying to come? How might we reimagine it? And how might we leave some room for the inevitable unexpected?

What if we gaze at the horizon a while in this moment? What if we let the distance meet us?

Less striving, less rushing, less struggle. More thriving, more noticing, more trust.

So perhaps you'll join me this Sunday 5th January to begin the year writing, and let your very own words be your guide onward.