Embrace Separation, Return to Whole

In my last post I talked about how for some people writing is a necessity, as much so as eating or breathing. I also mentioned the impasse my life seemed to be at with regard to writing and sustenance. A few nights ago I had several puzzling dreams. As I talked them over with my wife I realized they were indeed pointing me in a direction.

A Jewish mystic once said, “Every dream unexamined is a letter from God unopened.” Now I realize that the word God is problematic for many people, including myself, but let’s move on. For me, dreams are letters from somewhere gloriously mysterious, and I just have to leave it at that. I do pay attention to them.

The dreams, in their own symbolic fashion, were pointing at my educational experience and telling me to enlarge on it with my writing. Several times I have contemplated writing about my teaching experience, but I never have been able to get a handle on how to approach it. Suddenly ideas began to enlarge in my mind and I could feel the nature and shape of the book. My writing is guided by both a symbolic vision of the book and the feel of what I am doing. The writing doesn’t yield to outlines and strict reportage. Though I mainly write nonfiction, the writing guides itself and reveals itself as if I were writing fiction.

I have begun to dive into this new project and I believe that it is a commercially viable piece of writing. Education is a hot topic. Many people write opinions about it, but how many can say they’ve actually taught within a school that works, a school where kids would rather go to class than stay home sick? So I’m going to write about it in my own inimitable style and see what happens. My hope is that a quality independent publisher with integrity like Beacon Press picks it up. Beacon Press was founded by the Unitarians, and the school was housed by the Unitarian Society here for the first ten years of the school’s existence. Having the spiritual companionship of Emerson and Thoreau would be nice.

Article Author: John Spivey

John Spivey is a writer and furniture maker who lives in Santa Barbara, California with his family. His personal blog is called Nature, Craft, & Soul. He can be contacted here.

Visit John Spivey's author page — John Spivey's Blog