Where Do We Go Now?
Where do we go now? The Guns and Roses refrain keeps traveling through my brain. I’m in flux. We’re re-establishing a presence in Memphis, renting an apartment downtown until we can hopefully find a condo. I’m so place oriented, y’all. This splitting back into three parts—New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and Memphis—has discombobulated me. I tend to grow deep rather than wide, I always have. Conversations that hit subjects and move on like dragonflies on the surface of a pond disorient me. Maybe this has to do with my lack of spatial competence. I too easily lose my place in the world. So I’ve been struggling.
Until yesterday.
The Moment of Now
I was leaving the hair salon on the sidewalk in Uptown New Orleans. Mulling over the disquiet I’ve felt and how the delightful conversations with the Paris Parker folks had eased that unease into the background for a moment. Then it hit me. I think because my brain was unjangled, in that moment I thought of the transformative experience of being a facilitator for Days of Dialogue with the Mississippi Episcopal Diocese.
This small but mighty group is traveling the state initiating conversations about who we are in the context of race. And I thought about the Contemplative Justice Group I attend most every Monday by Zoom through The School of Contemplative Living. There we slowly and carefully review our lives like picking crab from the shell. Also the spin-off group that is examining the role of enslavement in the founding of the Louisiana Diocese. And my beloved Free Church of the Annunciation where a conversation is ongoing about using more gender-inclusive language in the liturgy. And y’all, the loyal and nonjudgemental readers of this blog.
At that, the thought hit me square on: you have already landed. The “where do we go now” question is already underway. I don’t need to feel adrift because I’ve already landed in my new place.
The Moment of Landing in Now
This imagery might be influenced by my novel I picked back up, The Bone Trench. In it, Mother Mary leaves heaven in search of her missing son. She lands in Memphis on the lip of a trench filled with bones. My thoughts about Mother Mary on her feast day encouraged me to return to this work that had an agent who dribbled it out to about four houses before handing it back to me. It’s a really good novel. I can say that because when my writing flounders like a dead fish wall-eye up, I know it. This one doesn’t.
But re-engaging with the effort to get it public is also one of the reasons I feel like jagged pieces of a broken mirror floating in dark outer space . Really? You’re taking on this odd novel too? Isn’t it enough that no agents are interested in the Mississippi novel?
That’s when I realized I already have my group for whom this work will at least start an interesting conversation, even if they don’t agree with everything it has to say or the way it’s said. They will appreciate the effort. I’m already in the midst of that group. No matter that I’ve had this epiphany before–see the blog post above on Days of Dialogue. Perhaps the stream reference in there wasn’t good enough for me. Maybe I need to be more grounded, literally. Because all of a sudden I felt my toes hit earth. My mind cleared. I started walking down the sidewalk, already in the now.
Days of Dialogue with the Mississippi Episcopal Diocese, Searching for place in life, The Bone Trench, The moment of now, where do we go now
Joe Hawes
2 good things:
1) We might sell you out and about I. Memphis
2) You are going to revive a novel which really impressed me when I read it so long ago.
I loved it then and now it surely will find a large and worthy readership.
You made Mt day
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Hi, Joe. I’ve missed hearing from you. Hope you are well. Yes, I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with Memphis folks. I thought I remembered you liked this novel! That makes me happy. 🙂 We’ll have to talk more soon.
Joe Hawes
Sorry for the typos…
Ellen Morris Prewitt
No problem, says the woman who can’t spell…
terry woosley
I grew up Catholic and and I’ve loved Mary from my earliest spiritual memories. In seventh grade I prayed a novena at her statue in our little church asking her to make me May Queen, an honor which trditionally went to an eighth-grade girl. On the ninth day, Mary winked at me and smiled. I had no witnesses and I didn’t know what she meant. But the next week, when the eighth grader’s name was announced, I was relevied of the obligation of special treatment and a life in the convent — my bargaining chip.
I’ve trusted her for my spiritual guidance for sixty-two years now. The woman has a sense of humor and compassion, and she’s always been a reliable source of comfort to me in the face of my life’s everchanging reality.
I so look forward to reading your novel.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
“The obligation of special treatment and a life in the convent.” 🙂 I love this story (I often pray in church, “Thank you for what you have given me, and for what you have withheld”). Thank you for giving me a picture of Mary’s playful side, which I do believe in. Surely we are meant to delight in this world, which truly requires a sense of humor. And thank you for believing in my novel!
Joanne Corey
I’m thinking of circles as you come back ’round to Memphis and to The Bone Trench. I hope that that sense of return, of being drawn back into familiar circles, will give new energy to your Memphis endeavors.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I love this–thank you! The image of circles is so much more helpful than my usual distaste at backtracking–I was born a “Been there, done that” person. But circles, return, renewing energy, that I can use.