From Thursday to Sunday of last week I was at Laity Lodge — or, as I like to think of it, the Texas Rivendell — co-leading a retreat with the amazing Sara Hendren, with music by the equally amazing Claire Holley. (I’ll have more to say about those ladies in a future post.) Our retreat was called The Work and Joy of Repair, and it grew out of my Invitation and Repair project and Sara’s thinking about critique and repair. It was a wonderful, wonderful time, but let me tell you, my head is spinning. So much to process.
And my blog is the main place I’ll do that processing — thanks to the support of readers, which many of you reading this are. I received an email the other day from a reader, Philip Sugg, who really gets what I’m trying to do:
Thanks for all your work on the blog, and for condensing a lot of its material in the newsletter! I followed one of your links below to your blog post, “The Homebound Symphony,” and branched out in a few different directions across the site from there. It’s immensely satisfying to follow one link after another across “Snakes and Ladders,” and see the way posts talk to one another, hang together on a theme, and evolve. This is the kind of association the hyperlink model was meant to create. Of course it takes a lot of writing to get there, but you’ve really accumulated something special at this point: each new post is richer than it would be on its own because it offers a new way in. It’s a great example of what writing and creativity should look like on the open internet.
Yes! – and just what I had hoped to hear, because that kind of associative exploration is what I’m trying to enable for myself and for my readers. And the more support I get here the more time and energy and thought I can invest in that project. Many thanks to all who have helped so far.
If you have in mind any particular topics or themes you’d like me to explore, please note them in reply to this message. I will read all your suggestions and incorporate what I can into my writing – or, perhaps, link to others who have written better than I can.
Thanks again for accompanying me on this peculiar journey.