A Bunch of Beautiful Things (and Poetry, of course!)
Miscelania and poetry for you, as we bid January farewell...
Can you believe the first month of the NEW year is almost over? We will be welcoming February and bidding a hearty farewell to January soon enough! I pray your January has been good to you and that it has brought you many little ways to have some NEW beginnings and SEE THE LIGHT!
“Every man should be born again on January first. Start with a fresh page.”
-HENRY WARD BEECHER
Tonight’s newsletter is a quick and happy post for you, which includes all things NEW for me and our beloved community, The Way Back to Ourselves. Stay with me, and I will have a secret poem for you from my debut poetry collection, Of Wings & Dirt, at the end!
Okay then… onward and upward!
First, I would like to deeply thank
Magazine and of Makers and Mystics (along with their judges, like ) for selecting my poem to be voted on in the Audience Choice Award! And I have ALL of you, their readers and mine, to THANK for voting for my poem, “An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights.” Because of your kindness and generosity, my poem was chosen from 700 to win the title of Audience Choice. I am beyond humble and grateful. You can read “An Ode to Hard, Dark Nights” at the Ekstasis website. It’s about the dark nights during my illness when I prayed to die. God didn’t answer those prayers. Instead, he breathed me back to life. He wants to do the same for you!In case you didn’t know, I have a writing course, “How to Grow Your Writing Life,” available for sale in our website store! It’s a warm, encouraging hug to all of the faithful creatives I know and love! It is also packed full of my best writing lessons and advice from my twenty-year career and experience as a writer, teacher, editor, and professor.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
1) Learn to create WRITERLY HABITS that supercharge your craft and productivity.
2) Learn to nurture your ARTIST-SELF so you can have more confidence, creativity, and calm.
3) Learn specific techniques to dramatically improve your WRITERLY CRAFT overnight.
4) Learn a direct path to find and improve your WRITING VOICE so you stand out as YOU.
Right now, we are moving through the course as a launch team of forty, and we will meet together on Zoom next month! It’s been an amazing experience so far, and I am SO very grateful. A HUGE thank you goes to this amazing launch team and all of the writers who have purchased the course so far!
What are you doing on February 12th at 8:30 pm EST? We’d love to hang out with you! All the editors & lots of nice faithful creatives will be there. Trust us, you don’t want to miss out. Email us at thewayback2ourselves@gmail.com for the Zoom link invite and details. There will be an open mic, writing wins, free write, and OF COURSE connection with amazing friends, new and old.
YOU BELONG HERE!
The Way Back Podcast is coming back!! We are on Spotify and Apple now! We will have our beautiful editors on for a round table about our literary submissions for the Spring Collection and their upcoming projects, as well as all things writing, creativity, community, and faith. We will also be having on Jordan Raynor (The Sacredness of Secular Work),
(of The Fallow House, Let There Be Art, and The Matter of Little Losses), and (She’s Not Your Enemy) on to talk about their amazing new books, along with many more amazing guests. I am totally giddy to meet these amazing creatives!If you are reading this, you are a faithful subscriber, so I invite you to SUBMIT EARLY—as in NOW—for our Spring Collection: RENAISSANCE. Beat the rush and get our eyes on your writing and artwork sooner! We are open to ALL Feb. 1 through March 1, so please submit your best work and share this with a faithful creative that you know! We are now accepting the following: poetry, short stories, essays, paintings, photography, and the like in high resolution quality. Any art must have a written component that accommodates it. Please see our website for more details and submission guidelines. Please strictly follow the guidelines and submit the best you have, which is edited and in the spirit of our mission.
THE WAY BACK TO OURSELVES MISSION STATEMENT
We are for seekers, believers, wanderers, and creatives.
Here, at The Way Back to Ourselves, we are committed to making a community where our members can slow down, take a deep breath, and find the way back to who they were always meant to be. And in that self-discovery, be it spiritual or otherwise, we become better people, parents, leaders, and creatives who impact our homes and communities toward a gentler, healthier, and more beautiful tomorrow.
We hope our content points others toward cultivating a quieter more creative life that is rooted in a creator-God who loves us and reveals himself through the divine beauty evident in our relationships, artistic expressions, natural surroundings, existential quandaries, and diverse experiences.
Okay, sweet friends! Thank you for reading and sticking around. As promised, here is a secret poem for you from my forthcoming debut poetry collection with Wipf and Stock, Of Wings & Dirt. I wrote this poem in the Blue Ridge Mountains this month and squeezed it in my final manuscript. I pray you enjoy!
THIS HOLY ACT By Kimberly Phinney Something holy is afoot. Do you feel it close, moving through the woods— here within your reach? Do you see how the soft pines glide through the frigid air— still green with life— and how the last copper leaf clings to the maple tree in the wind? Or how the ivy crawls across the rock like an upward stream— and how the chanterelle’s yellow cup opens wide to be born at night? Do you see how the stars seem to move and shake with verve in the ancient sky and how they guide the deer and bear the same? Or how the black atmosphere goes on and on and on, so hungry in the forever dance of creation beyond them— ever expanding out into something new and back to the starting touch of God, when he breathed burning life into the dust because of love and birthed light? In the beginning, it says, God made the Heavens and the Earth. Can you feel backward and trace it all to you? Love begets love begets creation begets life begets love and so on: from land, to sky, to lark, to wings, to river, to trout, to mountains, to springs, to face, to heart, to lips, to words. All love. All one, beating in the same accord. All happening now— in soul and song. All light, all good, all divine. Yes, something holy is afoot. Even now, as we doubt, or cry, or walk about, or bask in joy. Even now, as we are born or born again, are gaining or are losing, are growing old or are dying. Even now, as we are opening our eyes to live or wake, or are closing our eyes to pray or sleep a bit— in heaven or in our dreams. His kingdom come, His will be done, it says, on Earth as it is in Heaven. It is all happening—all at once. So, gasp now. Hold your hand to your heart. Know your own soul. Then, stand back and see anew— in this Holy Act.
As always and always…
You belong here,
me
Congratulations on the reader’s choice win! Well deserved. Such a beautiful poem ❤️
So beautiful ❤️