My Voice

Sometimes I find it hard to find my voice when writing. It isn't that I have nothing to say; it's quite the contrary. I have a lot to say and I just don't know how to possibly write it all. The last few weeks I have been experiencing this. So, I decided to start small by writing something. When I was in my creative writing class, we did an exercise where we wrote a list of whatever words came in one minute. I thought this might be interesting...let's see what happens!

turnip
flower
prayer
gone
travel
fear
tantrum
grace
love
peace
angel
American
stove
paper
song
story
odd
off
canary
topic
connected?
holy
stomping
flame
honour
honest
gentle
kind
blank
thought
thinking
stomach
hunger
tame
lion
soft
light
glitter
floam
butterfly
broken
sad
re-metamorphoses
good
dance
retreat
two
change
aspire
city
bridge
flow
TIME

What does it all mean? Here's the explanation.

My first thought was a turnip. I then thought of the plant flowering and how that can relate to prayer. The fruit that comes from an effort. Then it was gone and I thought of travel and how sometimes I am fearful of travel. Sometimes I respond to fear by throwing tantrums. God responds with grace and love and peace and his angels are present. Then I thought, "wouldn't it be great to have more grace, love, peace, and angels present in American lives?" Something was cooking on the stove and smelled like paper. I looked back at the computer screen as my "paper". Then I heard a song playing in the background. I started wondering if there may be a story in the making. Then I thought, "this is a pretty odd list." When I started writing odd, I accidentally wrote "off". I erased it and wrote odd, followed by off. For some reason a yellow canary popped into my head and I just wrote canary. I thought, "that's off topic." I had already written off, so I wrote topic. Then I wondered, "is canary connected in any way to anything else I have thought of?" The song playing in the background had the word holy and it stuck. A child went stomping by. Then I thought of Holy flame and stomping out a flame. A moment later, I thought of honouring one's parents - when I thought of honour, I also thought of gentle and kind. Then, my mind went blank for a moment. I thought. I was thinking. My stomach growled. I am hungry. I need to tame my hunger. A lion also gets tamed. They are soft and I saw the light glittering through a mane. Today I was playing with some floam that had glitter in it. I made a butterfly. It got broken and I was sad. I was with a friend and I started teasing about re-metamorphoses. It was good. I enjoyed the conversation! Dancing is also good. There was dancing at the retreat I was on. There was dancing at the last two retreats I have been on. It has changed me. I aspire to change more. I also aspire to see great things for my city. I have visions of bridges for my city. Bridges that allow the Spirit to flow. The timer went off.