I’m using the words from AdventWord as writing prompts during this season. Each day has one word assigned to it. People around the globe are posting daily pictures, prayers, or writing, and sharing it with the hashtag #AdventWord. It’s lovely to see the variety of ways one word speaks to so many different people. My social media feed of friends participating in the practice is a tapestry of reflections ranging from silly pictures of children to classical artwork to short scripture or quotes. All inspiring.
Words—even just one word at a time—have such power to stir our memories, imagination, and creativity. That’s why I write—and invite you to write—reflective or expressive writing to prompts. Even five or ten minutes of writing based on a word, or a collection of words like a poem, or a visual word in a photo, can lead to surprising connections and revelations.
Today’s #AdventWord is PATH. My reflection on the word led me to a photo of a path from a journey I took, and a poem by Billy Collins. Both are shared below.
What path will these prompts lead you down today?
a photo prompt
a poetry prompt
Directions —by Billy Collins You know the brick path in back of the house, the one you see from the kitchen window, the one that bends around the far end of the garden where all the yellow primroses are? And you know how if you leave the path and walk up into the woods you come to a heap of rocks, probably pushed down during the horrors of the Ice Age, and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now against the light-brown fallen leaves? And farther on, you know the small footbridge with the broken railing and if you go beyond that you arrive at the bottom of that sheep’s head hill? Well, if you start climbing, and you might have to grab hold of a sapling when the going gets steep, you will eventually come to a long stone ridge with a border of pine trees which is as high as you can go and a good enough place to stop. The best time is late afternoon when the sun strobes through the columns of trees as you are hiking up, and when you find an agreeable rock to sit on, you will be able to see the light pouring down into the woods and breaking into the shapes and tones of things and you will hear nothing but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy falling of a cone or nut through the trees, and if this is your day you might even spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese driving overhead toward some destination. But it is hard to speak of these things how the voices of light enter the body and begin to recite their stories how the earth holds us painfully against its breast made of humus and brambles how we who will soon be gone regard the entities that continue to return greener than ever, spring water flowing through a meadow and the shadows of clouds passing over the hills and the ground where we stand in the tremble of thought taking the vast outside into ourselves. Still, let me know before you set out. Come knock on my door and I will walk with you as far as the garden with one hand on your shoulder. I will even watch after you and not turn back to the house until you disappear into the crowd of maple and ash, heading up toward the hill, piercing the ground with your stick – Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room
If you have something about PATH to share today, post it with the hashtag #AdventWord. Find out more here: AdventWord
